Calendar
| Week # | First Session Topic | Second Session Topic | Readings | Key Dates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1: Introduction; Surrealism in Exile | Introduction: the Aesthetic and Ideological Context for Abstraction following WWII in the United States and Europe | Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting (TAP), Harper and Row (1970), 1-28. | ||
| 2: Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism | The Unconscious made Visible: Matta, Masson, Miro, Calder, Noguchi, Moore; Formalizing the Intuitive: Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and Hans Hofmann | "I am Nature:" Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Screening of Hans Namuth's influential 1951 film, Jackson Pollock. |
Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning, Viking (1973), University of California Press reprint 1992; Intro. and Chapters 4-7. begin reading Caroline Jones, Machine in the Studio, pp. 1-41. Recommended: Sandler, TAP: 29-71. | |
| 3: Abstract Expressionist "Action" to "Field" | Gesture/ Field: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell VERSUS Rothko, Newman, Reinhardt | Abstract Expressionist Sculpture: David Smith's "Drawing in Space" versus Bourgeois's and Nevelson's Intimate Worlds; Roszak, Lipton, Ferber. | Ashton, chapters 8-11, 13, 15. Ellen Johnson, American Artists on Art, from 1940-1980, Harper and Row (1982), 1-39. Clement Greenberg, "`American-Type' Painting," Art and Culture, 208-229. Harold Rosenberg, "Parable of American Painting," (1954) and "American Action Painters" (1952), from Harold Rosenberg, Tradition of the New, McGraw-Hill (1965), 13-22 and 23-39. finish reading Jones Chapter 1, Machine in the Studio, pp 41-59. Recommended: Sandler, TAP: 92-137, 233-268. Lisa Phillips, The Third Dimension: Sculpture of the New York School, pp. 9-44, plus entries. | |
| 4: Abstract Expressionish Abroad: Precursor, Export, Zeitgeist? | Rothko, Still, and the San Francisco School; Tobey, Matthieu, Yoshihara and the promotion of an "ecole du Pacifique" | Body/Gesture in Europe: (Giacometti, Dubuffet, Fautrier), Tachisme, l'art informel, CoBrA, the d'affichistes, the "Nouveaux Realistes" (Arman, Yves Klein), Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely. |
Caroline A. Jones, Bay Area Figurative Art, (BAF), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and University of California Press (1989), chapter 1. Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Skim and consult pictures, Chapters 1-4. | Take-home essay question handed out |
| 5: The Fifties into Sixties: International Neo-Dada | John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and the question of a homosexual aesthetic | The "Gutai" group in Japan; extending AbEx gesture into performance |
Johnson, 72-78. Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. Recommended: Irving Sandler, The New York School (NYS), Harper and Row (1978), 140-95. Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde, Penguin (1976), chapters on Cage, Tinguely, Rauschenberg. De Antonio and Mitch Tuchman, Painters Painting, New York: Abbeville, 1984, and view the laserdisk of Emile de Antonio, Painters Painting. James Roberts "Painting as Performance," Art in America, May 1992, 113-118. | Suggested paper topics handed out, due at last class. |
| 6: Fifties (and later): Hot Art/Cold War | Bay Area Figurative Art: The View from the West Coast; California Funk and Chicago's "Hairy Who" | The Beats; Environments and Happenings in the US (Fluxus begins) |
Johnson, 57-72 Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America (1995). Read "Prologue" by Allen Ginsberg, "Beat Culture" by Lisa Phillips, skim text and pictures throughout. Recommended: Barbara Haskell, Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism, and Performance: 1958-1964 Whitney Museum of American Art (1984). Skim and consult pictures. Sandler, NYS, 196-213. Albright, Art in the SF Bay Area. Skim and consult pictures, Chapters 5-6. Franz Schultze, Fantastic Images: Chicago Art Since 1945, Chicago: Follett, (1972). Skim and consult pictures. | |
| 7: Midterm | MIDTERM Note: Topic for 10-15 page paper should be chosen and research underway. | Midterm short paper due. | ||
| 8: Sixties Abstraction - An Industrial Aesthetic | "Post-Painterly Abstraction" and Formalist Sculpture; Greenberg's reign | Frank Stella and Minimal Art: the Corporate Icon (Andre, Judd, Flavin, Morris) |
Johnson, pp. 105-123, 179-184. Jones, Chapter 3, "Frank Stella, Executive Artist," Machine in the Studio, 114-188. Recommended: Irving Sandler, American Art of the 1960s, (AAS), New York: Harper & Row, 1988; Introduction, Chapters 1 and 10 (pp. 1-44, 242-281). James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties, (New Haven: Yale, 2001) | |
| 9: Sixties Figuration -- Encounters with Mass Culture | Warhol's Factory; Pop Art and another kind of Industrial Aesthetic (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Dine, Marisol) | The Independent Group (London); German "Capitalist Realism"; Arte Povera (Italy) |
Johnson, 79-104. Jones, Chapter 4, "Warhol's Factory..." in Machine in the Studio, pp. 189-267. Robert Rosenblum, "Pop Art and Non-Pop Art," Art and Literature 5 (Summer 1964), anthologized in John Russell and Suzi Gablik, Pop Art Redefined, New York: Praeger, 1969, pp. 53-56. Recommended: Sandler, AAS, Chapters 3, 4, 7, and 8 (pp. 60-104, 143-222) Marco Livingstone, Pop Art: An International Perspective, New York: Abrams, 1990 skim and consult pictures. Tate Gallery of Art, Gerhard Richter (London: 1991) | |
| 10: Seventies Pluralism: Realism, Conceptual Art | Modes of Realism shading into conceptualism: Photorealism in US versus Lucian Freud, Malcolm Morley in UK | Early Conceptual art: Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, Richard Artschwager; International conceptualism and Fluxus |
Johnson, 125-168 Siegel: Baldessari 37-50, Richter 105-118 Farver et al., Global conceptualism: points of origin, 1950s-1980s Recommended: Monographs by Alicia Legg et al., Sol LeWitt (Museum of Modern Art, 1978), Coosje van Bruggen, John Baldessari (New York: Rizzoli, 1990). | |
| 11: Pluralism cont.: Process, Environmental, and Performance Art | Performance/Intervention abroad: Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Bruce Nauman, Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles | Sculptors of Land, Poets of Light: Robert Smithson and De Maria, Heizer, Long (UK) Morris, Flavin, Irwin, Turrell; screening of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty |
Johnson, 169-224 Siegel: Beuys 77-83 Jones, Chapter 5, "Robert Smithson...." in Machine in the Studio, pp. 268-343. Recommended: Sandler, AAS, chapters 14, 15, and Epilogue. Schimmel, Paul. Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art/ New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. | |
| 12: End of the Mainstream? | Women buck the Canon: Louise Bourgeois to "Womanhouse" and "The Dinner Party," process/performance artists: Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Laurie Anderson, Adrian Piper. | African Americans: Bearden, Puryear, Saar, Piper, Wilson; Native Americans: Luna, Durham |
Johnson, 246-249 Interviews with Eva Hesse and Judy Chicago in Lucy Lippard, From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1976, 214-230. Lucy Lippard, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, New York: Pantheon, 1990. Read chapters on "Naming," "Telling," and "Turning Around," skim pictures throughout. Recommended: Amelia Jones, ed., Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in feminist art history, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; Jones essay. Corinne Robins, "Art and Politics," from The Pluralist Era: American Art 1968-1981, New York: Harper & Row, 1984, pp. 37-75. Barbara Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies, exhibition catalogue. Helen A. Cooper, ed., Eva Hesse (Yale U. Press, 1992) | Note: Papers due in 2 weeks! |
| 13: Political Art | Political Interventions, public art: Hans Haacke, Maya Lin, Mel Chin; Mapplethorpe, AIDS Demo-graphics, Krzysztof Wodiczko |
Seigel: Haacke 63-74 Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo-graphics, Seattle: Bay Press, 1990; skim and consult pictures. Recommended: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. | ||
| 14: Post-Modernism | The End of American Hegemony? Italian "Bad Boys" (Mario Merz), Clemente, Chia, Cucchi; German Neo-Expressionists (Baselitz), Kiefer, Richter; US Neo-Expressionism with Graffitists Basquiat, Haring; "Bad" Painting, New Image, etc. Salle and Schnabel vs. Bartlett, Rothenberg, Murray | Appropriation Art: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach; "Neo Geo": Peter Halley, Philip Taaffe. |
Johnson: 225-244; 260-266 Siegel: Clemente, Cucchi 121-151; Schnabel, Salle 153-175; Longo 197-210, Halley, Levine 235-255; Sherman, Holzer, Kruger 269-311. Hal Foster, "Re: Post," in Brian Wallis, ed., Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, (AAM) New York: New Museum, 1984, pp. 188-201. Douglas Crimp, "Pictures," pp. 175-187, and other essays in AAM. Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," in Owens, Beyond Recognition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, U.Cal. Press, 1992, pp 166-190. Recommended: Craig Owens, "The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism," parts 1 and 2, Beyond Recognition pp. 52-87. (Part one is also in AAM pp. 203-235.) Lisa Dennison, ed., Angles of Vision: French Art Today, New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1986. Thomas Krens et al., Refigured Painting: The German Image 1960-1988, New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1989. | Note: Papers due in class. |
| 15: Installation Art, New Media, and Biennial Culture | Installation Art, Video, and New Media in context; class summary and review | |||
| 16: Final Exam | Final Exam |
