Contemporary Art

SPRING 2020

Syllabus

 

 Modernism PPT

 

 

January 15

Discussion of reading (come in prepared to discuss one aspect of Greenberg's essay and bring pratice summary)

Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” in Art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 754-760 [book, listed subsequently as AIT

PPT

January 22

Lecture   Introduction to Neo -Dada

Hopkins, ch. 2 “Duchamp’s Legacy:  The Rauschenberg-Johns Axis”, After Modern Art:  1945-2000 (London:  Thames and Hudson, 2000).

PART A        PART B            Power Point Duchamp/Johns

 

January 27

Lecture   Introduction to Pop

Hopkins, ch. 4   “Blurring Boundaries:  Pop Art, Fluxus, and their Effects,” After Modern Art:  1945-2000  Pop Images

PART A

PART B

 

January 29

Discussion  

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Art in Modern Culture:  An Anthology of Critical Texts, ed. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (London: Phaidon Press, in association with the Open University, 1992), pp. 297-307.    

 

 

February 3    Submit names of three potential artists for the final presentation

Discussion        

Clement Greenberg “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in AIT 539 - 549

 

February 5
Lecture    Hopkins, ch. 5  Minimalism    PART A     PART B        PPT

February 10  

Discussion   (pick one to summarize) 

Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” in AIT, pp. 809-813    

Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” in AIT, pp. 822-834

 

February 12

Anna C. Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine, 64 (January 1990), 44-63.

 

February 17

Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, trans.  Stephen Heath (New York:  Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. 142-148

 

February 19 - lecture

TOPIC IDEA AND BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

Sandler chapter 2 'The Impact of 1968 European Art'   PART A     PART B

PPT

Feruary 24     (pick one to summarize)     

Gene Ray, “Joseph Beuys and the After-Auschwitz Sublime,” in Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy, ed. Gene Ray (New York, DAP, Inc. 2001) 55 – 74.  

Benjamin Buchloh, “Beuys:  The Twilight of the Idol,” in Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy, ed. Gene Ray (New York, DAP, Inc. 2001) 199 – 211.

 

February 26 Discussion of Thesis for Long Paper

You are required to turn in a (minimum one sentence and maximum 1/2 page) statement that explains your thesis for the paper.

March 2 Lecture

 Sandler, ch. 3 First Generation Feminism   PART A            PART B    PPT

March 4

Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (New York:  Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 145-178 

 

March 9

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Art After Modernism:  Rethinking Representation (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art in association with David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., Boston, 1984), pp. 361-373  

 

  October 28 (summary required; pick one)  

Douglas Crimp, “On the Museum’s Ruins,” in On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge, Mass.:  The MIT Press, 1993), pp. 44-64  

Daniel Buren, “Function of the Museum,” in Richard Hertz, Theories of Contemporary Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 189-192

 

October 30

Christian Sorace, "China's Last Communist:  Ai Wei Wei," Critical Inquiry, vol. 40, no. 2 (Winter 2014), pp. 396 - 419.

November 4:  Discussion

Mona Hatoum TBD

 

November 6- TBD 

 

November 11: Meeting in groups to discuss what comes after Post-Moderism

All readings taken from Supplanting the Postmodern see titlepage

METAModern                 DIGIModern             HYPERModern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


  Nov

 

April 16:  St