Madrid: Art and Society

This course offers a survey of Spanish modern and contemporary art history, with a special focus on Madrid. (Additionally, we will see some architectonic and artistic examples in various other Spanish cities that students are likely to visit, such as Barcelona, Sevilla, or Toledo). Its main objective is to provide students with a useful tool to explore and understand the city in which they will be living and studying during these weeks. As an introduction, we will examine Madrid’s origins and its important mannerist, baroque, and neoclassic heritage, framing the transformation of the city into the kingdom’s capital during the Hapsburg and early Bourbon reigns. But the core of our course will be the 19th and 20th centuries: Romanticism, Real-Naturalism, Modernism, the Avant-Garde, the impact of the Franco dictatorship on Spanish arts, and its later evolution after the return to constitutional monarchy in 1975. Students will have a very active role in the development of the course, both inside and outside the classroom –touring and reporting on neighborhoods, museums, and important landmarks.