This module explores art in Britain in the period after the Second World War. It traces art’s relationship to post-war reconstruction, from artists who engaged explicitly and publicly with the experience of war and the spirit of reconstruction to those who developed more private or personal responses in this period. It considers how art can help us to understand the temporally unstable experience of reconstruction, making visible the multiplicity and highly contested nature of this extended period of British history; it also asks what role art might have served for those caught up in post-war reconstruction. It explores how artists engaged with questions of politics, national identity, gender, sexuality, and migration in this period. Artists include Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton, Pauline Boty, Eduardo Paolozzi, Oscar Kokoschka, Victor Pasmore, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Frank Bowling, David Hockney, Prunella Clough, and Bridget Riley.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
exhibit an in-depth knowledge of the key artistic practices in Britain after the Second World War.
exhibit an understanding of the place of those practices in the wider cultural and social context of post-war Britain.
display a sound knowledge of the relevant critical debates over the question of how to interpret them.
apply knowledge of those debates to the analysis of individual artists and works of art.
identity primary and secondary sources relevant to the understanding and interpretation of art in post-war Britain and subject them to critical analysis.
Assessment
30805-01 : 4000 word essay : Coursework (100%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions
Assessment: One 4,000-word essay (100%)
Reassessment: Re-submission of 4,000-word essay (100%)