ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. THE OTHER GENEALOGY OF CONTEMPORARY ART. Contemporary art course

In an exercise more attuned to archaeology, our aim during the course On the Origin of Species. The Other Genealogies of Contemporary Art is to unearth images and objects of popular culture made eternal through art, despite being destined for rapid consumption only to disappear after a single (and often final) use.

If Darwin, in his day, refuted the belief that species had arisen spontaneously and explained their evolution as deriving from a need to adapt to their environment, then we are going to employ a similar perspective insofar as artistic expressions are concerned. We will formulate an ‘extra-history’ of art, in other words, a history of art based on the evolution depicted by interferences between artists and the outside world.

The end of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of numerous technical, social and cultural advances; innovations that created the conditions for many of the plastic solutions adopted by the vanguards, and which are still to be found today in contemporary artistic practices, to flourish.

Mass culture replaced art as the dominant player in the production of images and, for the first time in history, the artists of the future, like the ‘painter of modern life’ depicted by Baudelaire, were born amidst a flow of images in continuous movement and confronted with the challenge of portraying a world in which priority is given to the transitive, the fugitive and the contingent.

Our journey will take us along by-roads in search of a possible new route: an investigative proposal that confirms the unstoppable changes of society as the true driving force behind the renewal of an ever-evolving artistic language.

PROGRAMME

14 NOVEMBER
The Transitive, the Fugitive and the Contingent. The Image in a World in Movement.
The belle époque garnered the greatest number of technological advances in the history of a humanity heading towards a world of social and industrial revolution. All of these changes brought with them a new system of values and a new way of seeing and understanding the world and life which would be reflected in the art of movements such as futurism or cubism.

15 NOVEMBER
Avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil.
In 1914, Marcel Duchamp drew an enigmatic sketch on the page of a music notebook, in which a cyclist is trying to balance on a thin line. The title of the work, which could be translated as ¡To have the apprentice in the sun,’ evokes investigation into and reflection on shade as a factor that shapes the artist’s aesthetic discourse.

21 NOVEMBER
The Greatest Show in the World.
The birth of Dadaism during the First World War was more than a mere anecdote, as was the search for the unreal by surrealism after the conflict. Both artistic movements are loyal to an art inspired by the ecosystem amidst which it emerged, exploring and challenging artistic conventions and everyday reality at a time in which destruction shaped the visible landscape once the smoke from the cannons had cleared.

22 NOVEMBER
In the Dusk of High Culture.
Mass culture, which had been no more than murmur among the din of the avant-garde, has now become the dominant soundtrack of artistic movements which, after abstract expressionism had peaked at the end of the nineteen-fifties, are gradually introducing the images resulting from triumphant capitalism in the repertoire of artistic themes.

SUSO FANDIÑO (Santiago de Compostela, 1971) is a Galician artist and theorist linked to conceptual art from a multi-disciplinary perspective. A graduate and Doctor of Fine Arts from Vigo University and in Art History from Santiago de Compostela University, he has had an extensive career in teaching, research and promoting contemporary art in Galicia’s most important centres and institutions.
He began his artistic career at the turn of the century, mixing with the new generation of artists who have led the change of direction of Galician art as of the decade of the nineteen-nineties, after the creation of the CGAC, Pontevedra’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Spain’s most important museums. He took part in numerous national and international exhibitions, among which feature the individual ones titled Wunderkammer (CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, 2022) and History of the Future (Appleton Square, Lisbon, 2024). His work has won awards on multiple occasions, and forms a part of public and private collections such as the Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, Afundación Obra Social Abanca, the Fundación Coca-Cola España, the Jan Michalski Foundation or the CGAC Collection. His work El CGAC está aquí (2023), created specifically for the 30th anniversary of the CGAC, can currently be seen on the museum’s façade.

DESIGNED FOR

Teachers of Primary and Secondary Education, including Higher Secondary, in the subjects of Art History and Artistic Foundations, students of Fine Arts and Art History and anyone with an interest in culture.

REGISTRATION

Registration is open from 23 October to 12 November 2024. Anyone interested in applying should send an email to edu.cgac@gmail.com, including the following information: surname, first name, national ID number, studies, area of work or interest, email address and contact telephone number. Places will be allocated by order of registration. Once the application has been accepted, those registered will receive information on how to make payment.

CERTIFICATION

The CGAC will issue a course completion certificate to all those who attend at least 70% of the sessions.