First Academic Year
| HKGK1514 |
Image Interpretation in Art History |
16 credits |
L Combrinck
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The historical sources and roots of contemporary visual culture and art are discovered. The living interaction between the present and the past is emphasised, and frameworks for the historical interpretation of the cultural and artistic heritage are explored.
The aim of the module is thus to introduce students to the discipline of art history. We look back from the contemporary visual world to the historic sources and beginnings of questions and problems in art. A broad survey is given of the history of the visual arts, from the pre-historic to the postpostmodernist period, by way of specific themes.
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| HKWS1624 |
Studying Visual Culture and Media |
16 credits |
L Combrinck
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| Visual culture includes media like film, photography, painting, installations, advertising, etc. Students are encouraged to become alert to the various values and frameworks which influence our perception and evaluation of images. Key paradigms or methodologies which have become central to the humanities (e.g., feminism), and concepts and evaluative frameworks according to which products of visual culture are judged (e.g. economic, judicial, religious/moral, and aesthetic), are discussed with reference to films, advertisements, art and other visual material. |
Second Academic Year
| HKGK2614 |
Visual Narratives and Fictive Worlds |
16 credits |
JA Kriel de Klerk
J van Wyk
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| The module investigates the visual ways in which fiction opens up possibilities of being-in-the-world. Visual narratives from the past, as well as contemporary narratives from the western world and Africa are examined. This includes: history painting and its sources, emblem books and public monuments, modern and postmodern visual narratives in various media, and mutual visual translations of stories and myths from the West and Africa. |
| HKGK2724 |
Image Translations in South Africa |
16 credits |
Prof ES Human
J van Wyk
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| The module consists of an exploration of interactions, reconstructions, appropriations and translations of art in Western and African contexts in South Africa. Contemporary art is analysed in the light of the historical transformation of enduring questions and problems from Western art, genres and systems of the arts. |
Third Academic Year
| HKGK3718 |
Forms of Image Interaction: Key Texts in Art Historical Interpretation |
32 credits |
J van Wyk
Prof ES Human |
Why do images have the power to arrest, fascinate, enthral and manipulate the human gaze, and even to inspire the urge in humans to destroy and replace them? The focus of the module is on the ways in which spectators understand, use and interpret images.
The aim is to stimulate reflection on the world between the onlooker and the image, and to expose students to key texts in art historical interpretation. Various topical discursive tools and theories of interpretation are assessed and tested in action in order to develop coherent frameworks for interpretations of visual material.
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| HKGK3728 |
Envisioning Knowledge: Image and Imagination |
32 credits |
Prof ES Human
J van Wyk |
Knowledge and experience are increasingly visualized in our time since the so-called “iconic turn”. The module is a systematic and historical look at the ways, conditions and media in which pictures are generated for diverse purposes, and received in various contexts including the worlds of art, science, entertainment, mass-media, commerce, technology, politics, justice, religion etc.
Image theories which have been developed in the discipline of art history to scrutinize a variety of image types, are used to analyse and interpret the ideological power of images and word-image configurations in pictures like advertisements, maps, caricatures, diagrams and scientific models and schemas.
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Fourth Academic Year (for BA Fine Arts students)
| HKWS4804 |
Recent Developments in Visual Art and Culture |
32 credits |
Prof ES Human
J van Wyk
JA Kriel de Klerk
Dr MP Rossouw
|
| A sophisticated dialogue with topical image and interpretation theories and theories of vision and visuality is entered into in order to enable students to develop coherent frameworks for interpretations of visual material. |
| HKGK4804 |
Contemporary South African Art Contexts |
32 credits |
Coordinators:
Prof ES Human
Dr MP Rossouw
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| Seminar-based, individual research projects in the history, theory and criticism of visual art and culture in support of studio research by final-year students in Fine Art. |