In our first session we will explore the debate between 'committed art', (the view that good art should further a social or political view) and 'art for art's sake' (the opposing view that political content is irrelevant to art’s quality).

Twentieth-century American critics Clement Greenberg and W.E.B. Du Bois will be our main guides to the National Gallery Collection in this session. We will focus on works such as ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)’ by Paul Cezanne, and ‘Sunflowers’ by Vincent van Gogh. In the second hour, Vid Simoniti will be joined by Dr Christina Faraday to discuss how some of the ideas we have discussed may or may not be applied in the case of Tudor art. 

This session will look at the intersection of art, propaganda, and conflict, examining how art might contribute to social struggles. We will seek to understand how artworks might have been used across history to propagate political messages and ideologies.

Philosophically, the topic has been analysed by social and Marxist philosophers, who disagreed among themselves about what kind of art would best aid class struggle: realist and propagandistic (as defended Georg Lukács) or more experimental and avant-garde (as defended by Bertolt Brecht). We will focus on works like ‘The Battle of San Romano’ by Paolo Uccello, ‘Bathers at Asnieres’ by Georges Seurat, and ‘The Execution of Lady Jane Grey’ by Paul Delaroche. In the second hour, Vid Simoniti will be joined by an Art historian and curator, Amy Mechowski to look the role of class in French painting of the period. 

The body, especially the naked body, is one of the main subjects of Western art. The political portrayal of the body has received plentiful analysis, especially from feminist art historians. This session will introduce the body as a battleground of political contestation, considering, also, politically subversive desire (especially queer desire), and ask the philosophical question: can and should art shape our desires, as much as serve them? Which bodies get seen, and which omitted? 

Our philosophical guides here will be Michel Foucault and Laura Mulvey. We will consider ‘Toilet of Venus’ by Diego Velázquez and ‘John Stuart and his Brother’ by Anthony van Dyck. In the second hour, Vid Simoniti will be joined by a Renaissance art historian looking at the role of eroticism and different understandings of sexuality in that period.