From the advent of European democracy and the parallel birth of the avant-garde artist, whose singular vision boldly shattered prevailing styles and norms, to the radical rise of abstract painting and the even more provocative introduction of everyday objects into works of art, this course will unfold modernism’s defiant embrace of the new. This course will engage the major issues of twentieth-century aesthetic practice, from Freud’s description of the unconscious and the play of dreams as fertile source material for the artist, to the explosive rise of pop art and the dizzying information age that has profoundly shaped contemporary practice. To closely study modern and postmodern art is to learn how to look at the world, to take notice of form, color, and image, and to respond to the richness of visual and material culture that is all around us.
This course will not only provide a canonical repertoire of great works of historic art, as well as the context for understanding them, but through the unfolding of such a narrative, these lectures will allow new ways of observing one’s own contemporary world and reimagining its value.
SCHEDULE
Session 1: The Rallying Cry Of The Avant-Garde
Romanticism and Realism
Session 2: The Power Of Form And Emotion Of Color
Impressionism and Post Impressionism
Session 3: The 20th Century Explodes
Fauvism and Cubism
Session 4: Painted Blueprints Of Utopia
Kandinsky, Mondrian, And Malevich
Session 5: Pranksters, Tricksters, Revolutionaries
Dada Breaks the Mold
Session 6: Surrealist Dreams
Courting the Unconcious
Session 7: The Last Gasp Of Modernism
The heroics of the New York School
Session 8: The Romantic Sublime/ American Style
The New York school and Abstract Expressionism
Session 9: Pop And Its Legacy
Pop art
Session 10: Minimalism And The Phenomenology Of Being
Minimalism
Session 11: Critiquing The Institutions Of Art
Earthworks, Body, and Conceptual Art
Session 12: The Cacophony Of Postmodernism In The Information Age
Postmodernism and beyond