Art
History 245
Art Since the 1940s
Room: Gamble Auditorium, Art 106B
Mon and Wed, 8:35-9:50
Fall 2006
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Anthony
W. Lee
Office: Art 209, x2243, awlee
Office hours:
Wed, 4-5, and by appt.
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Description
This course traces some of the different paths of painting, sculpture,
and photography in the United States and, less so, Western Europe since
World War II. Initially, many of these paths traced a relationship with
the “crisis of modernism,” but increasingly, they have taken
on a different vitality, drawing energy from a wide variety of postmodern
and postcolonial subjects and debates, especially identity and transnational
politics. Can something that can be identified as an avant-garde practice
exist in such a context? What kinds of questions are appropriate to ask
about works that stridently attempt to suspend the very category of art?
To help answer these and other questions, we will try to become comfortable
with the shifting language of art and, equally important, link art to
the pressing and often dramatic cultural and political issues arising
in late 20c western society. In addition, we will read and assess statements
by art historians, critics, and artists.
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Texts
A reader of essays,
available at Art and Art History Department main office, Art 201.
In addition, a website, consisting of the syllabus and key images from
the lectures, is available for this course. To access the site, click
on the main department page, then “courses,” then “art
history 245.” The images are roughly compiled into weekly sets.
You should consult these sets frequently.
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Requirements
and Evaluative Criteria
There are four major
requirements for the course: a midterm, class participation, a paper,
and a final. Each is valued at a quarter of the final grade.
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Class and
Reading Schedule
All readings
can be found in the course reader.
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| Week
1 |
Sept
8 |
Introduction
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| Week 2 |
Sept
11/13 |
Pre-War
Art and Culture
Read: H. H. Arnason, “American Scene Painting,” “Recording
American Life in the 1930s,” “The Mexican Muralists,”
“Toward Abstract Art”; Meyer Schapiro, “The Social Bases
of Art”
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| Week
3 |
Sept
18/20 |
Modernist
Paradigms and the New York School
Read: H. H. Arnason, “Abstract Expressionism and the New
American Sculpture”; Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”;
Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”; T. J. Clark, “Clement
Greenberg’s Theory of Art”
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| Week 4 |
Sept
25/27 |
High
Modernism and the Cold War
Read: David and Cecile Shapiro, “Abstract Expressionism and the
Politics of Apolitical Painting”
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| Week 5 |
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The
Beats
Read: Jonathan Fineberg, “A Coney Island of the Mind,” “Robert
Rauschenberg,” “Jasper Johns”
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| Week 6 |
Oct 11
no class mon 10/9
(Fall Break)
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Pop
and the Popular
Read: Lawrence Alloway, “The Arts and the Mass Media”; Claes
Oldenburg, “I Am for an Art . . . “; Walter Benjamin, “The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”; Andreas Huyssen,
“The Cultural Politics of Pop”
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| Week
7 |
Oct
16/18 |
Review
on Monday, Midterm on Wednesday
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| Week 8 |
Oct
23/25 |
Warhol's
Achievement
Read: Andy Warhol, “Warhol in His Own Words: Untitled Statements,”
“Interview with Gene Swenson”
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| Week 9 |
Oct
30/Nov 1 |
New
Documents in Photography
Read: H. H. Arnason, “The Snapshot Aesthetic in American Photography,”
Susan Sontag, “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly”
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| Week 10 |
Nov
6/8 |
Minimalism,
Art, and Objecthood
Read: H. H. Arnason, “Modernism vs. Minimalism”; Michael Fried,
“Art and Objecthood”; Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the
Rhetoric of Power”
Final paper assignmnet distributed
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| Week 11 |
Nov
13/15 |
Performance
and The Politics of Representation
Read: Daniel Bell, “Modernism and Capitalism”
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| Week 12 |
Nov 20
no class 11/22 (Thanksgiving
Break)
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The
Counter Public Sphere
Read: H. H. Arnason, “Earth and Site Works”; Robert Smithson,
“Spiral Jetty”; Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson,
“Discussion”; Hans Haacke, “Museums, Managers of Consciousness”
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| Week 13 |
Nov
27/29 |
Identity
Politics
Read: Jonathan Fineberg, “Art and Feminism”; Miriam Schapiro
and Melissa Meyer, “Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women
Saved and Assembled—Femmage”; Cindy Sherman, “Untitled
Statement,” “Interview with Els Barents”
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| Week 14 |
Dec 4/6 |
Postmodern
Strategies
No readings this week. Polish
those papers!
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| Week 15 |
Dec
11/13 |
Conclusion
Papers due
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Last modified on:
Monday, 12/04/2006 10:09 AM
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