4.651 | Fall 2010 | Undergraduate

Art Since 1940

Lecture Notes

The table below includes selected lecture notes and slide lists.

LEC # TOPICS FILES
1 Introduction: the aesthetic and ideological context for figuration vs. abstraction going into WWII (PDF)
2 Formalizing the unconscious: Surrealism. Matta (Echaurren), Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Sandy Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and Hans Hofmann (PDF)
3 “I am Nature:” Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Screening of Jackson Pollock, 1951 film by Hans Namuth (PDF)
4 Gesture vs. Field: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell vs. Rothko, Newman, Reinhardt (PDF)
5 Abstract expressionist sculpture: David Smith’s “Drawing in Space” vs. Bourgeois’s and Nevelson’s intimate worlds; Roszak, Lipton, Ferber (PDF)
6 Rothko, Still, and the San Francisco school; Tobey, Matthieu, Yoshihara and the “Gutai” group, promotion of an “ecole du Pacifique” (PDF)
7 Body vs. Gesture in Europe: Giacometti, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Tachisme, l’art informel, CoBrA, the d’affichistes, Yves Klein, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely (PDF)
8 John Cage, Robert Rauschenber, Jasper Johns, and the question of a homosexual aesthetic (PDF)
9 Bay Area figurative art: the view from the West Coast; California funk and Chicago’s “Hairy Who” (PDF)
10 The Beats; environments and happenings in the US (Fluxus begins) (PDF)
11 Post-painterly abstraction and formalist sculpture; Greenberg’s reign (PDF)
12 Screening of Painters Painting, 1970 film by Emile De Antonio  
13 Meet at List Visual Art Center for tour of exhibitions  
14 Frank Stella and Minmal art: The corporate icon (Andre, Judd, Flavin, Morris) (PDF)
15 Warhol’s Factory; pop art and another kind of industrial aesthetic (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Dine, Marisol) (PDF)
16 The Independent Group (London); Capitalist Realism (Germany); Arte Povera (Italy) (PDF)
17 Early conceptual art: Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, Richard Artschwager; international conceptualism and Fluxus (PDF)
18 Sculptors of land, poets of light: Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Richard Long (UK), Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, James Turrell; screening of Spiral Jetty, 1970 film by Robert Smithson. (PDF)
19 Performance vs. Intervention in an international context: Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Bruce Nauman, Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles, Zhang Huan (PDF)
20 From Smithson to Gordon Matta-Clark, “Post-Minimalism” and process artists: Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, Lynda Benglis; screening of Office Baroque, 1977 film by Gordon Matta-Clark (PDF)
21 Women buck the Canon: Louise Bourgeois to “Womanhouse” and “The Dinner Party,” status of the decorative; performance art redux: Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Laurie Anderson, Adrian Piper (PDF)
22 Identity politics: Bettye Saar, David Hammons, Fred Wilson, Lorna Simpson, Jimmy Durham, James Luna; Public interventions: Hans Haacke, Maya Lin, AIDS Demo-graphics, Krzysztof Wodiczko (PDF)
23 PoMo 1, appropriation art: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach; “Neo Geo:” Peter Halley, Philip Taaffe (PDF)
24 Installation art, “new media art,” political interventions, and globalism (PDF)
25 In-class debate, class summary and review (PDF)

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Fall 2010
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