Adventures of the Avant-Garde

Catalog description

In the early years of the twentieth century, a series of artistic movements rippled across the Western hemisphere, exploding conceptions of art and culture while reconfiguring international relations. Explores those movements, from their predecessors (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé), through overlapping –isms (Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Vorticism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism), to avatars in the Americas. In keeping with the avant-garde's cross-pollinating spirit, we study texts from a variety of traditions, forms, and genres: from poetry through prose to manifestoes, from painting and photography to film, music, and dance, touching on questions of translation and translatability between languages, cultures, and art-forms. Enrollment limited to 25.