Online summer course on “Plastic Arts in the Arab world today”

Fundación Tres Culturas will be awarding 14 tuition grants for this academic year thanks to a cooperation agreement currently being arranged with the UNIA. The deadline to apply for this aid is September 6. The course will be held online from October 5 to 8.

The main purpose of this course is to provide accurate knowledge about the most relevant aspects of contemporary Arab art production, which has hardly been explored in Spanish academia, despite its social, intellectual and economic transcendence.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the plastic arts in Arab and Islamic countries have reached a high level of development and remarkable international outreach, which has only increased throughout the twenty-first century. Therefore, these arts deserve to be properly acknowledged and analyzed both for their intrinsic cultural and aesthetic values, and for their contribution to global culture. The proliferation of art movements, galleries, fairs and art studios in these countries, with significant momentum recently given to the art world in the United Arab Emirates, has led to a growing interest in Arab art and artists in the art market and some academic circles in Arab countries themselves. Spain has joined them, as well, as demonstrated by the exhibitions and other activities organized in recent years by Casa Árabe at its headquarters in Madrid and Cordoba, the Three Cultures Foundation in Seville, the Euro-Arab Foundation in Granada and the Reina Sofia and Prado Museums in Madrid.

This course, intended for undergraduate and graduate students of Art History, Arab Culture, Anthropology and Sociology, as well as anyone interested in contemporary art and present-day Arab societies, is meant to reflect on the creative conditions, problems, desires and achievements of artists in today’s Arab world, and the specificity and conceptual and aesthetic features of their works.

In order to study the rich panorama of plastic arts in today’s Arab world, a fine group of professors, researchers, art curators and artists from Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, the United States and Spain have been selected to give classes on the artistic avant-garde movements in their countries and other countries throughout the region, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and the Gulf States, as well as Iran. They will analyze the plastic works of outstanding artists and schools that have built and continue to build upon modernity and the attempts to modernize their respective societies.

At the core of the course are also contents on the major contributions to the world of art by Arab women and the reflections on the contrast between tradition and modernity, on cultural identity, and on the expression and practice of freedom that artistic activities arouse in societies that have suffered external aggressions, totalitarian or unstable political systems and renewal movements of such great importance as “pan-Arabism” and the so-called “Arab Spring.”

The summer course “Plastic Arts in the Arab World Today” will be held from October 5 to 8, 2021 online only and will include 25 course hours.

Technical information:
October 5 to 8, 2021
Online
25 course hours
100 places available
Fee: 60 euros.

The full program and schedules of the lectures can be found by following this link.  

Registration fee grant. This will only include an exemption of payment of the registration fee for the course, but does not cover the amount of the fee charged for creating your file and issuing certificates (€8).

Further information