27928 - Laboratory (1) (LM) (G. C)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the laboratory the student knows how to organize and collect complex information in a coherent way, knows how to apply methodologies of critical analysis on the visual arts. He knows how to appropriately use the sources of information necessary to address research in the different areas of the visual arts.

Course contents

The path of the lab will develop through a historical and methodological itinerary which will have at the center of its investigation the relationship between the production of images and the birth and development of publishing in the 20th century. In particular, some key figures will be analyzed who, in the field of comics, visual arts and illustration, have marked with their creative research not only the languages in which they have operated, but the wider figurative context, becoming real stylistic paradigms. Therefore, by activating a gaze as multidisciplinary as possible, we will try to identify and interpret the complexity and the cross-references within an iconosphere that can now only be reconstructed through an intertextual perspective. From this perspective, the work of cartoonists such as Winsor McCay, George Harriman, Will Eisner, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, José Muñoz, Mœbius, Jiro Taniguchi will be analysed; illustrators such as NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, Ferenc Pinter, Karel Thole, Milton Glaser, Lorenzo Mattotti; painters such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Hokusai, Edward Hopper, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, Roy Lichtenstein. And these are just some of the artists who will mark the stages in which the journey will be articulated. Coordinates of a map in which there will be space for insights into the techniques of representation, the methods of storytelling through images, the relationship between conception, realization and reproduction of the image. An in-depth study will be dedicated to the graphic novel, a form of storytelling in images that is gaining more and more space in the productions of contemporary comics.

Readings/Bibliography

The reference texts, the iconographic material and an indicative bibliography will be provided during the course of the laboratory.

Assessment methods

Eligibility is obtained automatically if 70% of the meetings are attended.
Less frequent students will have to sit an interview on some readings to be agreed with the teacher.

Office hours

See the website of Enrico Giovanni Battista Fornaroli