ART AND VISUAL CULTURE, 1945-PRESENT
Prof. Sue Ann Prince
House of Our Own bookstore, 3920 Spruce St.:
Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, Documents and ??? of Contemporary Art
(University of California Press,
Peter Sayre, Writing about Art, 3rd edition (Prentice Hall, 1999)
Campus Copy Center:
Bulk Pack for Art History 287-001
Syllabus
COURSE CONTENT:
The contemporary art we will be covering in this course includes
several works and performances that are sexually explicit (dealing with
hetero-, homo-, and auto-eroticism) or politically provocative. Some
individuals may find these works disturbing or even offensive. Such
works are included because they were significant events in the history
of art. They presented important challenges to artistic conventions,
to social mores, to standards of beauty and taste, and ultimately, to definitions
of art. Students will not be asked to subscribe to any particular
definition of art, nor will they be required to like all the works shown.
However, if you choose to take this course, you will be expected to understand
the issues involved and why they are important. If you have any special
concerns, please discuss them with me.
ASSIGNMENTS:
Wed., Feb
2-3 page paper, comparing one work of art in the PMA or in the Jackson
Pollock exhibition at MOMA to a color reproduction of that same work of
art, either online or in a book or journal.
5%
4-5 page paper, comparative visual analysis of the work of art from
the previous paper and another work of art in the PMA.
15%
Mon. Feb. Midterm
20%
Mon. April?? 10-page paper.
25%
Final Exam 25%
Class Participation This will include introducing at least one reading
to the class
10%
NOTE: 1.) In order to pass this course, you must complete ALL
of the above
Assignments, including class participation.
NO EXCEPTIONS
AH 287//Prince//Spring 1999
Class Schedule
Jan. 11 Introduction and Background: The Thirties and Early Forties
STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: Visit to Jackson Pollock exhibition, MOMA
Jan. 13 Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, and Abstract Expressionism:
Gesture and Figuration
Reading due:
Henry Sayre, Writing About Art, Introduction and Chapter 1,
pp. 1-26.
Stiles and Selz (hereafter S/S), 22-24 and 197-99.
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” 1952, in The
Tradition of the New, 23-39.
Excerpt from Jackson Pollock exhibition catalogue, pp. 15-20.
(BP)
Jan. 18 More on Gesture Painting (Franz Kline); Color Field Painting:
Mark
Rothko, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler
Readings due:
Sayre, pp. 27-64
S/S, 24-26 and 28-31. CHECK Newman and Frankenthaler?
Clement Greenberg, American-Type Painting,” 1958, in Art and
Culture, 208-229.
Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” in
Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, Francis Frascina, ed.
(N.Y.: Harper and Row, Icon Editions, 1985), pp. 125-133.
Jan. 20 David Smith; Early Work by Louise Bourgeois
Readings due:
S/S, 37-42 (Smith and Bourgeois).
Rosalind Krauss, “Tanktotem: Welded Images,” from Passages in Modern
Sculpture, 147-77. (BP)
Jan. 25 Assemblage and Happenings: Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, Claes
Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg
Readings due:
Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Art News 57, no. 6
(Oct. 1958), 24-26, 55-57. (BP)
???????S./S reading????????
Jan. 27 Robert Rauschenberg; Jasper Johns
Readings due:
S/S, 321-326 (Rauschenberg and Johns).
Leo Steinberg, “The Flatbed Picture Plane,” in Other Criteria, 1975,
82-91. (BP)
Leo Steinberg, “Modern Art and the Plight of its Public,” in
Other
Criteria, 3-16. (BP)
Highly Recommended: Leo Steinberg, “The First Seven Years
of his
Art,” 17-54. (On reserve, in folder, at Fisher Fine Arts)
Feb. 1 Early British and American Pop Art
Readings due:
S/S, 296-300 (Hamilton)
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” 1939, in Art and
Culture,
3-21. (BP)
Playboy Magazine, Editor’s statement, April 1953 and “The Playmate
as
Fine Art: Eleven Famous Contemporary Artists Interpret
Playboy’s Provocative Gatefold Girl” of Jan. 1967. (BP)
Feb. 3 American Pop Art: Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, James Rosenquist,
Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg
Readings due:
S/S, 335-339 (Oldenburg); 340-346 (Warhol); 347-349 (Rosenquist).
Benjamin Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art: 1956-66,” in
Andy Warhol, A Retrospective, Kynaston McShine, ed., 39-61???
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, “The Great American Nude,” in Tom
Wesselmann, pp. 17-21. (BP)
Feb. 5 (EXCEPTION: CLASS MEETS THIS FRIDAY
FRIDAY Post-Painterly Abstraction and Minimalism (Frank Stella, Ad
Reinhardt,
and others)
Readings due:
S/S, 86-91 (Reinhardt).
Michael Fried, Excerpt from “Shape as Form: Frank Stella’s New
Paintings” in Art in Theory, 775-78. (BP)
Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum (June 1967) in
Fried, Art
and Objecthood, pp. 148-168. (BP)
Feb. 8 Minimalism
Readings due:
S/S, 114-117 (Judd); 117-123 (Judd and Stella).
Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine,
64, no. 5 (Jan. 1990), 44-63. (BP)
Feb. 10 NO CLASS; first part of first paper due in
section this week; WATU
students, first paper due
Please refer to Sayre, both the readings assigned above and
the rest of the
book (from pp. 62-end, for information on how to approach writing about
an image, citing references, etc.)
Feb. 15 Grids and Repetition: Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman
Readings due:
S/S, 128-138 (Martin).
Clement Greenberg, “Modernist painting,” Arts Yearbook 4 (1961),
in
Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, Francis
Frascina, ed., 5-10. (BP)
Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist
Repetition,” October (Fall 1981), repr. In The Originality
of the
Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, 151-70. (BP)
Feb. 17 Conceptual Art (Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Joseph Kosuth, Walter
De
Maria)
Process Art (Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris)
Readings due:
Thomas McEvilley, “Yves Klein: Messenger of the Age of Space,”
Artforum 20, no. 5 (Jan. 1982), 38-51. (BP)
S/S kosuth??? Johnson equivalent: Joseph Kosuth, Art after Philosophy
Feb. 22 More on Process Art
Artist as Shaman: Joseph Beuys
Readings due:
S/S ?????? Johnson, 184-96—Morris, Anti-Form
Donald Kuspit, “Beuys: Fat, Felt and alchemy,” Art in America
68, not. 5
(May 1980), 79-89. (BP)
Benjamin Buchloh, “Beuys: Twilight of the Idol: Preliminary
Notes for a
Critique,” Artforum 18, no. 5 (jan. 1980), 35-43. (BP)
Recommended: Temkin, “Thinking is Form: The Drawings of
Joseph
Beuys”
*****FIRST PAPER DUE
Feb. 24 Earthworks (Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer)
Readings due:
S/S, 530-533 (Smithson, “The Spiral Jetty”); 534-536 (Heizer,
Oppenheim, Smithson).
Feb. 24-25 Film showing: Smithson’s Spiral Jetty
and Christo’s Running Fence
Jaffe, Room 201, 5:00-6:45 each evening CHECK ROOM AVAIL
Mar. 1 Site-Sculpture and Architectural Sculpture: Jeanne-Claude
Christo, Walter
De Maria, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Mary Miss, Robert Irwin
Readings due:
S/S, 550-556 (Christo); 558-560 (Aycock); 563-566 (Long); 572-
(Irwin).
Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, in Art in Theory
(abridged)??
Mar 3 Art in Public Spaces: Controversy
Readings due:
S/S ??????Maya Lin?
Robert Storr, “Tilted Arc: Enemy of the People?” in Art in America
73,
no. 9 (Sept. 1985), 90-97.
Elizabeth Hess, “A Tale of Two Memorials,” Art in America 71,
no. 4
(April 1983), 120-27.
Buren article
Mar 5 MIDTERM
Recommended for review: Read S/S (Stiles and Selz), pp.
Mar. 8-10 Spring Break
Mar. 15 Engaging the Spectator: Vito Acconci, Performance Art,
the Emergence
of a Feminist Voice (Schneemann, Anderson, Antin)
Readings due:
David Bourdon, “An Eccentric Body of Art,” Saturday Review of the Arts
(Feb. 3, 1973), repr. In G. Battcock and R. Nickas, eds., The Art of
Performance, 183-93. (BP)
S/S: 759-67 (Acconci)
RECOMMENDED: Henry Sayre, Three Performances: Laurie Anderson, Eleanor
Antin, Carolee Schneemann, in The Object of Performance, pp. 145-173.
Mar. 17 More on Early Feminist Art (Judy Chicago, Mary Kelly,
Ana Mendieta)
Introduction to Postmodernism; the Critique of Art Institutions
(Marcel
Broodthaers)
Readings due:
S/S: 773-75 (Antin); 358-62 (Chicago).
S/S: 868-72 (Broodthaers)
Douglas Crimp, “On the Museum’s Ruins,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-
Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, pp. 43-56 (BP).
Mar. 22 Critique of Art Institutions (Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke)
Readings due:
Leo Steinberg, “Some of Hans Haacke’s Works Considered as Fine
Art,”
in Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business, Brian Wallis, ed.,
8-19.
Daniel Buren, “Function of the Museum,” in Theories of Contemporary
Art, Richard Hertz, ed. 189-92.
S/S: 872-81 (Haacke)
S/S: 70-71 (relevant part on Buren) and 140-49 (Buren).
Mar. 24 Masquerade, Sexuality, Identity: Cindy Sherman, Martha
Rosler, Richard
Prince, Mathew Barney
Readings due:
Craig Owens, Feminism and Postmodernism (just do first
couple pages?
S/S: 791-94 (Sherman); 461-73 (Rosler) ????????
Mar. 29 Art as Language: “Subversive Signs” (Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger)
Readings due:
S/S, 376-378 (Kruger);
Kruger, Also statement in Art in Theory 1070-71??
Recommended: Hal Foster, “Subversive Signs,” in Recodings: Art, Spectacle,
Cultural Politics, pp. 99-118.
Mar. 31 Figuration and Neo-Expressionism
Readings due:
Craig Owens, “Honor, Power, and the Love of Women,” Art in America
71, no. 1 (Jan. 1983), 9-13.
Hal Foster, “The Expressive Fallacy,” Art in America 71, no.
1 (Jan.
1983), 80-83, 137
S/S
April 5 Cultural Politics: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Sherrie Levine
Allan
McCollum, Louise Lawler
Andrea Frazer, V-Girls Simulations Hans Haacke, manzoni?:
Readings due:
379 (Levine); 424-427 (Wodiczko).
also Levine, Statement, in Art in Theory, 1066-67?
(Lawler and McCollum: econ manipula of art obj; address collector and
exh framework (Lawler horse)
April 7 Commodity, Spectacle (Allan McCollum, Haim Steinbach, Jeff Koons)
Readings due:
Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” 1983, in Art After
Modernism, Brian Wallis, ed., 253-81
Craig Owens, “Allan McCollum: Repetition and Difference,” in
Beyond
Recognition, 117-21.
Steinbach, Halley and others, in Art in Theory, 1080-84 (BP)
S/S: 380-83 (Koons)
WATU STUDENTS: FINAL PAPER DUE
April 12 Voice/Image of African-Americans (Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar,
Carrie
Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Adrian Piper, Glen Ligon)
Postcolonial: Trinh-Minh-Ha, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Mona Hatoum)??
Readings due:
S/S: 787-91 (Piper);
Black Male
Interview with Saar
Ringgold from catalogue?
April 14 Voice/Image of the Racial or Ethnic Other (Part 2)
Postcolonialism, “Nomadism,” Global Issues: Africa, Asia, Latin
America
(Kusama,Trinh-Minh-Ha, Theresa Hak Kuyng Cha, Mona
Hatoum)
Readings due:
April 19 Desire and the Body: Art in the Era of AIDS; Homosexuality
and
Censorship (Robert Mapplethorpe); Children (Sally Mann)
(Peter Hujar, Simon Leung, Lisa Bowman, Leslie Sharpe, Robert Flynt
and others??)
Readings due:
S/S, 273-281 (Mapplethorpe, Serrano, Helms);
April 21 Body/Psyche (Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, David Wojnarowicz, Sylvia Kolbowski, Annette Messager, Rona Pondrick, , Mike Kelley)
Readings due:
S/S: 373-376 (Wojnarowicz).
April 23 Other Art and Issues in the 80s and 90s
FINAL PAPER DUE
Exam: