HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND ART
Subjects covered in preliminary examination – 5th year
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND ART I – FROM PREHISTORY TO THE BAROQUE
1. The beginnings of art in prehistory and the art of the hunter gatherers
(Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age, megalithic constructions, primitive civilisations of the third world)
2. Ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt
(Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians; Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, new
Kingdom and Late Period)
3. The Pre-Hellenic and Hellenic world of the Eastern Mediterranean
(Crete and Mycenae; Greek art and architecture of the Archaic, Classical and Hellenic periods)
4. Creative culture of Ancient Rome, its conditions and heritage
(Etruscans, Rome as a republic and under the emperors – sculpture and monumental architecture, the
spread of Roman culture)
5. Art of the Early and High Middle Ages
(Early Christian, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian art; the Romanesque period in Western,
Southern and Central Europe)
6. High Middle Ages of European Gothic culture
(French cathedrals and the expansion of the Gothic into Europe; the Italian masters – the Pisani family
and Giotto; international Gothic, Franco-Flemish realism – Jan van Eyck and his successors in the
Netherlands, the winged altarpieces of the late Gothic)
7. Czech Gothic
(the late Přemyslovec, the flourishing of architecture, painting and sculpture under Charles IV, Master
of Vyšší Brod, Master Theoderic, Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, Petr Parléř, the Beautiful Style and
its masters, Vladislav Gothic)
8. The birth and boom of the 15th century Renaissance in Italy
(Masters of the Florentine Renaissance – architects, sculptors, painters and their successors)
9. The High Renaissance in Italy and Mannerism
(from Leonardo and Bramante to Raphael and Michelangelo, Venetian painting – Giorgione, Titian,
Tintoretto, El Greco, Palladian architecture)
10. The beginnings and development of the Baroque in Italy in the 17th century
(architecture from Maderno and Bernini to the dynamic baroque of Borromini and Guarini, painting
from Caravaggio and Caracciolo to Pozzo, the sculptor Bernini)
11. Main currents of Western European baroque of the 17th century
(architecture, painting and sculpture of classicising baroque in France in England, baroque painting in
Spain – Velasquez, masters of Flemish and Dutch painting from Rubens and Rubens and Rembrandt
to Vermeer)
12. Late baroque and rococo in Western and Central Europe
(French and Italian rococo painting – Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Tiepolo; architecture, painting
and sculpture of princely residences, pilgrimage churches and monasteries in Northern and Southern
Germany, the Danube region of Austria – Hildebrandt, Fischer von Erlach, Balthasar Neumann, the
Asam Brothers, Conner, Troger, Maulbertsch)
13. The baroque in Bohemia and Moravia
(early baroque construction art, the Dienzenhofers, a radical group of buildings, the baroque gothic of
Santini, Bendl, Jan and Ferdinand Maxmilian Brokoff, Braun, Škréta, Brandl, Reiner…)
HISTORY OF MODERN ART
1.
Classicism
The influence of the Enlightenment on art, the importance of art academies (the founding of the
Academy in Prague), academic painting and sculpture. Classicism in architecture.
(David, Ingres, Goya, Canova, Thorvaldsen, etc.)
2.
Romanticism
Fine art and literature – relationships, influences. Historicism in architecture.
(Friedrich, Blake, Fuseli, Géricault, Delacroix, Tkadlík, etc.)
3.
Realism
Fine art and social issues – relationships, influences. Caricature. Book illustration. Urban changes to
towns and cities.
(Daumier, Courbet, Corot, Navrátil, Purkyně, etc.)
4.
Impressionism and postimpressionism
Historical and contemporary understanding of impressionism, the relationship between art and
photography. The scientific bases of postimpressionism.
(Manet, Monet, Seurat, Slavíček, Lebeda, etc.)
5.
Symbolism and decadence
Fine art and period philosophy (Nietzsche), relationship to romanticism. The situation in different
centres of art (Paris, Prague, Munich, etc.)
(Moreau, Redon, Böcklin, Preisler, Pirner, etc.)
6.
The beginnings of modern sculpture
Relationships to impressionism, symbolism and the Secession. Sculpture and architecture. The
monument.
(Rodin, Vigeland, Rosso, Bílek, Meštrovič, etc.)
7.
Secession
Ideological sources of the Secession (Ruskin, Morris). The importance of the applied arts (posters).
Secession architecture and modern technology (Fanta).
(Mucha, Klimt, Horta, Wagner, Preissig, etc.)
8.
Fauvism and expressionism
Colour in fauvism. Sources. Modernism in Central Europe, new centres, expressionism and fauvism.
Relationships to literature and film in expressionism.
(Matisse, Munch, Ensor, Der Blaue Reiter, Die Brücke, Váchal, etc.)
9.
Cubism
The creative sources of cubism. Composition (and related theories in modern art), fine art and the
natural sciences, cubism in Paris and Prague, connections, links, differences.
(Cézanne, Braque, Picasso, Kubišta, Filla, Gočár, etc.)
10. The beginnings of abstraction
Abstraction and postimpressionism, abstraction and symbolism. The influence of scientific
knowledge. Basic theoretical texts. The relationship between fine art and music.
(Kupka, Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, etc.)
11. Futurism
Fine art and politics, the differences between Italian and Russian futurism, the influence on period art
in other countries.
(Marinetti, Boccioni, Larionov, Gončarovová, Zátková, etc.)
12. Dadaism
Historical context, relationship to literature and other artistic forms. The influence on art after the First
World War. Dadaism and contemporary art.
(Tzara, Duchamp, Dix, Grosz, etc.)
13. Surrealism
Fine art and psychiatry, psychology, etc. Surrealism and film. The influence on contemporary art.
Poetism and Devětsil. Architecture of the 1920s and 30s.
(Breton, Ernst, Dali, Artaud, Teige, Štyrský, etc.)
14. Socialist and degenerate art
Fine art and totalitarian ideology, socialist realism, “degenerate art”. Art and propaganda. Influence on
contemporary art.
(Malevich, Breker, Riefenstahl, etc.)
ART AFTER 1945, 20TH CENTURY CZECH ART.
1. Wartime and post-war art in Czechoslovakia
The wartime and post-war situation, wartime groups (Group 42, Sedm v říjnu [Seven in October], the
Ra Group). Post-war surrealism and explosionalism (M. Medek, V. Boudník, Signs of the Zodiac
circle)
2. American modernism after 1945
Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism. Color Field Painting, Hard Edge Painting, the
critic Clement Greenberg and his concept of modernism.
3. Totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, culture and politics
The development of the post-war situation in Czechoslovakia, socialist realism, form, content and
transformations from the 1950s to 60s. The official and unofficial scene in the 1950s, official
exhibitions and task-based events, domestic modernism and artistic groups (Máj, Trasa, UB 12,
Křižovatka, etc.)
4. Art in post-war Europe
Jean Dubuffet and Art Brut, informel and blot painting, the Independent Group (Richard
Hamilton), echoes of European developments on the Czech scene (Czech informel and
structural abstraction, the reaction to Art Brut in Czech art)
5. New forms and methods of art after 1950
John Cage and chance in art, Allan Kaprow, environments and happening. Fluxus and the
concept of intermedia (George Maciunas, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Milan Knížák)
6. European avant-garde of the 1950s and 60s
New realism (Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, affichistes), Cobra, situationists (Guy Debord,
Asger Jorn, Constant), Viennese Actionism
7. American avant-garde of the 1950s and 60s
Pop art: Forerunners (Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg), main representatives (Roy
Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol). Minimalism: Definition and genesis, main representatives
(Robert Morris, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd)
8. Constructivist tendencies
Op-Art, GRAV (Bridget Riley, Francois Morellet) and Czech neo-constructivism, New Sensitivity
(Jiří Kolář, Zdeněk Sýkora, Karel Malich). Different starting points and results of the shift toward
rational geometric and optical tendencies in Europe.
9. Figurative tendencies in world painting
European new figuration, hyperrealism, New Figuration in Czechoslovakia, Czech painting of the
1970s and 80s, personalities of European figurative painting after 1950 (Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud,
Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Eric Fischl).
10. Delta of modernism, selected artistic tendencies of the 1960s and 70s
Post-minimalism (Eva Hesse), anti form (Robert Morris), land art (Robert Smithson), arte
povera, performance and body art (Vito Acconci, Chris Burden). The Czech reaction and
action art in Czechoslovakia. Definition of terms, main representatives, differences between
Czechoslovakia and the rest of the world.
11. Conceptual art
Genesis and definition of terms, selected representatives (Joseph Kosuth), the expressive
resources of conceptual art: object, text, photography (Ed Ruscha, Berndt and Hilla Becher),
Czech conceptual and concrete art, main representatives (Jiří Valoch)
12. Video art and the moving image
The genesis of a new medium, main representatives (Nam June Paik, Woody Vasulka, Bruce
Nauman). Technical resources after 1990 (Douglas Gordon, Matthew Barney). Main
representatives of Czech video art.
13. Representatives of post-war German art
Joseph Beuys: personal mythology, everyone can be an artist, the artist as shaman, social
sculpture. Gerhard Richter: Painting and photography, art as archive, new historical painting.
14. Art in Eastern Europe after 1970
The official and unofficial Czech scene in the 1970s and 80s (culture under normalisation, the
underground, the grey zone), main representatives of authentic culture. An outline of the situation in
other socialist countries, main representatives of progressive art (Ilja Kabakov, Krzysztof Wodiczko,
Marina Abramovic, soc-art, Zofia Kulik, NSK).
15. Postmodernism, its forms and themes
Definition of the term. New-expressionism (Julian Schnabel), appropriation (Sherrie Levine),
object art and installations, photography (Cindy Sherman). Identity, feminism,
multiculturalism, institutional criticism. Czech postmodernism and its beginnings in the
1980s.
16. East and West in the 1990s
The situation after the fall of the Iron Curtain, globalisation. Key personalities and institutions
of world art. Outline of the situation, main representatives of Czech art (Pondělí,
inconspicuous tendencies of the 2nd half of the 1990s)
17. Selected terms and representatives of art after 2000
Postproduction (Pierre Huyghe), relational aesthetics (Nicolas Bourriaud), the art of
cooperation (Ai Weiwei), the Czech reaction.
18. Architecture after the 2nd World War
Key trends and influences, global and Czech trends.