BA History of Art (Asia, Africa and Europe)

Based around the three broad themes of Religion, Trade and Empire, this module examines a series of individual objects in context from across Asia and Africa to explore the role of material and visual culture in understanding the history of global connectivity. Each case-study will demonstrate the transmission of ideas, motifs, materials, objects and people within Asia and Africa and in interaction with Europe, over around 1500 years from the 2nd-3rd to the 18th centuries CE.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

Alongside studying individual objects, art historians also examine the spaces, locations, institutions and contexts within which they may be seen and evaluated.

This module will introduce the many contexts of use for objects, including the religious, social and material circumstances in which a 'work of art' was created and used. By considering individual objects or groups in a variety of media, we may explore how settings and institutions contribute to the production of the meaning and value of objects and material culture.

Furthermore, the constructions of an object's meaning may change over time especially when it moves from one space to another. How may an object produced for use in a religious environment in Asia or Africa become a 'work of art' in the different context of a museum or exhibition? How has the art market transformed the meanings and value of objects from Asia and Africa? This module examines these issues and the changing contexts and meanings of objects from Asia and Africa.

Classroom discussion will be complemented by fieldtrips to, for example, a gallery, museum or religious building.

Objectives and learning outcomes

On successful completion of this module students will be able to

• Understand a range of spaces, locations, institutions and contexts in which objects have been located in Asia and Africa.
• Evaluate how the religious, social and material circumstances in which objects have been made and used contribute to their meaning.
• Interpret the changing constructions of meaning of objects over time.
• Demonstrate a range of skills in visual and literary analysis, research and other study skills for successful academic and vocational pathways.

Workload

• Lectures: 1 hour per week
• Seminars: 2 hours per week

Method of assessment

• 500-word critical literature review/short report (worth 20% of marks)
• 1,500-word essay (worth 40%)
• Exam: 2 hours (worth 40%)

Suggested reading

• Craig Clunas, Art in China, 2nd ed., Oxford History of Art (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Finbarr Barry Flood and Gulru Necipoglu, eds., A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, 2 vols, Blackwell Companions to Art History (Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, 2017).
• Sharon Macdonald, ed., A Companion to Museum Studies (Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
• Maurizio Peleggi, Monastery, Monument, Museum : Sites and Artifacts of Thai Cultural Memory (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2017).
• Stacey Pierson. From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
  Louise Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects : Buddhism, Imperialism and Display (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

Disclaimer

Important notice regarding changes to programmes and modules.

Building upon Global Arts: connected histories (to 1800)(Term 1), this module develops an understanding of the arts of Asia and Africa from the 19th century to the present, encompassing the period when many regions were impacted first by European colonialism and later by nationalist and postcolonial movements.

This module builds incrementally on the first year module Histories of Art: In/Out of Asia and Africa to give robust theoretical and historical training in decolonising the curriculum with regard to the discipline of Art History.

Co-taught by department members, the module will offer students a series of key transferable skills and a range of analytical, theoretical and practical approaches to the decolonisation of the study of art and archaeology.

The module comprises a number of thematic blocks, of which at least one is theoretical and two historical. The themes of these blocks will vary each year but may include: Postcolonial or Decolonial?; The Stakes of Decolonisation; Why Decolonise the Canon?; Decolonising Archaeology; The History of Islamic Art History; The History of Art History in [a region of] East Asia; The History of Art History in [a region of] South and South-East Asia; and The History of African Art History. In addition to essay assessments, alternative assessments will be included; for example, group debates, literature reviews and weekly e-logs.

Objectives and learning outcomes

On successful completion of this module a student will be able to

• Demonstrate fluency in a range of decolonising topics specific to the discipline of Art History.
• Appraise the various approaches, key issues and concerns of these topics, with particular concern for their relevance to Asian and African contexts.
• Apply decolonising frameworks appropriate to their own research and professional interests.
• Demonstrate a range of skills necessary for successful academic and vocational pathways, including general research and transferable study skills.
• See and understand a variety of often opaque cultural values and explore their implications for redressing forms of disadvantage associated with racism and colonialism in academia and the wider world.

Workload

• Lectures: 2 hours per week

Method of assessment

• 800-word annotated bibliography (worth 25% of marks)
• 1,500-word essay (worth 50%)
• Seminar participation and weekly logbook entries (worth 25%)

Suggested reading

• Mignolo, Walter and Catherine Walsh On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Practice (2018).
• Capistrano-Baker, Florina “Whither Art History in the Non-Western World: Exploring the Other('s) Art Histories," The Art Bulletin 97: 3 (2015): 246-57.
• Grant, Catherine and Dorothy Price (eds), “Decolonizing Art History,” Art History 43: 1 (2020): 8-66.
• Nelson, Robert S., “The Map of Art History,” The Art Bulletin, 79: 1 (1997): 28-40.
• Gregor Langfeld, “The Canon in Art History: Concepts and Approaches," Journal of Art Historiography 19 (2018): 1-18.

Disclaimer

Important notice regarding changes to programmes and modules.

The course is designed to equip students with a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to the study of museums. It examines the strategies and practices by which museums interpret, organise and display objects – especially non-Western objects – within diverse cultural contexts.

This module comprises an essay of 8,000 words on an archaeological or art historical topic to be supervised by a teacher of the Department.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module examines key themes in the study of Buddhist art, visual and material culture in South Asia, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas. Central issues addressed include the figure of the ‘historical’ Buddha in theory and practice, relics, reliquaries and the stupa, and iconography, aesthetics and Buddhist imagery.

The module focuses upon objects that represent outstanding achievements of the arts of the Islamic lands of the pre-modern and early modern periods, within the theoretical framework of the study of objects and material culture. Artefacts in different media from different times and regions will be studied in depth, developing critical understanding and knowledge. The agency and consumption of these objects will form an integral part of the study in this module, with consideration given variably to artists, artistic practices, patrons, and/or viewers. Another important art historical aspect that may be explored is the artistic interactions between the Islamic Middle East and neighbouring cultures, including Europe, including the circulation of objects and their transculturation, to be critically discussed through a decolonising lens.

This module examines the art and culture of premodern East Asia through a range of thematic lectures, that may adopt a pan-East Asian approach or may hone in on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan). Drawing on visual material, including (but not limited to) paintings, ceramics, tomb furnishings and textiles, the module seeks to present an overview of key developments in East Asian art from early times to the 1800s. The topics considered include artists, artworks, producers, consumers, materials and design approaches.

Concepts of place and space offer rich and multivalent points of entry for constructing connected histories of art, architecture, and cultural production across East Asia. Through exploration of conceptual notions of place and space, this module will examine memory, interaction, and art production across national and regional boundaries as realised in visual and material culture. The module enables students to develop knowledge of East Asian artistic and built environments through lectures that may take a pan-East Asian approach or may focus on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan).

In this module we will explore the central debates of contemporary art through a series of thematic case studies. Students will engage with artworks, exhibitions, art criticism and art theory to gain critical understanding of the key issues and concepts of contemporary art in its global scope.

This module offers a broad introduction to the visual arts in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa.  Students will engage with a range of theoretical positions to think through art historical case studies, from Pan-African festivals and anti-apartheid art, to photography and contemporary performance.

South and Southeast Asia is a region of great religious and cultural diversity. This module examines aspects of the visual arts of South, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas over two millennia from the 3rd century BCE to the 18th century. A core theme is the role of art, architecture and visual culture in the negotiation between cosmopolitan and local cultures, and the formation of regional, religious and political identities by rulers, patrons, artists and their communities. This cultural encounter was expressed in terms of transregional literary and court cultures (Pali, Persian, Sanskrit or Tibetan), religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) as well as visual culture.

With its broad geographical and chronological span, the module offers students the opportunity to delve into the architectural histories of the Islamic world and encourages them to engage critically with a range of issues that link to those covered in other art history modules. Where relevant and possible, classroom discussion will be complemented by study-visits to museum collections in London.   

this module offers students the opportunity to explore how artists negotiated their place within a rapidly society, and to examine the ways in which they forged unique world views and inspired new modes of visual expression. More specifically, it covers the development of East Asian art and visual culture in the 19th-21st centuries, starting with explorations of how artists’ experience of modernism were shaped by particular regional and historical contexts.

This module aims to introduce students to the major works and movements in the history of Japanese visual culture through the examination of selected works of art dating from early times to the 1800s in relation to religious, literary, historical and social contexts. Material covered ranges from religious paintings, sculpture and architure to the secular arts, such as prints and textiles.

The course will provide an introduction to histories, theories and practices of collecting, drawing on a range of Asian and African case studies. It explores different approaches to collecting across cultures and historical periods, shifting patterns of taste and connoisseurship, individual as well as institutional collecting motivations.