Art and the City:Buenos Aires, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City

Catalog description

This course studies modern and contemporary art and architecture through a strategic focus on the cities of Buenos Aires, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City. We consider key artworks and architectural movements, approaching art history in urban, socio-historical and contextual terms. Emphasis is placed upon the city as a hub for the production and reception of art. Cities are multifarious complexes of paradoxical elements, where rhythms of stasis and motion coexist. Every city absorbs creative interchange, while also triggering different types of transformation. Our speculations on the urban environment will bring up multiple questions that point back to and extend beyond the mere physical structure of the city, discovering arenas of social action. How does art exploits the characteristics of the metropolis? How is art distributed and consumed throughout the dense fabric of the city? We will explore art (primarily Latin American art) as a staging ground for the city, and the city as staging ground for art. Developing comparative perspectives on Buenos Aires, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City will illuminate the particularities of the places under investigation, albeit with reference to aesthetic trajectories as well as broader technological, economic, and social-political changes. New York is included in our selected network of Latin American cities, acknowledging its critical importance as a center of cultural experimentation where artists (including Latin American artists) share ideas in a global context. Work in class will focus on both visual and textual analysis, employing images, manifestos and critical essays. The course includes a lively program of tours throughout Buenos Aires, visits to museums and private art collections, and conversations with guest contemporary artists.