The curricular unit has the following objectives: . to analyze the way culture and art contribute to the building of English identity; . to ponder on the importance of the religious problematic towards the building of an artistic discourse; . to understand the way a “protestant aesthetic” was built in the domain of the representation of the real; . to analyze the way the 19th century art dialogued with the Industrial Revolution emergent paradigm ; . to problematize the permanence of past aesthetic discourses in Modernism and Post-Modernism.
The curricular unit aims to develop the following competences: . the domain of conceptual and methodological tools in the fields of cultural and artistic studies; . the capacity to elaborate on topics while using the required conceptual tools; . the capacity to build a critical a rational approach of the object; . the capacity to ponder on the speculative dimension of the chosen object; . the capacity to problematize the epistemological dimension inherent to the state of the arts on the chosen object.
1.Building a singular aesthetic 1.1.The remains of Medieval aesthetic and religious memories; 1.2.The specificity of an English renaissance aesthetic; 1.3.Building a British imaginary – from William Hogarth to Thomas Gainsborough.
2.In the tension between past and present 2.1.Recovering a perception of the Transcendent – William Blake; 2.2.A new aesthetic dialogue with the space – from John Constable to J. M. W. Turner; 2.3.The synthesis of the interarts dialogues – the pre-Raphaelites.
3. From Modernism to Post-Modernism 3.1.Conceiving a perception of modernity – from Walter Richard Sickert to Stanley Spencer; 3.2.Avant-Garde and tradition – from Paul Nash to Francis Bacon; 3.3.On the dialogues with other aesthetic horizons – from Edward Hopper to Lucien Freud.
Avelar, Mário. Ekphrasis – O poeta no atelier do artista (Chamusca: Cosmos, 2006) Barringer, Tim et al. Pre-Raphaelites – Victorian Avant-Garde (London: Tate, 2012) Faria, Luísa Leal de. Sociedade e Cultura Inglesas (Lisboa: Universidade Aberta, 1996) Graham-Dixon, Andrew. A History of British Art (London: BBC Worldwide Ldt, 1999 [1996]) Wilton, Andrew. Five Centuries of British Painting – From Holbein to Hodgkin (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001)
Continuous assessment is privileged: 2 or 3 digital written documents (e-folios) during the semester (40%) and a
presence-based final exam (p-folio) in the end of the semester (60%). In due time, students can alternatively choose to perform one
final presence-based exam (100%).
