Art & Ideas: What is Social Practice Art?

Catalog description

This course explores the burgeoning field of social practice art. Today artists working in the field of social practice focus on aesthetics, ethics, collaboration, media strategies, & social activism as central issues that inform their artworks & projects that are designed for public & social spaces. In the United States, visual art that engaged the public directly began in the late 1950s & coincided with the local “decentralization” efforts that, in the arts, resulted in community-based art practices that envisioned the public as diverse, socially-engaged, & contributed to an expansive aesthetic consciousness. Understanding this history contextualizes social practice art & allows us to interrogate the ways artists blur the lines between object making, performance, activism, grass roots organizing & pedagogy.