B.A. Art

Course Content

One of the most distinctive aspects of your studies within the School of Art will be the studio. All students will spend the majority of their time within dedicated studio spaces and/or workshops and its important to realise that the experience of these spaces will be quite distinct from your experience of lecture and seminar rooms. You need to spend time in them, as the making of art is a time-based activity that requires a disciplined approach.

First year introduces the culture of studio and workshop practice and encourages an independent approach to making work supported by a structured timetable of projects, tutorials, crits, lectures and seminars.

Year 1

Each of our four-year BA (Hons) programmes in Art shares common elements of study during the early part of Year 1. Throughout Year 1 you will work with tutors to ascertain your strengths and preferences, and select which of the specialist BA (Hons) programmes you wish to pursue.

Please note that all students accepted into Year 1 Art are guaranteed a place in their chosen Art specialism from Year 2 onwards, provided they have completed Year 1 study to a satisfactory standard.

Year 2

As for your chosen Art specialism.

Year 3

As for your chosen Art specialism.

Year 4

As for your chosen Art specialism.

Courses include:

• Sinners, Saints and Seers: Scottish, Irish and English art from 600-900
• Rome: From Imperial Capital to Holy City, c. 300-1300
• The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck
• Miniatures, frescoes, icons: the figural arts in the Islamic world (7th-15th century)
• Antiquity Recovered: Imag(in)ing Pompeii and Herculaneum
• Architecture in Scotland before 1650
• How to Make Italian Renaissance Art: Media, Methods and Materials in Theory and Practice 1400-1550
• Golden Age Spain: Art, Politics and Religion
• Caravaggio, 'the man who came to destroy painting,?
• The Rise of the Aesthetic: Art, Nature and the Ideal
• Picturing Authority: Art and Politics at the Tudor and Stuart Courts
• The Italian Renaissance Villa
• Sinners, Saints and Seers: Scottish, Irish and English art from 600-900
• The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck
• Europe 1900: Nationalism and Decadence at the Fin-De-Siecle
• Scottish Art in the Age of Change 1945-2000
• Rome: From Imperial Capital to Holy City, c. 300-1300
• Modern Art in Shanghai, 1840-1930
• Sacred and Profane Painting in Quattrocento Italy
• How to Make Italian Renaissance Art: Media, Methods and Materials in Theory and Practice 1400-1550
• Golden Age Spain: Art, Politics and Religion
• City as a Work of Art: Western Urbanism 1960 to the Present Day
• The Rise of the Aesthetic: Art, Nature and the Ideal
• Miniatures, frescoes, icons: the figural arts in the Islamic world (7th-15th century)
• Antiquity Recovered: Imag(in)ing Pompeii and Herculaneum
• Caravaggio, 'the man who came to destroy painting,?
• Picturing Authority: Art and Politics at the Tudor and Stuart Courts
• Fractures: The Origin, Development and Influence of Cubist Painting
• Architecture in Scotland before 1650
• Victorian Architecture: Themes and Ideas 1840-1914
• The Italian Renaissance Villa
• CONTEMPORARY ART: THEORIES AND METHODS
• Histories and theories of photography
• Sexual Politics and the Image
• German Architecture in the Twentieth Century
• Architecture of the Russian and Soviet Avant-Gardes

The majority of teaching and learning is through involvement in a range of experiential projects, situated in a studio environment. Conceptual, material and technical issues are explored through seminars, workshops, lectures, tutorials and critiques. Research, critical thinking and study of the visual, intellectual, social and professional contexts that shape creative practice are regarded as essential to your development. This often involves participation in exhibitions and live projects. As well as learning through group situations you will also be allocated a studio tutor with whom you will have one to one tutorials on a regular basis.