Learning objectives
The course aims at training the students for the research and critical interpretation of the sources of the history of art, looking for a more complete awareness of the methodologies for historical and artistic studies. The chosen monographic theme confronts the students with several iconic and literary evidences (letters, diaries, travel reports, drawings, photographs, etc..), Which require a specific analysis instrumentation, exposing the complex problems that concern the travel experience. At the end of the course the student should be able to autonomously meet the interpretation of various sources and testimonies, managing to frame them in their historical context, showing awareness of the different levels that involve the travel experience (the real or the virtual one) and its narrations, and must acquire a secure ability fot the reworking and a mastery of the specialized terminology.
Prerequisites
Knowledge of the general lines of debate on the visual arts from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century.
Course unit content
Travelling artists: routes and destinations between the nineteenth and twentieth century.
The course aims at tracing, starting from some exemplary case studies, the new geography of the grands and petits tours from the artists during a period of great transformation of the phenomenon of the journey, as it is the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, while trying to highlight motivations, goals, routes in the ongoing confrontation between history and modernity. In particular, we'd try to grasp the complexity of the analysis of this experience, with the documents providing often fragmentary and elusive evidences that are unlikely to make us understand its meaning and cultural impact.
Full programme
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Bibliography
V.Strukelj, Flânerie tra le lettere di Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in D.G. Rossetti, Lettere scelte, a cura di G.Silvani e V.Strukelj, MUP, Parma 2010, pp.127-156
V.Strukelj, Il pittore, la lettera, il viaggio. La correspondance di Eugène Fromentin e il progetto de Les Maîtres d’autrefois, in “La torre di Babele”, 2 (2004), pp.47-69
“Ricerche di s/confine”, 4, 1 ( 2013) [Il viaggio] Other bibliographic entries will be indicated during the lessons.
Teaching methods
Side by side with the lectures, seminars are planned for the students to comment, guided by the teacher, and explain texts (especially some biographies taken from Vasari's Vite), putting in place the proposed methodological reccomendation and identifying some specific issues.
Assessment methods and criteria
Starting from the bibliography and the subjects pointed out during the lessons, the students will have find out specific topics to examine in depth, about which they should then give an account in an oral presentation in front of the colleagues and with a written report. In this short exam it will also be evaluated the student autonomy in a bibliographical research, his ability to deal with a critical debate and to define a problematic research: all skills which will be necessary for the further processing of the thesis. The oral examination, which will take on the entire program, will have to verify the acquired knowledge, the student ability to analyze and summarize, his critical maturity in the reworking of the proposed themes.
Other information
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