Politics of Art and Visual Culture

Course content

This course aims to introduce and discuss the theoretical and practical interrelation of politics, art and visual culture from the 20th century to this day. The course is divided into five parts. We will first tackle some key theoretical texts that discuss the relationship betwcen politics, visual culture and art. Then we will move on to the visual politics of the nation-states and visual representations of Cold War ideologies. in Part III, we will accentuate the political perspective of avant-garde practices and the gendered nature of visual politics. Later on, we will scrutinize the usage of visual practices in political protests. And in the final part, we will focus on the neoliberal political relations behind the contemporary art scene, and the politics of museum display.