SPRING 2000

WEDNESDAYS 4:30PM - 7:10PM

PROFESSOR: DR. REBECCA BUTTERFIELD
 
 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The art of the Twentieth century is characterized by a radical break with all preceding art. Or is it? In this course, we will study the art produced in Europe and the United States between 1900 and 1945. We will examine its innovations--in style, materials, subject matter, and philosophy--and its continuing relation to artistic traditions.

The lectures, readings and discussions focus on six major themes: 1) The relationship between art and politics (class, gender, nationalism); 2) Abstraction versus realism or "outer" versus "inner" vision; 3) Primitivism and the search for origins, innocence and freedom from societal constraints; 4) Reactions to modernity, including attitudes toward originality, tradition and the rise of technology; 5) The relation between "high" art and popular culture; and 6) The role of artists and art in a modern society.

Are artists political revolutionaries? Spiritual leaders? Working-class producers? Or the spoiled lap-dogs of the moneyed classes? Is art politically or spiritually meaningful or is it merely expensive decoration? Can it transcend the mundane world or is it mired in particular economic and social relations? Are art and artistic values universal and eternal or are they personal and mutable? These are the questions and issues we will address.

Our weekly sessions will generally include discussion of the reading assignments as well as lectures. Therefore, with the exception of the first class, it is important that you read the assigned chapters and articles before coming to class that day.

Office Hours: To be announced.

Class Texts: Available at the Pennsylvania Book Center, 130 South 34th St.

rebecb@sas.upenn.edu AND rebeccb@aol.com

TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE

Jan. 19 INTRODUCTION ****** POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Harrison: 3-34.

Recommended: Fred Orton & Griselda Pollock, "Les Données

Bretonnantes: La Prairie de la Représentation," (article in

English) Modern Art & Modernism: A Critical Anthology, ed.

F. Frascina & C. Harrison (London, 1982): 285-304.

Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Going Native," Art in America 77

(July 1989): 118-128, 161.

Jan. 26 FAUVISM (THE WILD BEASTS) ****** THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTIC CUBISM

Harrison: 46-62.

Henri Matisse, "Notes of a Painter" (Reading Packet).

Fer: 158-62.

Barnet, "Writing About Art": 1-21; "Analysis": 22-61, 71-85; "Some Critical Approaches": 104-20.

Recommended: Leo Steinberg, "The Philosophical Brothel," October 44 (Spring 1988): 7-74.

Roger Benjamin, "Matisse in Morocco: A Colonizing Esthetic?" Art in America (Nov. 1990): 156-213.

Feb. 2 SYNTHETIC CUBISM, COLLAGE, CONSTRUCTED SCULPTURE, PUTEAUX CUBISM

C. Greenberg, "Collage," from F. Frascina, ed., Modern Art and Modernism, 105-108 (RP).

R. Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Typography of Cubism," in Penrose & Golding, eds., Picasso in Retrospect, 49-75 (RP).

Barnet, "In Brief: How to Write an effective Essay": 121-35.

Recommended: Christine Poggi, "Frame of Reference: Table and

Tableau in Picasso's Collages and Constructions," In Defiance of Painting: 58-89. (Fine Arts Reserve)

F. Frascina, "Realism and Ideology: An Introduction to Semiotics and Cubism," in Harrison: 87-183.

Feb. 9 FUTURISM

Futurist Manifestos (RP).

Barnet, "Style in Writing": 136-53.

Feb. 16 MODERN SCULPTURE ******* EXPRESSIONISM

Leo Steinberg, "Rodin," from Other Criteria (RP).

Harrison: 34-35, 62-82.

Barnet, "Manuscript Form": 154-86.

Feb. 23 GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

Vassily Kandinsky, excerpts from Concerning the Spiritual in Art (RP).

Mar. 1 THE RETURN TO ORDER IN FRANCE & THE NETHERLANDS: PURISM & DE STIJL

Ken Silver, "Purism: Straightening Up After the Great War," Artforum 15/7 (March 1977): 56-63 (RP).

Harrison: 250-62.

Fer, "Mondrian," in Fer: 153-58.

Batchelor, "Purism and l"Esprit Nouveau," in Fer: 19-30.

Barnet, "Essay Exams": 213-17.

Mar. 8 MIDTERM EXAM

Mar. 15 SPRING BREAK

Mar. 22 EARLY AMERICAN MODERNISM: THE ASHCAN SCHOOL, 291, THE ARMORY SHOW, PRECISIONISM

Recommended: R. Zurier, R. Snyder & V. Mecklenburg, Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan artists and Their New York (Washington: National Museum of Art in association with W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1995).

Gail Stavitsky, "Reordering Reality: Precisionist Directions in American Art, 1915-1941," in Precisionism in America 1915-1941: Reordering Reality (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers in association with The Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey): 12-39.

Mar. 29 RUSSIA: SUPREMATISM, CONSTRUCTIVISM, PRODUCTIVISM

Harrison: 228-49.

Kasimir Malevich, "Suprematism" (RP). Naum Gabo & Anton Pevsner, "The Realistic Manifesto" (RP). Walter Benjamin, "The Author As Producer," (RP).

Fer: 96-138.

Barnet, "Writing a Comparison": 86-103; "The Research Paper": 187-212; review "Manuscript Form": 156-86.

Recommended:

Margit Rowell, "Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura," October (Winter 1978): 83-108.

Apr. 5 THE BAUHAUS AND THE NEW OBJECTIVITY

P. Wood, "Weimar Germany," in Fer: 283-311.

Recommended: Fer: 139-67.

Apr. 12 DADA

Fer: 30-47.

Maud Lavin, "Heartfield in Context," Art in America (Feb. 1985) (RP).

W. Benjamin, excerpts from "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (RP).

Recommended: R. Huelsenbeck, En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism (1920), in Chipp, Theories of Modern Art.

Apr. 19 SURREALISM

Fer: 47-61, 171-247.

André Breton, "Surrealism & Painting" (1928) & "What Is Surrealism?" (1934) in Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: 402-17 (RP).

Max Ernst writings from Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: 427-31 (RP).

Apr. 26 RESPONSES TO FASCISM AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN MODERNIS

André Breton & Leon Trotsky, "Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art," (1938) in Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: 483-86. (RP).

Wood in Fer: 250-63.

Recommended: Wood, "Realisms and Realities," in Fer: 263-83; 311-31.