About the group
Modernism is widely understood as a general term for the various art movements and art expressions that became prevalent in the visual arts from the mid-19th century.
The research will include both epochal and systematic studies of modernism in Norwegian, Nordic, and global contexts. Here, the question of topicality will be central.
Today’s society is in general, and in the field of art and culture in particular, woven into ideas and mechanisms which had their starting points in modernism.
We will study art as both symptoms of and reactions to these ideas; especially the concepts of liberation and democracy shall form the core of modernism’s project. This way, the research group will also relate to the University of Oslo's democracy initiative.
Research areas
The research group will include a wide range of different art forms and artistic media in the following research areas:
- Gaze/looks and visuality
- Body and phenomenology
- Modernism and ideology: class, gender, colonialism
- Modernism and freedom
- Center / periphery
- Monographic studies of individual artists/architects
- Studies of processes, networks, and groupings
- Landscape and nature
- Architecture, welfare, and freedom
- Modernism, democracy, and the avant-garde
Collaborations and activities
The research group will initiate research collaborations with institutions and individual researchers both within and outside the University of Oslo.
The group will constitute a platform for preparing applications for research and publishing funding, as well as seminars and conferences, exhibitions, course development, joint publications, and so on.
We also have the strategic goal of including several PhD fellows into the group. The research group has long and broad experience in supervising a large number of master’s theses in modernism and master’s students will be drawn into colloquia each semester.
Academic courses (Only in Norwegian)
Bachelor
- KUN2061 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 1: 1870-1900
- KUN2062 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 2: 1900-1945
- KUN2063 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 3: 1945 til samtid
- KUN2130 – Nordisk arkitektur 1900-tallet
- KUN2132 – Norsk arkitektur og design 1950-70
- KUN2135 – Arkitekturens presentasjonsformer: Tegning, modell, fotografi og media
- KUN2140 – Internasjonal arkitekturhistorie og teori, 1900-tallet
- KUN2450 – Temaer i 1800-tallets kunst
Master
- KUN4061 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 1: 1870-1900
- KUN4062 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 2: 1900-1945
- KUN4063 – Temaer i norsk og nordisk billedkunst 3: 1945 til samtid
- KUN4130 – Nordisk arkitektur 1900-tallet
- KUN4132 – Norsk arkitektur og design 1950-70
- KUN4135 – Arkitekturens presentasjonsformer: Tegning, modell, fotografi og media
- KUN4140 – Internasjonal arkitekturhistorie og teori, 1900-tallet
- KUN4450 – Temaer i 1800-tallets kunst
- KUN4086 – Modernisme: Kunsthistorisk ekskursjonsemne