Modern & Contemporary East Asian Art

Catalog description

This course is an investigation of the various modern and contemporary art movements in East Asia from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century. What did the modern ideal mean in the various regions of China, Japan, Korea, and the diaspora? What forms did it take? The establishment of traditionalist movements will be equally as important to tracing the development of Asian modernism(s). Can one exist without the idea of the other? Taking art objects and their related texts as our core evidence, this course will also consider the ways that the politics, literatures, popular cultures, and pasts of modern East Asia nations have intersected with one another and with the world. Coming forward into the present, what does it mean to be an artist from East Asia in the contemporary art world of global biennials and art fairs? Key concepts will include: post-colonialism, Marxism, nationalism, socialism, gender, ethnicity, modernism, traditionalism, post-modernism, diaspora, etc.