4.602 | Spring 2012 | Undergraduate

Modern Art and Mass Culture

Course Description

This class provides an introduction to modern art and theories of modernism and postmodernism. It focuses on the way artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to mobilize a critique of both. We will examine objects of visual art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, …
This class provides an introduction to modern art and theories of modernism and postmodernism. It focuses on the way artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to mobilize a critique of both. We will examine objects of visual art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, performance and video. These objects will be viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, folk art, and “primitive” art.
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes
Written Assignments
A painting of a woman, her breasts exposed, hoisting the French flag as she leads armed men across a battlefield.
The painting Liberty Leading The People (1830), perhaps the most influential work of artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). (This image is in the public domain. Source: Web Gallery of Art.)