Required Texts
Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. 7th ed. Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN: 9780321101440.
[Harrison] = Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishing, 2002. ISBN: 9780631227083.
[Foster] = Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, et al. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Vols. 1&2. 2nd ed. Thames and Hudson, 2011. ISBN: 9780500289518.
[Frascina] = Frascina, Francis, and Jonathan Harris, eds. Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts. Phaidon Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780714828404.
| LEC # | LECTURE TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1–Modernity, Modernism, Modernization | ||
| 1 | Introduction to Theories of Modernism and Modernity |
Berger, John. Chapters 1 and 7 in Ways of Seeing. Penguin Group, 2009. ISBN: 9780141035796. OptionalView John Berger’s BBC program, “Ways of Seeing,” Episode 1. 1972. |
| Week 2–Mass Culture and Revolution | ||
| 2 | Introduction to Theories of Mass Culture |
Williams, Raymond. Entries on “Art,” “Culture,” “Masses,” “Modern,” and “Popular”. In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780195204698. Williams, Raymond. “When Was Modernism?” In [Frascina]. |
| 3 | Eugène Delacroix, or How to Imagine Liberty | Pointon, Marcia. “Liberty on the Barricades: Woman, Politics and Sexuality in Delacroix (1986).” Chapter 3 in Naked Authority: The Body in Western Painting, 1830-1908. Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780521409995. |
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Week 3–Field Trip Field trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to see Monet’s La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume), 1876, and other paintings. |
No readings | |
| Week 4–Post–Revolutionary France | ||
| 4 | Caricature and the Safehouse of “High Art” | Merriman, John M. “‘Philipon Versus Philippe’: The July Monarchy and its Enemies.” In The Pear: French Graphic Arts in the Golden Age of Caricature. Edited by Elise K. Kenney and John M. Merriman. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, 1991. |
| 5 | Courbet, Realism, and Popular Images / ASCO preview |
Schapiro, Meyer. “Courbet and Popular Imagery (1941).” In Modern Art, 19th and 20th Centuries: Selected Papers. George Braziller, 2011. ISBN: 9780807616079. Nochlin, Linda. “Courbet’s Real Allegory: Rereading the ‘Painter’s Studio.’” In Courbet Reconsidered. Written by Sarah Faunce and Linda Nochlin. Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780300042986. |
| Week 5–Manet’s Realism and the Painting of Modern Life | ||
| 6 | Manet: Flâneurs and Flâneuses in the Modernizing City / ASCO |
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Salon of 1846: On the Heroism of Modern Life.” In Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison. Sage Publications Limited, 1982. ISBN: 9781853960321. Clark, T. J. “The Painting of Modern Life,” and “Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of Manet’s Olympia in 1865.” In [Frascina]. Wolff, Janet. “The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity.” Theory, Culture and Society 2, no. 3 (1985): 37–46. Also available in: ———. Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture. University of California Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780520070745. Romo, Tere. “Conceptually Divine: Patssi Valdez’s Vírgen de Guadalupe, Walking the Mural.” In ASCO: Elite of the Obscure. A Retrospective 1972 – 1987. Edited by C. Ondine Chavoya and Rita Gonzalez. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011. ISBN: 9783775730037. Chavoya, C. Ondine, and Rita Gonzalez. “Asco and the Politics of Revulsion.” In ASCO: Elite of the Obscure. A Retrospective 1972 – 1987. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011. ISBN: 9783775730037. |
| 7 | European Orientalism: Camille’s Kimono and Gauguin’s Skir |
Said, Edward. “Orientalism.” In [Frascina]. Expanded version available in: ———. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. ISBN: 9780394740676. Perry, Gill, Francis Frascina, and Charles Harrison. “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’.” In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780300055160. Nochlin, Linda. “The Imaginary Orient.” In The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Westview Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780064301879. Spate, Virginia, Gary Hickey, and Claude Monet. “Introduction,” “Modern Life. Modern Vision,” and “The Forces of Nature.” In Monet and Japan. National Gallery of Australia, 2001. ISBN: 9780642541352. |
| Week 6–Impressionism & Photography | ||
| 8 | The Impressionist Eye as Camera |
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and Photography.” In Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison. Sage Publications Limited, 1982. ISBN: 9781853960321. Varnedoe, Kirk. “The Artifice of Candor: Impressionism and Photography Reconsidered.” Art in America 68, no. 1 (1980): 66–68. Also available in: Perspectives on Photography: Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall. Edited by Peter Walch and Thomas Barrow. Olympic Marketing Corp., 1986. ISBN: 9780826308627. |
| Week 7–Serialism & Semiosis | ||
| 9 | Serial Impressions (Print and Eye) |
Eisenman, Stephen. “The Intransigent Artist or How the Impressionists Got their Name.” In [Frascina]. Isaacson, Joel. “Impressionism and Journalistic Illustration.” (PDF - 1.7MB) Arts 56 (1982): 95–115. Goldwater, Robert. “l’Affiche moderne: A Revival of Poster Art After 1880.” Gazette des Beaux Arts 22, no. 910 (1941): 173–82. |
| 10 | Picasso’s Cubism: Politics and/or Semiosis |
Leighten, Patricia. “The White Peril and L’Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism.” (PDF - 5.6MB) Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 609–30. Krauss, Rosalind. “In the Name of Picasso.” 1981. In [Frascina]. Expanded version available in: ———. The Picasso Papers. Diane Publishing Co., 1998. ISBN: 9780756760250. [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 78–84 and pp. 106–17 |
| Week 8–New Subjects for Modernity | ||
| 11 | The Soviet Avant-Garde |
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936. In [Frascina]. Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” 1939. In [Harrison]. Crow, Thomas. “Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts. " In Modern Art in the Common Culture. Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780300076493. [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 130–4 and pp. 180–5. OptionalGough, Maria. “Formulating Production.” Chapter 3 in The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution. University of California Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780520226180. [Preview with Google Books]
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| 12 | Futurism’s and Dadaism’s Popular Mechanics |
Marinetti, F. T. “The Founding Manifesto of Futurism.” 1909. In [Harrison]. Jones, Caroline A. “The Sex of the Machine: Mechanomorphic Art, New Women, and Francis Picabia’s Neurasthenic Cure.” In Picturing Science, Producing Art. Edited by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison. Routledge, 1998. ISBN: 9780415919111. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” In The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, Vol. 21. Edited by James Strachey. W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. ISBN: 9780393011289. [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 90–7 and pp. 172–9. |
| Week 9–Production and (Commodity) Fetish | ||
| 13 | In and Around Duchamp |
Duchamp, Marcel . “The Richard Mutt Case.” 1917. In [Harrison]. Marx, Karl. “The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret.” In Capital, Vol.1: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Penguin Classics, 1992. ISBN: 9780140445688. [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 160–5. OptionalPietz, William. “Fetish.” In Critical Terms for Art History. 2nd ed. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226571683. Wood, Paul. “Commodity.” In Critical Terms for Art History. 2nd ed. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226571683. |
| 14 | Irrational / Rational Production: Surrealism vs. The Bauhaus Idea |
Breton, Andre. Excerpts from “The First Manifesto of Surrealism.” 1924. In [Harrison]. Bataille, Georges. “The Lugubrious Game.” 1929. In [Harrison]. Gropius, Walter. “The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus.” 1923. In [Harrison]. Koss, Juliet. “Bauhaus Theater of Human Dolls.” The Art Bulletin 85, no. 4 (2003): 724–45. [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 191–5, pp. 196–201, pp. 214–9 and pp. 224–7. |
| Week 10–Postwar Primitives | ||
| 15 | Anti-culture? Dubuffet, Pollock, and Premonitions of the Postmodern |
Dubuffet, Jean. “Notes for the Well-Lettered.” 1946. In [Harrison]. ———. “Crude Art Preferred to Cultural Art.” 1949. In [Harrison]. Greenberg, Clement. “Modernist Painting.” In [Frascina]. Guilbaut, Serge. “The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America.” In [Frascina]. [Foster]. Vol. 2, (Dubuffet) pp. 369–74 and (Pollock) pp. 387–91. Foster, Hal. Excerpt from “Postmodernism: A Preface.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. The New Press, 2002, pp. ix–xii. ISBN: 9781565847422. Jameson, Fredric. Excerpt from “Conclusion.” In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780860913146. |
| Week 11–Marketing Mass Culture | ||
| 16 | Robert Rauschenberg’s Coca-Cola Plan / International Pop |
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1969. ISBN:9780826400932. Alloway, Lawrence. “The Arts and the Mass Media.” 1958. In [Harrison]. Jones, Caroline A. “Coca-Cola Plan Or, How New York Stole the Soul of Giuseppe Panza.” In Panza: The Legacy of a Collector. Written by the Museum of Contemporary Art. Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999. ISBN: 9780914357735. Hamilton, Richard. “For the Finest Art, Try Pop.” 1961. In [Harrison]. [Foster]. Vol. 2, (Rauschenberg) pp. 406–10, (Independent Group), pp. 423–8, (Johns) pp. 442–8 and (Cold War) 459–63. |
| 17 | The “Business Art Business,” Globalism vs. Globalization |
Oldenburg, Claes. “Documents from The Store.” 1961. In [Harrison]. “Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson.” 1963. In [Harrison]. “Roy Lichtenstein: Lecture to the College Art Association.” 1964. In [Harrison]. Jones, Caroline A. “Globalism / Globalization.” In Art and Globalization. Edited by James Elkins, Zhivka Valiavicharska, and Alice Kim. Penn State Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780271037172. Jameson, Fredric. “Periodizing the 60s.” Social Text, no. 9/10, The 60’s without Apology (1984): 178–209.
[Foster]. Vol. 2, (Lichtenstein, Warhol, etc.) pp. 483–7, (Oldenburg) pp. 488–93 and (more Warhol) pp. 530–5. |
| Week 12–Simulation, Spectacle, & the Postmodern | ||
| 18 | Postmodernism, Spectacle, and Institutional Critique |
Huyssen, Andreas. “Mapping the Postmodern.” In After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008. ISBN: 9781597405553. Steinbach, Haim, et al. “From Criticism to Complicity.” 1986. In [Harrison]. Wodiczko, Krzysztof. “Public Projection.” 1983. In [Harrison]. Debord, Guy. “Writings from the Situationist International.” 1957–1961. In [Harrison]. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Hyper-realism of Simulation.” 1976. In [Harrison]. |
| 19 | Postmodernism and Feminism |
Huyssen, Andreas. “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other.” In After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008. ISBN: 9781597405553. Owens, Craig. “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism.” In Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. Edited by Scott Bryson, et al. University of California Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780520077409. [Foster]. Vol. 2, (Baudrillard and artists) pp. 624–33, (Jameson and artists) pp. 640–3 and (appropriation) pp. 644–8. |
| Week 13–New Media & Biennial Culture | ||
| 20 | New Media / Mass Media / Sensory Reconfigurations |
Jones, Caroline A. “The Server/User Mode: The Art of Olafur Eliasson.” Artforum International 46, no. 2 (2007): 316–25.
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| 21 | Biennial Culture and the Aesthetics of Experience |
Von Hantelmann, Dorothea. “Experience.” In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601. Moore, Jenny. “Future.” In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601. Smith, William S. “Optics.” In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601. Celant, Germano. “Participation.” In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601. Jones, Caroline A. “Troubled Waters: Caroline A. Jones on Globalism and the Venice Biennale.” Artforum International 44, no. 6 (2006): 91–2. [Foster]. Vol. 2, pp. 758–69. |
| Week 14–Present Strategies | ||
| 22 |
Present-day Strategies Vis-a-vis Art and Mass Culture Guest lecturers: Star TAs, Rebecca Uchill and Niko Vicario! |
Spiegler, Marc. “When Human Beings Are the Canvas.” (PDF). Art News 102, no. 6 (2003): 94–7. Fraser, Andrea. “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique.” (PDF) Artforum 44, no. 1 (2005): 278–83. Riding, Alan. “Alas, Poor Art Market: A Multimillion-Dollar Head Case,” New York Times, June 13, 2007.
Lambert-Beatty, Carrie. “Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism.” (PDF) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 2 (2008): 309–28. |
| 23 | Last class: concluding discussion of class themes, review for exam, and discussion of student research paper abstracts. | No readings |
