00345 - Aesthetics

Learning outcomes

Comprehension and discussion of some key questions of contemporary aesthetic debate on architecture, its language and link to the subject “city”, through a reconstructive and analytical approach.

Course contents

The course introduces the principal themes and authors of philosophical aesthetics, examining the forms of sensory experience, perception, expressive forms, and artistic production in modernity and contemporary culture, with particular attention to the aestheticisation of everyday life, diffuse aesthetics, the aesthetics of commodities and their spaces, and the industrial arts. While maintaining a general theoretical perspective, the course will also examine aesthetic transformations related to design, services, media, urban forms of life, cultures and landscape, as well as material culture. By the end of the course, students will acquire conceptual and critical tools for analysing contemporary aesthetic languages and experiences, and for developing independent interpretative and argumentative skills.

Readings/Bibliography

The course is divided into six sections, which will correspond to six working groups. The way in which the work of the six groups will translate into the exam bibliography will be illustrated in the classroom. The sections are as follows:

1) Gottfried Semper, Architettura, arte e scienza, a cura di Benedetto Gravagnuolo, CLEAN, Napoli 2017

 

2) John Ruskin, La natura del gotico, trad. di C. Mattioli, Jaca Book, Milano 2016

 

3) Henry Van de Velde, Per il nuovo stile, a cura di Hans Curjel, il Saggiatore, Milano 1966

 

4) Georg Simmel, Le metropoli e la vita dello spirito, a cura di Paolo Jedlowski, Armando, Roma 1995

 

5) Henri Focillon, Elogio della mano, in Id., Vita delle forme seguito da Elogio della mano, trad. di Elena De Angeli, Einaudi, Torino 2002

 

6) Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Formazioni, deformazioni. La stilistica ornamentale nella scultura romanica, trad. di Marco Infurna, Adelphi, Milano 2005.

 

7) Walter Benjamin, L'opera d'arte nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, a cura di Fabrizio Desideri, Milano, Donzelli 2012

Teaching methods

The 40-hour course includes a portion of lectures, a portion of in-depth seminars, and a portion of feedback from the students.

Assessment methods

The examination of the course on Aesthetics includes the verification of the learning of the contents and takes place in a single exam.

Oral examination. Short texts written or discussed by students are welcome.

A very thorough knowledge of the topics covered in the course, together with high critical analysis and linking skills and a secure command of the specific terminology will be assessed with maximum marks (30-30L).
A thorough knowledge of the topics covered in the course, together with good analytical and critical skills and a secure command of the specific terminology will be assessed with good marks (27-29).
A technically adequate preparation and sufficient analytical capacity, even if not particularly articulate, expressed in correct language, will produce fair marks (23-26).
Sufficient preparation and ability to analyse, expressed in barely formally correct language, will result in a pass (18-22).

Teaching tools

The bibliographies specific to the different parts of the course will be analyzed and acquired during the various lessons, starting with the tools available in the texts indicated in the program. The teaching material presented during the lessons is made available to the student in paper or electronic format via the internet, also following the access restrictions, according to the modalities that will be indicated at the beginning of the course.

Office hours

See the website of Pierpaolo Ascari