Contemporary Art and
the Art of Curating / Cinema and the Other Arts
Professor Karen
Beckman
Office:
Office hours: Monday
and Wednesday,
Telephone: (215)
898-3250
Email: beckmank@sas.upenn.edu
Teaching assistant:
Beck Feibelman
Email: beckf@sas.upenn.edu
Whitney Lauder
fellow: Sara Reisman
Monday 2-5, Room 201
Jaffe Building
This two-semester seminar will provide a forum in which to engage a variety of issues in contemporary art, including the question of what role film and new media play in the contemporary art scene. Each week, we will read a range of theme-based essays that pose strong, sometimes even polemic critical positions, which we will then engage and problematize through discussion and written work.
Our in-class engagement with issues in contemporary art,
film and exhibition design will provide an important complement to the
intellectual and practical challenge of planning and curating
your own exhibition at the
Site visits to private and public collections around the country (Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C., Dallas, and more!) will provide you with the opportunity to experience contemporary art as we read about it, but they will also give you the chance to think about the different venues in which art and film are collected and displayed. These trips are mandatory, and you will be evaluated, in part, on written and oral responses to specific elements of the exhibitions we visit (layout, wall labels, publications, audio-tours, exhibition spaces, etc.). As you consider these curatorial decisions throughout the fall and spring semester, you should find yourselves in a good position to think critically and carefully about why and how you plan your own exhibition in a particular way.
This course, as you know, is somewhat unusual, and you will
find that it challenges and rewards you in several different ways. In order to do well in this class, you will
need: to be an active participant in discussions and group presentations; to
prepare all the required reading, which means having questions ready to
discuss; to work well with colleagues; to attend all site visits; to complete
all written assignments by the agreed upon deadlines. Because we are working in conjunction with
lots of different people (museums,
I am always available to discuss readings, ideas, questions (big or small), and difficulties, in office hours, and encourage you to come as often as you like.
Course requirements
(Fall):
Exhibition journals: 25%
Class attendance and participation (includes doing the reading before class and internship work): 20%
One 8-page paper: 15%
One 4-page paper: 5%
Two oral presentations (one on reading, one on curatorial project): 15% total
Grading policies and
submission guidelines:
I will not allow incompletes or extensions except in real emergencies. There will be a grade penalty for all other late work. I will evaluate you on your critical engagement with and understanding of the material covered in class, as well as on your participation with the group activities. Above all, I value work that strives to engage the topic in question in original, creative ways. In essays, I am most interested in how your own voice emerges distinctly from the voices of the authors we are reading through your argument. I also value close, careful, detailed analysis of the films, art, essays, or exhibition designs you are writing about. I encourage you to draft essays and outlines in advance, and to discuss them with me in office hours prior to the submission deadline, so you have time to revise your work.
All work should comply with MLA guidelines (see MLA
handbook), and should be double-spaced in Times 12 font. Written work should be put under my office
door by
The SAS grading
system:
A+ and A = 4.0 C = 2.0 F = 0
A- = 3.7 C+ = 2.3
B+ = 3.3 C- = 1.7
B = 3.0 D+ = 1.3
B- = 2.7 D = 1.0
Important dates (this
information will be updated throughout the two semesters):
Formal proposal to Art History Faculty: week of 11/29
Formal proposal to
Essay #1 due: October 4th
Essay #2 due: November 15th
Books and articles:
I have ordered a number of texts for the class, and they can
be purchased at the
P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film
James Elkins, What
Happened to Art Criticism?
Rosalind Krauss, “A
Voyage on the
Condition
Art Now, ed. Riemschneider, Burkhard et. al. (recommended)
Amelia Jones, The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (will be used fall and spring)
September 9 Chris Lord, “Ant Farm and Beyond,”
S.
September 10 Trials
and Turbulence opening:
December 3 Opening: Experiments with Truth, Fabric Workshop film and video installation
(runs until March 12 in conjunction with film series)
September 13 Introduction
Discuss syllabus, goals, requirements, internships, trips.
Walk to ICA-discuss current exhibitions & earlier catalogues, gallery space, and Osorio opening.
Discuss exhibition theme: COLLABORATION
*Prepare advance press release.
Site visit: Gallery talk at
Karen Beckman, “Video in Pepón Osorio’s Trials and Turbulence.”
September 20 Exhibition spaces and Display
Svetlana Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” and Elaine Heumann Gurian, “Noodling Around With Exhibition Opportunities,” in Karp and Levine, 2-32; 176-190.
Emma Barker and Christoph Grunenberg, in Barker, 8-49.
Nicky Hamlyn, “Interactivity,” in Hamlyn, 155-166.
Site visit: Andrea Fraser, “Highlights: A Gallery Talk,” Video Gallery,
September 27 Issues in Curating
Guest speaker: Johanna Plummer, on co-curating Pepón Osorio exhibition?
foci (selections): Hasegawa, Hanru, Hlavajová, Cameron,
*Discuss exhibition concepts and theme of “collaboration.”
October 4 Photography
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1936) in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Photography after Art Photography,” in Wallis, 75-85
Douglas Crimp, “The Museum’s Old/ The Library’s New Subject,” “Pictures,” and “The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism”
*Essay #1 due today
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
Michel Foucault, “What is An Author?”
Christine Macel, “The Author Issue in the Work of Sophie Calle,”
Sophie Calle: M’as-tu vue (Pompidou 2004).
Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman
R: Cindy Sherman: Retrospective (MOCA
Catalogue)
R: Image Scavengers: Photography (
Douglas Crimp, “Appropriating Appropriation”
October 25 Fall Break
Screening: Recommended
for Oct. 29th. Hollis Frampton’s Zorn
Lemma and Less at
November 1 ANTHOLOGY Film Archives visit: Art and Film
I
R: Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors catalogue. Recommended
catalogue essay: Bruce Jenkins, “The ‘Other’ Cinema: American Avant-
Garde Film of the 1960s,” in Art and Film, 188-215. Review catalogue.
P. Adams Sitney, “Structural Film” à end, Visionary Film, 347-436.
Lauren Rabinovitz, “Joyce Wieland and the Ascendancy of Structural Film,” in Points of Resistance: Women, Power, and Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema, 1943-71, 150-183.
Annette Michelson, “Gnosis and Iconoclasm: A Case Study of
Cinephilia,” October 83 (Winter 1998): 3-18.
“Gloria! The Legacy of Hollis
Frampton,”
Screenings: Friday Nov. 5th. Screenings at 1.30 and 3.30pm (Mandatory)
Conference: Sat. Nov. 6th: Hollis Frampton Conference (Recommended)
Hollis Frampton, “The Invention Without A Future,” October 109 (Summer 2004): 64-75
David James, “”Pure Film” (excerpts), Allegories of Cinema, 253-279.
*In-class work on Exhibition Proposal
November 15 The Projected Image
in Contemporary Art
R: Chrissie Iles, Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977 (review catalogue)
Thomas Zummer, “Projection and Dis/embodiment: Genealogies of the Virtual,” in Into the Light catalogue and reproduced in reader.
*Essay #2 due today
Marcel
Broodhaers, James Coleman,
(Review Goldin and Oiticica catalogues at reserve desk)
George Baker,
“Reanimations (I),” October 104,
28-70
Rosalind Krauss, “A Voyage on the
*Present formal exhibition proposal to AH faculty this week.
December
6 Review
of semester; Exhibition planning; discussion of next semester.
*Journals due today
*Present formal
exhibition proposal to
(Last class)
Books on reserve at Van
Pelt:
P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film (most recent edition)
James Elkins, What Happened to Art
Criticism?
Rosalind Krauss, "A Voyage on the
Riemschneider, et al., Art Now
Amelia Jone, The Feminism and Visual Culture
Reader
Cindy
Sherman: Retrospective (MOCA Catalogue)
Image
Scavengers: Photography (
Cindy
Sherman (
Art
and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors (catalogue)
Chrissie Iles, Into the Light: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art (Catalogue)
Hélio Oiticica
(
Topics to be covered in the spring semester include:
Globalization, Migration and Exile
Race
Feminism
Sexuality
Censorship and Scandal
Back to Beauty?
Subversion
(Post) Postmodernism
Video
Performance
The Body
Minimalism