Cultural analysis / Art Analysis and Reading – Master 2

Teacher: Catherine Mayeur

The course aims to study the means of mediation used by the artist himself in contemporary practices: writings and editions of artists, presentation devices (alternative exhibitions / alternatives to the exhibition), websites as works or spaces of creation / curatorial… It intends to link theory and practice, to show how this relationship is at work using examples chosen from recent developments in art. This selection takes into account editorial and curatorial news, but also practical and theoretical research by students.

Faced with developments in the cultural industry in the early 1960s, artists expressed the need to master the conditions of presentation and transmission through alternative practices. With the exponential amplification of the mediation of contemporary art since the 90s, the need to resist the instrumentalization of culture has become more pressing. Artists often feel dispossessed of their work and try to regain control over display and communication; they claim responsibility for it and inscribe their reappropriation in the creative process itself. All aspects can be taken into consideration: the design of the exhibition and the conditions of hanging, the drafting of labels and press releases, the production of invitation cards and posters, the drafting of texts in publications , the substitution of an artist's book for the traditional catalogue, etc. The distinctions between the roles of the actors are deliberately blurred (artists / theoreticians, artists / curators, artists / graphic designers...