Course on Contemporary Art and Culture
Complex n. a group or system of different things that are linked in a close or complicated way; a network.
Courses on the Introduction to Contemporary Art are often modelled on Art History courses that present a sequence of styles and movements. MACBA invites you to investigate the new terminology that marks contemporary art debates. We no longer talk of styles but of working lines, and at a time when the economy determines everything, art history also claims a specific, renewed and different narrative.
The art complex is seen from a new perspective and it includes the uses and interpretations that are added to the work throughout its public life. History, which used to guarantee reasonable explanations, is no longer sufficient to account for an art that creates spectators in the same way that it used to create artefacts. We are in the era of the art complex, a notion that allows us to revisit the conditions constantly imposed by the economy, through the point of view of cultural production.
Specialists invited to participate in this course must have a didactic commitment to impart basic lessons that will bring us nearer to what will be called the art complex from now on. The exhibitions of the MACBA Collection are designed as an open textbook from which study guides may be deducted. The course is organised in six lectures heading a series of complementary activities, which are optional for those taking part in the course. Therefore, lecturers impart full sessions to expose the more emblematic ideas, and an additional activity, taking place in the exhibition galleries, to discuss the most iconic and polemic works in the MACBA Collection. Participants are entitled to packages of audiovisual and bibliographic material offered by the Museum to all subscribers. A basic kit for everyone!
Art in a neo-liberal context
The first part of this pioneering course on the art complex is based on the current presentation of the MACBA Collection. ‘Art of the First Globalisation’, including works from the 1960s and seventies – the so-called decade of the critical paradigm, – will structure the spring edition. With the participation of Michel Feher, Pedro de Llano, Xavier Antich, Peio Aguirre, Beatriz Preciado and Joana Masó.
The art of the first liberalisation coincides with the era of economic neo-liberalism. The market references at that time were consumer products, with everyone in charge of their work. But for the last thirty years, the system that can best help us to understand the evolution of capitalism is the world of finances, based on credit and reputation. The pursuits of these markets no longer resemble those of the past. Rather than seeking commercial profit to obtain greater satisfaction, the new subjects of these pursuits are concerned with their own self-esteem and with the creation of circles of social and financial recognition. How can art expose the ways in which these markets not only evaluate people, but also drive them toward an appreciation of themselves?
