Course General Description

The study program aims to enhance the students’ artistic positions and strengthen their ability to critically engage with practical and theoretical aspects of painting. Building upon this core area, space is provided for trans- and interdisciplinary modes of working via installation-oriented, performative and other forms of praxis. The artistic development of the students is accompanied by one-on-one interviews and group discussions with the faculty. On a weekly basis, students of the painting department have the opportunity to conceive and realize exhibitions. These exhibitions and possible formats of communicating them are subsequently discussed together in class.

School General Description

In the heart of Vienna, the capital of the Danube monarchy, the predecessor institution of the current University of Applied Arts, the Imperial Royal Arts and Crafts School, was founded in 1867. It was closely affiliated with the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today the MAK), the first Arts and Crafts museum on the European continent. It was established in 1863 following the example of the South Kensington Museum in London, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, and was to serve as a collection of models for artists, industrialists, and the general public. At the time, early-industrialised England played a pioneer role in supporting a reformed Arts and Crafts movement in order to prevent its decline in the Machine Age. In the spirit of Historicism, the aim was to make it possible, also in Vienna, to study the great styles of the past by example of Arts and Crafts objects in the museum and to set up a place of advanced education for designers and craftsmen with the Arts and Crafts School in Vienna. It should train artists and teachers in equal measure to serve the demands of the art industry.