Courses

Based around the gallery's innovative displays, Tate Modern's courses explore issues such as identity, gender, politics and ideology through modern art.

An exciting new collaborative venture between The City Literary Institute and Tate Modern, this online course is designed for adults looking for an introduction to the gallery. The course focuses on the landscape/Environment, and is delivered via CD-ROM, supported by student/tutor discussions online. Individual projects feature virtual tours of the galleries, short video clips and audio commentaries by artists and curators. Ideal as an introduction to Tate Modern, and for anyone interested in the gallery and its collection.

Modern Traditions: The Body

A joint Tate Modern and National Gallery course looking at representations of the body across the National Gallery collection and in the displays of the Nude/Body/Action suite at Tate Modern.

The first four sessions of the course will take place at the National Gallery and explore the way in which artists historically have used the body as a principal source of inspiration. The final four sessions at Tate Modern will concentrate on twentieth-century notions of the body, and the way in which traditional views of it have been revised.

As part of the course structure, one session will be devoted to practical life drawing to show the progression from looking to drawing to painting. No previous experience is required, and no special skills are necessary to participate in this part of the course. Fee £130 includes refreshments, Tate Modern folder, materials for drawing session.

The Remix: New Histories of Twentieth-Century Art (Term Two)

This course explores current preoccupations in art and visual culture. Establishing relationships between past and present, the course identifies themes and debates in art during the period 1920-1960 and considers them from a contemporary perspective.

Possible parallels between the Surrealist interest in Freud's concept of the unconscious and art practice of the 1990s will be discussed, and attitudes to technology and the role of the artist in society will also be considered. In addition, Tate Modern's major spring exhibition Century City will raise the issues of urbanism and utopianism. Fee: £100.

After Aesthetics: Art Practice and Theory since 1960

Many contemporary artworks are at odds with traditional conceptions of aesthetic value. It can seem that questioning ideas of formal quality, originality and medium is at the heart of what it means to be contemporary in art. This course looks at some of the different ways in which traditional aesthetic concepts have been criticised and expanded by artists and theorists since the 1960s, and explores the wider cultural and technological circumstances of these developments. It will appeal to those with an interest in understanding some of the issues central to recent debates in art theory, and the ways in which they might inform art practice. Since this is not an introductory course, some knowledge of these debates will be assumed. Fee: £75.