Contemporary Art in East Asia

Catalog description

This course will explore modern and contemporary art and visual culture in East Asia produced since the mid-twentieth century with a focus on major artistic movements and artists active in China, Japan, and Korea. Encountering complicated geopolitical and socioeconomic conditions in the post-war era, a series of experimental and radical artistic, cultural, and political movements have emerged in East Asia. The course will map the critical topographies of Asian art from 1945 to the 1980s through the exploration of the following: post-war art and experimental art in Japan and Korea, Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution, material culture in Japanese Mono-ha and Korean Dansaekhwa, and art of resistance in China and Korea in the 1980s. The course will also investigate contemporary Asian art and visual culture focusing on its global turn from the late 1980s. Fueled by international geopolitical change, economic boom, and the impact of globalization, art in Asia or by Asian artists has gained a high level of international visibility and taken a central position in contemporary art exhibitions and art criticism. This visual, social, and theoretical development in the recent art in Asia will be examined through key issues and themes: art's revisiting of tradition and history, its exploration of body and identity, the impact of consumerism and popular culture, and its engagement with public space and the urban environment. Offered as ARTH 397 and ARTH 497 . Counts as a CAS Global & Cultural Diversity course.