Art Since 1940

Catalog description

An international survey of painting, sculpture, photography and other media since 1940. ART H 326 Art Since 1940 (3) (GA;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course offers a survey of art objects and practices after 1940. The class is international in scope, exploring the ways in which artists of different countries have responded to each other's work, and to international cultural and political events. Though the class will develop chronologically, lectures will be thematic in their emphasis. Topics to be covered include Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and other forms of art relying upon methods of appropriation, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Fluxus and Performance Art, Land Art and Site-Specificity, and Art in protest movements (such as the Civil Rights movement). The course will also address such larger issues as: 1) the means by which art works engage in critiques of racial, sexual and national identity; 2) the political uses to which contemporary art has been put (often by figures other than the artists); 3) the dominant critical paradigms through which art has been filtered; 4) the relationship of art works to commodity culture and late capitalism; 5) and the ways in which contemporary art works challenge notions of exhibition, patronage, and ownership of art. This course should be of interest to students of Art History as well as to students interested in post-war history, literature and intellectual culture. It should also be of use to those enrolled in studio art, architecture and other practicum areas.