Postwar & Contemporary Art: 1945 to Now

Catalog description

This course is designed to survey late modern and contemporary art from the perspective of significant themes, theories and practices from 1945 to the present. Although modes of painting and sculpture and their innovations will be discussed, the aim of the course is really to help the student to think beyond traditional paradigms and towards how several generations of artists interpret the modern through the lens of what we now term the contemporary. Conceptual art, performance art and installation will be looked at in their earlier experimental forms before analyzing their reappearance in the second half of the twentieth century. Debates concerning multiculturalism and postcolonial thought will be viewed through key exhibitions. Finally, the course will shift from Europe and the United States towards evaluating more recent art from around the world with the onset of globalization.