Historical+and+Critical

Historical and Critical
 * Board of Studies**

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/

It is essential to become familiar with the exam. Download the past exams and practice.
 * Board of Studies Exam Papers**

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/hsc2008exams/index5.html#v


 * Visual Arts Syllabus**

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/visual-arts.html

 **Aim** Visual Arts at Stage 6 is designed to enable students to: • gain increasing intellectual autonomy in their abilities to aesthetically and persuasively represent ideas in the visual arts; and • understand and value how the field of the visual arts is subject to different interpretations.

**Objectives** Students will develop knowledge, skills and understanding of how they may represent their interpretations of the world in artmaking as an informed point of view. Students will develop knowledge, skills and understanding of how they may represent an informed point of view about the visual arts in their critical and historical accounts.


 * The Conceptual Framework**


 * The Frames**

Through the frames, students learn how art may represent:  **//the subjective frame — personal and psychological experience.//** Through this frame, art may be thought to be about and represent deeply felt and sensory experience, human consciousness, intuition, imagination, originality, creative expression, and the aesthetic response. Meaning is understood in relation to the intersubjective experiences afforded to the maker and viewer. In artmaking, students can explore their own deeply felt experiences, investigating their own and others’ feelings and responses to the world around them. This may influence their selection of subject matter such as friends, family, self-image or things of personal significance from their own environment. It may lead to the imaginative investigation of subject matter and the exploration of techniques that capture their personal interests. In art criticism and art history students can develop personal responses to artists and artworks that are highly significant to them. They can explore artworks as expressive and unique objects, develop notions of individual styles, and interpret the work and the influence of those artists who are of great personal interest to them. **//the cultural frame — cultural and social meaning.//** Through this frame art may be thought to be about and represent the collective interests of cultural groups, ideology, class, politics, gender, and the celebration of spiritual and secular beliefs, events and objects. From this view, meaning is understood in relation to the social perspective of the community from which it grows. In artmaking, students can explore cultural values and social meanings. This may influence how they represent subject matter of a broad social significance and lead them to explore the cultural meanings of the expressive forms they work in. In art criticism and art history, students can consider how notions of cultural identity can inform the production of artworks. Students may study differing cultural attitudes towards the visual arts and the effects of scientific and technological innovation, politics and economics. They may study concepts of social and cultural identity (eg gender, Indigenous, regional, national, modern, contemporary etc) on artistic practices in particular places at a certain time and over time. **//the structural frame — communication and the systems of signs.//** Through this frame, art may be thought to be about and represent a visual language as a symbolic system: a system of relationships between signs and symbols that are read and understood by artists and audiences who are able to decode texts. From this view, meaning is understood in terms of the relationships of symbols that are used to refer to the world. Through this system ideas are circulated and exchanged. In artmaking, students can explore the communicative value of their work in the use of conventions and in the selection of symbols. This may affect their adoption of certain conventions and lead them to consider how codes and symbols are read by themselves and audiences, as well as how particular expressive forms convey certain meanings. It may lead them to pay close attention to the formal organisation and placement of parts within their own works. In art criticism and art history, students can consider how artworks can be read and their meaning understood in terms of how specific symbols refer to the world. Students may study how visual information is transmitted in artworks, how the formal and organisational relationships in a work mean certain things and how the visual arts can operate as a visual language at a certain time and over time. **//the postmodern frame — ideas which challenge mainstream values of histories and ideas.//** Through this frame, art may be thought to be about and represent ‘texts’ that reconfigure and question previous texts and current narratives. These are woven together through such things as irony, parody, quotation. From this view, meaning is attained through critique that exposes the patterns of authority and the assumptions of mainstream values in the visual arts to reveal inconsistencies, uncertainties and ironies. In artmaking, students can recontextualise artworks and critique definitions of what art is. Students may modify, reinterpret or appropriate images from a variety of sources in the artworks they make. They may investigate the potential of newer technologies where challenges are made to the unique, singular, precious object as art. In art criticism and art history, students can question practice in art and the generally accepted classifications of artists, artworks, movements and styles. They can identify inconsistencies in what is written. They can re-evaluate notions of the artistic genius and the masterpiece, and study influences and chronologies to reveal power relations, disjunctions and hidden assumptions.

The expressive forms

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/visual_arts/content/practice/what_practice/3001/Express.forms.html


 * Critical and Historical Handouts

Drawing Joy Hester

Painting Street Art

Expressionism

Printmaking Albrecht Durer

Photomedia Man Ray

Patricia Piccinini

Textiles and Fibre

Graphic Design Art Deco Design

Designed Objects Bauhaus

Sculpture

Ceramics

Time-based Forms Bill Viola

Matthew Barney

New Media Marina Zurkow

Feng Mengbo

Other New Media Artists

Documented Forms

Collection of Works

Resources

http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/creativearts/visualarts/index.htm**