Taster Materials for Art History

The samples featured here mostly come from OpenLearn and iTunes U. They are taken from various points in the courses - some are relatively simple introductions but others are more complex extracts from the later weeks. You can view module books and study guides at many public libraries and at some Open University centres. You can also find a wealth of open access Art History and Visual Cultures resources on Open Arts Archive. Finally, once you have registered to study with us, please do take advantage of a wealth of information, ongoing support from academics in art history, and an opportunity to connect with fellow art history students on the art history ‘Study Home’ page.

Art and its global histories (A344)

• This short taster video for A344 will give you a sense of the ideas and artefacts you will encounter while studying this module.
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  The OpenLearn module Art and the Mexican Revolution explores one of Diego Rivera’s key murals which was commissioned by the Mexican government in the period after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. These monumental public artworks, designed to win over the Mexican peasantry and working-class to the new post-revolutionary state, brought Mexican mural artists international acclaim and Rivera was subsequently awarded important commissions in the United States. Yet, due to his commitment to a figurative form of propaganda, Rivera’s reputation suffered during the Cold War period and these Mexican murals are now largely left out of dominant accounts of twentieth-century United States art.

• A short excerpt from the introduction of the first A344 text, European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550.

MA in Art History

The free OpenLearn course, Artists and authorship: the case of Raphael, opens up the relationship between biography and art history, taking Raphael as a case study. This is an adapted extract from the Open University postgraduate course, A843 MA Art History Part 1 (the predecessor module to A845).