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Course, academic year 2024/2025
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Iconology: Art-historical and Philosophical Aspects Of Reading The Cultural Phenomena (ON PORN) - YMSMK028PV
Title: Iconology: Art-historical and Philosophical Aspects Of Reading The Cultural Phenomena (ON PORN)
Guaranteed by: Programme Electronic Culture and Semiotics (24-KEKS)
Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
Actual: from 2024
Semester: winter
E-Credits: 5
Examination process: winter s.:
Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
Capacity: 40 / 40 (40)
Min. number of students: unlimited
4EU+: no
Virtual mobility / capacity: no
Key competences:  
State of the course: taught
Language: English
Teaching methods: full-time
Level:  
Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan
enabled for web enrollment
Guarantor: Mgr. Ondřej Váša, Ph.D.
Teacher(s): Mgr. Ondřej Váša, Ph.D.
Class: Courses available to incoming students
Incompatibility : YBAJ223, YBAJ256
Interchangeability : YMM03HRA
Is incompatible with: YBAJ256, YBAJ223
Is interchangeable with: YMM03HRA
Annotation -
What does Botticelli’s Venus have in common with the contemporary Instagram stars? How did the influential renaissance concept of “figura serpentinata” become a pornographic backbone of contemporary sexual imagery? How did Michelangelo’s infernal orgies survive into the present time, disguised as the images of destruction? While addressing these questions, the course will provide a practical introduction to iconology as it has been defined and practiced by Aby M. Warburg and Ernst Cassirer in the 1920s and 1930s. Concerning their mutually influenced methodology, the course will interpret the critical aspects of the “nameless science” by (and while) exposing and analyzing complicated genealogy of the specific spectrum of surprisingly interrelated images like selfies, underwear advertising, cloud imagery, abstract painting, war atrocities or hygiene-related illustrations.
Last update: Váša Ondřej, Mgr., Ph.D. (29.07.2021)
Course completion requirements - Czech

75% attendance, active participation in discussions, final essay on an individually selected topic

Last update: Váša Ondřej, Mgr., Ph.D. (28.08.2020)
Syllabus -

GENERAL OVERVIEW (selected topics):

 - Introduction: Representing Human Body

 

SECTION I.: From Renaissance to William Hogarth

 - Between Plato and Ficino: philosophical origins of “figura serpentinata”

- Between Michelangelo and Lomazzo: (de)erotizing bodies

 

SECTION II.: From William Hogarth to hygienic imperatives

 - Lomazzo’s influence on Hogarth

- Movement and eroticism in Hogarth’s “The Analysis of Beauty”

- Unexpected consequences of Hogarth’s mistakes: William Hogarth as the father of the “modern line”

- Hygienic discourse of the 18th century: clean outlines of the healthy bodies

- Art Nouveau and its implications: “figura serpentinata” runs wild

 

SECTION III.: 20th and 21th Century Aftermaths

 - “Cloud turn” in art: the demise of the line and the victory of the flesh

- Uncomfortable bodies: architectural drawing imperatives

- Fascist reactions: individual erotic wilderness vs. hollow social bodies

- Figura serpentinata and the contemporary anatomical imagination: spirituality held in check

- Between war and pornography: contemporary survivals of the renaissance concepts

Last update: Váša Ondřej, Mgr., Ph.D. (04.10.2021)
Learning resources

Selected Basic Literature:

CASSIRER, E.: The Logic of the Humanities (1961)
C'LICKME. A netporn studies reader (https://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/24.pdf)
HESTER, H.: Beyond Explicit. Pornography and the Displacement of Sex. New York: SUNY Press, 2014, ISBN: 9781438449609.
HOGARTH, W. The Analysis of Beauty. Ilkley: Scolar Press, 1969. ISBN: 0-85417-523-7
MAES, H. - LEVINSON, J.: Art and Pornography: philosophical essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN: 0198744080
MAURER, E.: Manierismus: figura serpentinata und andere Figurenideale des Manierismus. Studien, Essays, Berichte. Zürich: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2001, ISBN: 978385823791
RUTHERFORD, P.: World Made Sexy: Freud to Madonna. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2018, DOI: 10.3138/9781442685628-005
WARBURG, A.: A Lecture on Serpent Ritual. Journal of the Warburg Institute, No. 4, 1939, pp. 277-292. ISSN: 09592024 / Hadí rituál – zpráva z jedné cest (Umění : časopis Ústavu dějin umění Akademie věd České republiky Praha : Ústav dějin umění AV ČR, Roč. 57, č. 4 (2009), s. 385-398)

Last update: Váša Ondřej, Mgr., Ph.D. (06.09.2024)
 
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