This assignment accounts for 14% of your overall score.

How have works of art engaged with the conditions of modernity? Answer with reference to two works of your choosing from two different study weeks of Block 3.

In your answer you should analyse both of the extracts below, each of which engages with some of the different aspects of modernity explored in the block.

There is a mode of vital experience experience of space and time, of the self and others, of lifes possibilities and perils that is shared by men and women all over the world today. To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, all that is solid melts into air.

Berman, M. (1982) All that is solid melts into air: the experience of modernity. London: Verso, p. 15.

It is generally agreed that modernity as a nineteenth-century phenomenon is a product of the city. It is a response in a mythic or ideological form to the new complexities of a social existence passed amongst strangers in an atmosphere of intensified nervous and psychic stimulation, in a world ruled by money and commodity exchange, stressed by competition and formative of an intensified individuality, publicly defended by a blas mask of indifference but intensely expressed in a private, familial context. Modernity stands for a myriad of responses to the vast increase in population leading to the literature of the crowds and the masses, a speeding up of the pace of life with its attendant changes in the regulation of time […] All these phenomena affected women as well as men, but in different ways.

Pollock, G. (1988) Vision and difference: feminism, femininity and the spaces of art. London: Routledge, pp. 6667.

Rationale

This assignment is designed to test your knowledge and understanding of the key theme explored in Book 3, Art in the Modern World, and the online materials for Weeks 1215 and to enable you to construct a reasoned argument supported by visual analysis of works of art and the critical analysis of textual sources.

You are advised to read the above instructions slowly and carefully to ensure that you have correctly identified all the requirements of this assignment. Please note that points will be deducted from your grade for this assignment if it does not fulfil all the Guidance note

This assignment is the first one for which you have been asked to structure your answer as an essay. It is also the first one for which you have been asked to make your own selection of works of art to write about. You may therefore find it helpful to consider the following points when planning your answer and selecting your images.

For this assignment, you are required to discuss the conditions of modernity as they have developed since the late eighteenth century. In your discussion, you should make close reference to the accounts of modernity presented in the two extracts above, supporting your points by briefly quoting from these texts. You are advised to pay careful attention both to the similarities and differences between the account of modernity that each text offers. You should be aware that Marshall Berman was a cultural theorist who wrote about the broad impact of modernisation while Griselda Pollock is a feminist art historian who is here concerned with the experience of modernity in the late nineteenth century. In your discussion of modernity, you should take account not only of broad historical shifts but also of geographical differences in the way that it was experienced.

In selecting your two works of art, you will need to make sure that they come from different study weeks. You will also need to consider how your selected images will work in relation to the two extracts, making sure that they enable you to construct a focused answer that explores key points drawn from the texts. The block features works of art and visual culture dating from the late eighteenth century to the present day, produced in a range of locations and representing a variety of media, so these are all factors to consider in making your selection. The visual analysis of your chosen works should be an important aspect of your argument, but you should also take care to consider how they were made, displayed and viewed.

Once you have considered the extracts and made your selection of works of art to discuss, you will need to work out how to structure your essay. You are advised to avoid writing a mini-essay about each of your chosen examples; you should instead try to devise a structure that allows you to explore the broad themes and issues raised by the question.

Please note that there is no need to provide a reference for any quotations from the two extracts above.