Lecture Notes

For a list of modern art resources and image galleries on the web, please see the related resources section.

WEEK # -LEC #	TOPIC
1-1	Introduction: the Aesthetic and Ideological Context for Abstraction following WWII in the United States and Europe
2-1	The Unconscious made Visible: Matta, Masson, Miro, Calder, Noguchi, Moore; Formalizing the Intuitive: Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and Hans Hofmann
2-2	"I am Nature:" Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Screening of Hans Namuth's influential 1951 film, Jackson Pollock
3-1	Gesture/ Field: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell VERSUS Rothko, Newman, Reinhardt
3-2	Abstract Expressionist Sculpture: David Smith's "Drawing in Space" versus Bourgeois's and Nevelson's Intimate Worlds; Roszak, Lipton, Ferber.
4-1	Rothko, Still, and the San Francisco School; Tobey, Matthieu, Yoshihara and the promotion of an "ecole du Pacifique"
4-2	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
5-1	John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and the question of a homosexual aesthetic
5-2	The "Gutai" group in Japan; extending AbEx gesture into performance
6-1	Bay Area Figurative Art: The View from the West Coast; California Funk and Chicago's "Hairy Who"
6-2	The Beats; Environments and Happenings in the US (Fluxus begins)
8-1	"Post-Painterly Abstraction" and Formalist Sculpture; Greenberg's reign
8-2	Frank Stella and Minimal Art: the Corporate Icon (Andre, Judd, Flavin, Morris)
9-1	Warhol's Factory; Pop Art and another kind of Industrial Aesthetic (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Dine, Marisol)
9-2	The Independent Group (London); German "Capitalist Realism"; Arte Povera (Italy)
10-1	Modes of Realism shading into conceptualism: Photorealism in US versus Lucian Freud, Malcolm Morley in UK
10-2	Early Conceptual art: Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, Richard Artschwager; International conceptualism and Fluxus
11-1	Performance/Intervention abroad: Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Bruce Nauman, Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles
11-2	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
12-1	Process Art (and Earthworks Catchup)
12-2	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.
13-1	African Americans: Bearden, Puryear, Saar, Piper, Wilson; Native Americans: Luna, Durham and Political Interventions
13-2	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
14-1	Appropriation Art: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach; "Neo Geo": Peter Halley, Philip Taaffe.
14-2	Installation Art, Video, and New Media in context; class summary and review