UCL - Iconology and History of Art

[ARKM2310]

[15h] 4 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Ralph Dekoninck

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

Students will have acquired the main keys towards reading " images ", of all artistic disciplines, from late antiquity until today, in their contexts of creation and use.
They will be able to detect and analyse the principal conventions and to handle the main iconographic repertoires and their historical developments. Having mastered the strategies for deciphering isolated images and complex programmes they will be prepared for their personal research in this field..

Main themes

Case studies will provide the keys and methods for analysing the relations between the material support of the image and its multidimensional message in shape and colour and for reading and interpreting artistic iconic messages of our era in their context and function

Content and teaching methods

Thorough case studies through all arts and iconological analyses of highly significant works of art.
Contents and recurrent topics: - Nature and characteristics of iconic language. - The creation of images : their sources (texts, images, environment)..- Support and function (notions of programme and semantic field, ...). - The meanings of composition - and of colour. - Ornamentation, figuration and script: specificities and interaction. - Rules and traditions in the decoration of profane and religious space (funerary, baptismal, domestic, promotional, etc). -Main iconographic traditions : biblical, allegorical, cosmographic, animal, mythical,¿). -Byzantine iconography in Western art. -Typology and the use of great prefigures: exempla and counter-exempla. -The iconological importance of the physical discovery of the work of art and of its iconography. - Life and afterlife of images (examples also from the decorative and applied arts)
- Special questions will concern: the illustration of the manuscript text; the image as a history document and testimony; the image as a commentary and exegesis; portraits; the real, the transreal and the monstrous. the iconographical vocabulary of an artist; the iconography of a theme with its mutations through time and space.
Lectures are based on analyses of works chosen from different periods, techniques and areas (mainly the West and Mediterranean area).illustrated by projections. Each student prepares a full commentary on a work of her/his choice during interactive visits to current and permanent exhibitions and monuments.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Further information (prerequisites, assessment methods, course materials, ...) :
The iconology course of the Master's years extends the ARKE 1255 course in "Interpretation of the Image and Introduction to Iconological Methods" of the second bachelor's year; it asks for an active presence during the lectures and invites to apply methods to personal research.
Average knowledge of Graeco-Roman mythology and Biblical sacred history is strongly recommended.
Grids for analysis should be assimilated. Readings and the observation of art works will be required.
Tools provided : grids of analysis, repertories, principal systems of iconographical classification, bibliographies, reproductions of art works and of details studied during the course + commented visit(s) of collections or exhibitions. Assessment of these, in relation to the cases studied during the course and to the current events concerning iconological research and by final oral examination where students will benefit from a preparation time before answering their question.

Programmes in which this activity is taught: Specialization in History of Art.