Painting III: Advanced Painting

Catalog description

This advanced painting class will consider contemporary painting in the context of traditional genres, exploring both continuity and discontinuity between contemporary painting and the tradition out of which it arose. Questions considered will include: Do traditional genres such as the history painting, the still-life, the nude, the portrait, the landscape painting have any relevance to contemporary painting? If not, where have these genres migrated to in our contemporary culture? Does contemporary painting exist solely as a cliché of art production, a hand-made status symbol and luxury commodity or can an argument be made for painting as an individual revolt against mass culture? Is painting’s appeal simply due to nostalgia for a now-obsolete technology of representation or does its enduring popularity result from a desire for the physical/personal in a screen-based world? How are contemporary artists using painting today and what critical strategies are available to painters today? Students will be expected to present artwork weekly for individual and group critiques. The course will use an expanded definition of painting so students should feel free to experiment with other media as desired. Students will be required to research historical and contemporary (both art and mass culture) examples of the various genres and to create visual presentations of their research. Supplemental readings will be assigned weekly. Students will spend the last month working on a project of their choice