Department:

History & Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation

Course Leader:

Celia Ghyca

Learning outcomes:

Synthetic course, focusing on the cultural and historical perspectives on arts. Its objectives aim:
- to situate art within the philosophical, theological, scientific, economical, social context
- to identify fundamental symbolic paradigms and significations carried out by artistic and architectural form

Content:

Lectures:
1. Introduction: art as an expression of society’s values and representations
2. Magic and myth as origins of art. The artistic revolution within the Neolithic era.
3. Archaic civilisations. Geometric order of the laboured lands and order of the architectural composition. Hierarchy as a principle for art /architecture, religion and society at large. Sacred landscape and architecture.
4-5. Greek and Roman antiquity. The classical synthesis between realism and idealism. Hypostases of antique humanism: classical Greece, Hellenic and Roman eras.
6-8. The Christian era. Medieval art form Augustine to St. Thomas and from iconoclasm to "speculum mundi". The Christian space: spirituality, privacy and dematerialisation.
9-11. Modern premises. Renaissance and Mannerism as hypostases of humanism : the "divine" man and the dilemmatic man. Baroque synthesis and the system. The classical of the 17th century as a category of the baroque. Baroque themes: illusion (the world as a stage) and metamorphosis.
12-14. Modern times and the theme of the change. The classical in between the pre-modern and the modern. Stages of modernity in art: the neoclassical and the romantic; the realism and the eclectically; modernism between utopia and the age of the consumer. Modern crisis and postmodern response.

Teaching Method:

Lectures with slides.

Assessment:

Individual work on a given topic 50%.
Exam (synthesis) 50%

Bibliography:

- Christian Norberg-Schulz, La Signification dans l'Architecture Occidentale, Liège, Pierre Mardaga éd., 1984
- Vincent Scully, Architecture. The Natural and the Manmade, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991
- Michel Freitag, Architecture et société, Éditions Saint-Martin, Montréal, 1992 (extrase)
- Erwin Panofsky, "Architecture gothique et pensée scolastique", în Jean-Pierre Épron (dir.), Architecture - une anthologie, Liège,
Pierre Mardaga éd., vol. II, p 167
- Erwin Panofsky, "Abatele Suger de la Saint-Denis", în Artă și semnificație, Buc., Meridiane, 1980, pp. 174
- Erwin Panofsky, "La perspective comme forme symbolique", în Jean-Pierre Épron, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 77-78
- Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture et humanisme, Paris, Bordas, 1981, pp. 181-186
- Rudolf Wittkower, Principii architettonici nell'età dell'umanesimo, Torino, Giulio Einaudi editore, 1964, pp.29-33
- Hans Scharoun, "La modernité du baroque", în Jean-Pierre Épron, op. cit., vol. II, p. 151
- Richard Wittman, "Architecture parlante - an anti-rhetoric?", in Daidalos, june 1997, pp.12-23
- Jan Starobinski, 1789 – Emblemele rațiunii, Buc., Meridiane, 1990, pp. 55-68
- Claude Mignot, L'architecture au XIX-ème siècle (neoclasicismul), în Jean-Pierre Épron, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 32-33, 155
- François Loyer, Le siècle de l'industrie (sec. XIX și istoria), ibidem, p. 169
- Jean-Pierre Épron, Comprendre l'éclectisme, ibidem, pp. 1670-171
- Nicolae Lascu, "Idei ale arhitecturii moderne”, prefață la Funcțiune și formă, Buc., Meridiane, 1989, pp. 5-51