ARTH 3750/6750 Contemporary Art Fall 2015 FAV 262 Tuesday/Thursday 4:30-5:45 pm. Course Description. Readings. Course Requirements

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1 ARTH 3750/6750 Contemporary Art Fall 2015 FAV 262 Tuesday/Thursday 4:30-5:45 pm Dr. Marissa Vigneault Office: V144 Office Hours: Wednesdays 1-3 pm, and by appointment Course Description This course will focus on artistic production from approximately 1940 to the 1980s with particular attention paid to the legacy of the European avant-garde, the influence of new types of media and materials on artists, the shifting philosophical arguments of artistic production and theory, and the transition from modernism to antimodernism and postmodernism. Some of the major questions we will address are: Why do we see such a rapid progression of artistic experimentation? What are the social conditions and changes that allow this to happen? How closely are politics and art related during this time? What role does theory (literary, philosophical, psychoanalytic, feminist) play in artistic production, criticism and the writing of art history? What effect has the introduction of a variety of new mediums into the realm of art (digital photography, film, video, etc.) had on artistic production? Where do we stand with the study of art history today? The production of art? What is the role of art in today s society? Is the category of Art and its sub-categories (painting, sculpture, etc.) still viable? This course will be comprised of a combination of lectures and discussions, which will revolve around a series of readings relevant to the questions posed above. I encourage thoughtful and interrogative questioning and discussion at any point. Readings All readings are to be completed for the class meeting under which they are assigned. Readings are available on E-Reserve, accessible through Blackboard and the library s website. There is no required textbook for this course, however, I recommend the following books for those who wish to supplement course readings and lectures: - Hal Foster, et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 2 nd ed. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2011). - Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2011). - Jonathan Fineberg, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, 3 rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2010). These textbooks will provide you with wide array of information on contemporary art and artists, much of which we will not have time to cover in just one semester. Course Requirements Course Requirements for 3750: 1

2 Exams Writing You will complete two take home exams The mid-term exam will be posted on Canvas on October 8 th and DUE in-class on October 13 th The final exam will be posted on Canvas on December 10 th and DUE on December 15 th (sent to me via ). Papers are DUE IN-CLASS and PRINTED OUT (no attachments!) on the days noted; please mark these dates on your calendars. Late papers will be assessed a penalty of one grade letter for each late day. *Note the guidelines for papers posted on Blackboard. Spiral Jetty Just write Due on site: September 19 th * This is a required trip scheduled by the Art + Design Department for September 19 th. Transportation will be provided. Times and meeting place TBD. Further instructions are posted on Canvas under Assignments. Exhibition Review 4 pages Due to WF: October 13 th Final Due in class: October 27 th Further instructions are posted on Canvas under Assignments. Campus Art Proposal 6 pages Due to WF: November 24 th Final Due in class: December 10 th Further instructions are posted on Canvas under Assignments. * Alternative Assignment (and strongly encouraged for art history majors and/or those considering applying for an advanced degree in the humanities). You may opt to write a research paper in lieu of the Exhibition Analysis and Campus Art Proposal. Research Paper 10 pages Brief Summary of Project Due in class: October 1 st Bibliography, Abstract, and Outline Due to WF: November 3 rd Final Paper Due to WF: November 24 th Final Paper Due in class: December 10 th This is an open topic research paper in which you will expand on one of the areas covered in this course. I STRONGLY encourage everyone to come and talk with me at any point in your process, from choosing a methodology, to compiling a bibliography, to structuring your approach. To this end, I am always available to discuss your topic, thoughts, concerns, beliefs, new theories, etc. outside of class. Further information is provided on Canvas under Assignments. 2

3 Course Requirements for 6750: * Students enrolled in 6750 will meet for one additional hour per week, day/time TBD Article Presentation and Review 3 pages Due on the day of your presentation You will choose one essay from the grad-level course readings, present the main arguments to the group, and post at least two questions on Canvas for discussion. The questions should be posted under Discussion on Canvas by 6 pm the day before your presentation so that your peers may have time to contemplate the issues you raise. Further information is provided on Canvas under Assignments. Research Paper Brief Summary of Project Due in class: October 1 st Bibliography, Abstract, and Outline Due: November 3 rd Final Paper Due in class: December 10 th This is an open topic research paper in which you will expand on one of the areas covered in this course. I STRONGLY encourage everyone to come and talk with me at any point in your process, from choosing a methodology, to compiling a bibliography, to structuring your approach. To this end, I am always available to discuss your topic, thoughts, concerns, beliefs, new theories, etc. outside of class. Further information is provided on Canvas under Assignments. Writing Fellows (3750 only) This class has been selected to participate in the Writing Fellows program, a special program designed to help students develop their writing skills with the help of specially trained fellow students. Here's how the program works: for the three papers listed on our syllabus, you will first submit a good draft to me for your WF. He or she will write comments on the paper, which will then be discussed during a conference between you and the WF. These comments will raise questions, suggest changes, and provide you with a valuable resource for revising your material for the final draft. You will then submit both the original draft (with the WF's comments) and the final paper to me. The WF will not grade your papers. His/her responsibility is to act as a reader--to make suggestions; you are still ultimately responsible for evaluating these suggestions, revising the draft, and putting it in its final form. As assignment deadlines near, you will be given a sign-up sheet for arranging your individual conference. NOTE: final papers will not be accepted if you fail to meet with the WF. The assignment grade will be recorded as a 0. Grading Papers are due in class in paper form on the days noted This means no attachments! Please mark these dates on your calendars. Late papers will be assessed a penalty of one letter grade for each late day. AHIS 3750 Exam 1 = 10% Exam 2 = 10% Spiral Jetty = 15% Exhibition Review = 25% Campus Art Proposal = 40% 3

4 AHIS 6750 Spiral Jetty = 10% Article Presentation and Review = 30% Bibliography and Abstract = 10% Research Paper = 50% All grades will be determined according to the following scale: A = B+ = C+ = Etc. A- = B = C = Participation and Classroom Etiquette Attendance and active participation is vital to success in this class. Intelligent, respectful, enthusiastic, and consistent participation can bump up a borderline grade. REMEMBER: to participate, you MUST complete the readings and attend class every week. Out of respect to your classmates and me, all cell phones must be turned off or inaudible while you are in the classroom and you should refrain from texting or internet browsing during class. I understand that many of you will want to use your laptops in order to take notes, but this should be all you are doing on your computer during class time. Discovery of texting, ing, or use of the internet in class is cause to mark the student absent from that day s class. Course Schedule *Subject to change due to weather, discussions, etc. Any changes to the syllabus will be posted on Canvas. ** All readings are to be completed for the class date under which they are listed. All readings are available on Canvas and are to be completed for the class date under which they are listed. *** All readings listed as grads are additional assignments to be completed by graduate students enrolled at the 6750-level. These readings are optional, yet encouraged, for undergraduates. September 1: A Brief History of Early 20 th Century Modernism September 3: High Modernism and the Emergence of the New York School 1. Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939) 2. Clement Greenberg, Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940) September 8: Postwar Europe, from Art Brut to CoBrA 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dionysian Worldview (1870), Journal of Nietzsche Studies n. 13 (Spring 1997): Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (1946) in Essays in Existentialism, ed. Wade Baskin (Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1965): Andrea Nicole Maier, Jean Dubuffet and the Bodies of Ladies in Art History v. 34 n. 5 (November 2011):

5 September 10: Action Painting and the Unconscious 1. Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters in The Tradition of the New (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965): Michael Leja, Jackson Pollock: Representing the Unconscious in Reading American Art eds. Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998): September 15: International Responses to Abstract Expressionism 1. Jirô Yoshihara, Gutai Manifesto (1956) in Art in Theory : An Anthology of Changing Ideas eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003): Eva Cockcroft, Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War (1974) in Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts eds. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (London: Phaidon, 1992): Lewis Kachur, The View from the East: The Reception of Jackson Pollock among Japanese Gutai Artists in Abstract Expressionism: The International Context ed. Joan Marter (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007): September 17: Abstract Expressionism and Role of Gender 1. Anna C. Chave, Pollock and Krasner: Script and Postscript, Res 24 (Autumn 1993): Fionna Barber, The Politics of Feminist Spectatorship and the Disruptive Body: De Kooning s Woman I Reconsidered in Performing the Body, Performing the Text eds. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson (New York and London: Routledge, 1999): September 22: Color Field, Hard Edge, and Art Criticism 1. Michael Fried, Three American Painters, The American Scholar 33 (Autumn 1964): Lisa Saltzman, Reconsidering the Stain: On Gender and the Body in Helen Frankenthaler s Painting in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005): September 24: Black Mountain and the Neo-Avant-Garde 1. Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria (1968/72) in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth Century-Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972): Jonathan Katz, Dismembership: Jasper Johns and the Body Politic in Performing the Body, Performing the Text eds. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson (New York and London: Routledge, 1999): September 29: Working on the West Coast: San Francisco and Los Angeles 1. Walter Hopps, Edward Kienholz: A Remembrance, American Art v. 8 n. 3/4 (Summer Autumn 1994): David L. Ulin, Fifteen Takes on California, Virginia Quarterly Review v. 91 n. 3 (Summer 2015): Gerald Silk, Censorship and Controversy in the Career of Edward Kienholz in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts ed. Elizabeth C. Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997):

6 October 1: This is Tomorrow : Transitionary Pop 1. A Symposium on Pop Art (1962) in Pop Art: A Critical History ed. Steven Henry Madoff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): Alexandra Schwartz, Second City : Ed Ruscha and the Reception of Los Angeles Pop October 111 (Winter 2005): October 6: Pop Goes Consumer Culture 1. Gene R. Swenson, The F-111: An Interview with James Rosenquist, Partisan Review 32 n. 4 (Fall 1965): Christin J. Mamiya, Pop Art and Consumer Culture: Corporations and the Imperative to Consume in Pop Art and Consumer Culture: American Super Market (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992): October 8: Pop and the Ma(r)kers of Gender 1. Cécile Whiting, Borrowed Spots: The Gendering of Comic Books, Lichtenstein s Paintings, and Laundry Detergent, American Art v. 6 n. 2 (Spring 1992): Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp, Partisan Review 31 (Fall 1964): October 13: Minimalism and the Reduction to the Object * ER Draft Due to WF 1. Donald Judd, Specific Objects, Arts Yearbook 8 (1965): Robert Morris, Notes on Sculpture, Part I, Artforum 4 no. 6 (February 1966): Robert Morris, Notes on Sculpture, Part II, Artforum 4 no. 2 (October 1966): Barbara Rose, A B C Art, Art in America 53 n. 5 (October/November 1965). October 15: NO CLASS - FALL BREAK October 20: The Monochrome and the Grid 1. Richard Tuttle, What Does One Look at in an Agnes Martin Painting?, American Art 16 n. 3 (Autumn 2002): Rosalind Krauss, Grids, October 9 (Summer 1979): October 22: Critical Responses to Minimalist Objectness 1. Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood, Artforum 5 (June 1967): Anna C. Chave, Minimalism and Biography, Art Bulletin v. 82 n. 1 (March 2000): Anna C. Chave, Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power Arts Magazine v. 64 n. 5 (January 1990): October 27: Post-Minimalism and Process Art * ER Paper Due 1. Robert Morris, Notes on Sculpture, Part IV: Beyond Objects, Artforum 7 no. 8 (April 1969):

7 2. Jeanne Siegel, Eva Hesse s Influence Today? Conversations with Three Contemporary Artists, Art Journal v. 63 n. 2 (Summer 2004): October 29: Conceptual Art and the Move Away from the Object 1. Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Artforum 5 n. 10 (June 1967): Sol LeWitt, Sentences on Conceptual Art, 0-9 n. 5 (1969). 3. Lawrence Weiner, Statements (1969) in Art in Theory : An Anthology of Changing Ideas ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003): Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, The Dematerialization of Art (1967), Art International v. 12 n. 2 (February 1968): November 3: Site Specificity and the Expansion of Sculptural Practices 1. Robert Smithson, A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects, Artforum v. 8 n. 1 (September 1968): Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, October 8 (Spring 1979): November 5: L.A. Cool School: Light, Space, and Finish Fetish 1. Richard Andrews, 1982 Interview with James Turrell in James Turrell: Sensing Space (Seattle: University of Washington, 1992: Lawrence Weschler, Art and Science and The Room at the Museum of Modern Art in Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008): ; November 10: Setting the Stage: Viennese Actionism, Happenings, and Fluxus 1. Allan Kaprow, The Legacy of Jackson Pollock (1958), ArtNews v. 57 n. 6 (October 1958): 24-26; Beth Hinderliter, Citizen Brus Examines his Body: Actionism and Activism in Vienna, 1968, October 147 (Winter 2014): November 12: Art and/as Politics 1. Lucy Lippard, Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation ed. Brian Wallis (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art; Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1984): Julia Bryan-Wilson, Hard Hats and Art Strikes: Robert Morris in 1970, The Art Bulletin vol. 89 no. 2 (June 2007): Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One (1977) in This Sex Which is Not One trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985): November 17: Performance/Body Art 1. Carolee Schneemann, The Obscene Body/Politic, Art Journal 50 n. 4 (Winter 1991): Amelia Jones, Presence in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation, Art Journal 56 n. 4 (Winter 1997):

8 November 19: Video as Medium 1. Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995): Rosalind Krauss, Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism October v. 1 (Spring 1976): Anne M. Wagner, Performance, Video, and the Rhetoric of Presence, October 91 (Winter 2000): Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology ed. Lawrence Cahoone (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003): November 24: Institutional Critique as Artistic Practice * CAP Draft Due to WF 1. "What is a Museum? A Dialogue between Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson" (1967) in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979): Daniel Buren, Function of the Museum (1970) in Theories of Contemporary Art ed. Richard Hertz (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993): Douglas Crimp, On the Museum s Ruins, October 13 (Summer 1980): November 26: NO CLASS - THANKSGIVING BREAK December 1: Pictures, Pictures, Pictures 1. Douglas Crimp, Pictures, October 8 (Spring 1979): December 3: Post-Modernism Theorized 1. Jeffrey Deitch, Report from Times Square, Art in America 68 (September 1980): Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism and the Consumer Society (1982) in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture ed. Hal Foster (New York: New Press: W.W. Norton, 1998): Craig Owens, The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Post-Modernism, Parts 1 and 2, October 12 (Spring 1980): 67-86; October 13 (Summer 1980): December 8: Controversies & Crises Since the 1980s, or Why the NEA has minimal funding 1. Robert Atkins, A Censorship Timeline, Art Journal 50 n. 3 (Fall 1991): Judith Tannenbaum, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Philadelphia Story, Art Journal 50 n. 4 (Winter 1991): Dave Hickey, Nothing Like the Son: On Robert Mapplethorpe s X Portfolio, in The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (Los Angeles: Art Issues, 1993): December 10: What Was Contemporary Art? * CAP Paper Due 1. Hal Foster, et al., Questionnaire on The Contemporary, October 130 (Fall 2009): Dan Karlhom, Surveying Contemporary Art: Post-War, Postmodern, and then What?, Art History 32 n. 4 (September 2009):

9 3. Terry Smith, The State of Art History: Contemporary Art, Art Bulletin 92 n. 4 (December 2010):