Fall 2007: Tuesday/Thursday 11:10am - 12:30pm, ARTS 335
Syllabus (MS word file)
Professor Liz Kotz
ewkotz@ucr.edu
office: Arts 227, 951-827-5921
office hours: T/Th: 10-11am & by apptRequired Course Texts:
Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
Vol. 2: 1945 to the Present (Thames & Hudson, 2004)
Additional texts on Blackboard (iLearn) and course website:
http://faculty.ucr.edu/~ewkotz/AHS182/AHS182.html
Recommended Course Text (for grad students)
Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory, 1900-2000 (Blackwell, 2003)Course Description:
To understand the range of activities that make up contemporary artmaking, we need to know and understand the art of our recent past. Why did many artists turn away from traditional media of painting and sculpture toward all manner of conceptual, site-based and performance-based practices? How can art address social and political issues? And what role can art play in a culture already saturated by images and objects?
AHS 182 will examine visual art and theory since 1945, focusing on work produced in the United States and Western Europe. Beginning with the aftermath of WWII, the course will investigate the emergence of radical art practices in the 1960s and 1970s, before tuning to the rise of postmodernism and more recent efforts to rethink the visual arts. The course will include an optional field trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to see the Gordon Matta-Clark and Takashi Murakami shows. Lecture, three hours. Prerequisites: AHS 017C or upper-division standing or consent of instructor.
Requirements: Undergraduates
1. Regular attendance at lectures is required and essential to passing the course.
2. Assigned readings are to be completed before each lecture; most will be quite demanding and you will need to read them more than once and take notes on them.
3. In-class midterm
4. Field trip assignment
5. Short paper (due 11-20)
6. Final exam
Requirements: Graduate Students
Grad students will be expected to complete all regular assignments, including the midterm, additional recommended readings, and a longer paper of aproxiamtely 15-20 pages in length.
Resources
Handouts, vocabulary lists, lecture notes with selected images and other materials will be posted on the course website for you to download and review.
Other Ground Rules
This is an upper-division class. It will require substantial work and commitment from all students. Although the class is mainly organized as a lecture, we will try to make time for short discussions and questions. You are also encouraged to meet with me during office hours, or contact me via email. All students are expected to be in class on time and prepared for each day’s work. Disruptive behaviors are not permitted, including arriving late or leaving early, or talking that distracts other students. Please turn off all cell phones, beepers, etc. Scholastic honesty is expected and required. All work submitted for this class must be your own. Copying or representing the work of anyone else (from the internet, in print, or another student) is plagiarism and is prohibited by the University; it will incur grave consequences and can result in a failing grade.
Provisional Schedule
Week 1: Aftermaths of WWII: What was Modernism?
9/27: Course Introduction
Recommended: Introduction (methods) 14-48
Week 2: The 1940s: Abstraction, Representation and the Rise of High Modernism
10/2 Legacies of the Historical Avant-Gardes: 1947a, 1947b, 1949, 1951
10/4 Abstract Expressionism and the “Triumph of American Painting”
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Benjamin, “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936), American Abstract Artists, Statement (1938), Siqueiros, “Towards a Transformation …” (1934), Wood, “Revolt Against the City” (1935), Pollock texts (1944/47), Greenberg “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939), Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters” (1952)
Week 3: The 1950s: Neo-Dada and the Challenge to Painting
10/9 Cage, Duchamp, Rauschenberg, Gutai: 1953, 1955a, 1955b
10/11 The Fate of Painting and the Object: 1957b, 1958, 1959a , 1959b
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Cage, “On Robert Rauschenberg” (1961), Johns, “Interview” (1965)
Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act” (1957) “Apropos of Readymades” (1961)
Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock” (1958)
Moira Roth, “Aesthetics of Indifference” (1972)
Leo Steinberg, “Jasper Johns: the First Seven Years of His Art” (1961)
Week 4: The 1950s/60s: Consumer Culture and its Discontents
10/16 Proto-Pop and Situationism; the Rise of Photography: 1956, 1957a, 1959d
10/18: Pop and Nouveau Realism, 1960a, 1960b, 1960c, 1964a
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Warhol, interview (1963), Lichtenstein, “Lecture” (1964)
Andreas Huyssen, “The Cultural Politics of Pop” (1986)
Week 5: The 1960s: Happenings, Fluxus and Performance
10/23 1961, 1962a, 1962b, 1964a
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Oldenburg, “I am for an art” (1961)
Maciunas, “Neo Dada in Music …” (1962)
10/25 in-class midterm + possibly screening (instructor out of town)
Emile de Antonio, Painters Painting (video)
Week 6: The 1960s: Minimalism and PostMinimalism
10/30 Minimal Sculpture: 1962c, 1965
11/1: Body, Gender, and New Models of Object-making: 1966a, 1966b, 1967b
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Stella, “Pratt Lecture” (1960), Judd, “Specific Objects” (1965)
Morris, Notes on Sculpture” (1967), Fried, “Art and Objecthood” (1967)
Nemser, “Interview with Eva Hesse” (1969)
Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power” (1990)
Week 7: The 1960s: Concept and Site: Art Beyond the Object
11/6: Entropy, Photography, Conceptual Art: 1967a, 1967c, 1968a, 1968b, 1972b
11/8 Artists as Writers
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Smithson, “The Monuments of Passaic” (1967)
Lewitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967)
Benjamin Buchloh, “Conceptual Art, 1962-1969” (1990)
11/10 or 11: Class Field Trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Week 8: The 1960s/70s: Art, Politics, and Institutional Critique
11/13 1970, 1971, 1972a, 1973, 1974, 1975
11/15 screenings: Video, Performance and Feminist Art
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Ukeles, “Maintenance Art Manifesto “ (1969), “The Artist and
Politics: a Symposium” (1970) The Art Workers Coalition, “Statement of Demands” (1970)
Week 9: The 1980s: Postmodern Photography and the Politics of Difference
11/20 1977, 1980, 1984a, 1984b, 1986, 1988
+ short paper due
Recommended:
Art in Theory: Levine, statement (1982), Kruger, “Taking Pictures” (1982)
Levine, Sherman, Kruger: interviews (1980s)
Kate Linker, “On Difference: Representation and Sexuality”(1984)
Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference” (1990)
Week 10: 1980s-1990s: Activist Art Projects; Rethinking Art Practices
11/27 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993c
Recommended:
Kellie Jones, Interview with David Hammons (1986)
Maurice Berger, “Interview with Adrian Piper” (1989)
Guillermo Gomez-Pena, “Border Culture: the Multicultural Paradigm”
11/29: Rethinking the Image: 1993a, 1998, 2001
Rethinking the Object: 1993b 1994a
Week 11: Globalism, & New Paradigms of Public Art
12/4 2003
Recommended:
Rosalyn Deutsche, “Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City” (1988)
Miwon Kwon, “Notes on Site Specificity” (1997)
12/6 Conclusion and Review
12/10: In-class Final Exam: 11:30am-2:30pm
* please note: we may have a take-home final exam instead, due on our exam day.
