Introduction to European Avant-Garde, 1880-1940
ARHA 241
Fall 2016
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
FIST 241, GRST 241, COL 230 |
In the years building up to and directly following World War I, artists, philosophers, and politicians called into question art's role, proposing both new relationships to society as well as path-breaking formal vocabularies that approached, and at times crossed, the threshold of abstraction. This deep uncertainty regarding art's relationship to society coincided with an era of unprecedented formal innovation. Artists struggled to define the costs and benefits of abstraction versus figuration, moving abruptly, even violently, between the two idioms. The extremism of artistic solutions speaks to a fundamental instability, if not outright crisis, in European art, society, and politics. This course will introduce students to the major avant-garde art movements from the first half of the 20th century as they took root in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Russia. Our focus will be on painting, but we will also look at attempts to go beyond painting in an attempt to gain greater immediacy or social relevance for art. Topics that will receive special emphasis include the relationship between abstraction and figuration, the impact of primitivism and contact with non-Western arts, modernism's relationship to mass culture, modernism and classicism, war and revolution, gender and representation, art and dictatorship, and the utopian impulse to have the arts redesign society as a whole. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ART |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ARHA-MN)(ARHA)(ARST)(FRST-MN)(FRST)(GRST-MN)(GRST)(RMST) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, ART SINCE 1900: MODERNISM, ANTIMODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM, VOL. 1: 1900-1944. Thames and Hudson, 2005. ISBN-10: 0500285357 ISBN-13: 978-0500285350
Herschel Chipp, THEORIES OF MODERN ART. University of California Press, 1984. ISBN-10: 0520052560 ISBN-13: 978-0520052567
Articles and book chapters made available via ereserve
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Examinations and Assignments:
3-page paper, 8-page paper, peer critique, mid term and final exams, in-class participation |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Instructor uses the enrollment request system and does not respond to emails prior to the beginning of class.
Students who do not attend the first day of class will be dropped from the enrollment list. |
| Instructor(s): Kuenzli,Katherine M. Times: .M.W... 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: BOGH112; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 30 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 9 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 5 | JR non-major: 5 | SO: 6 | FR: 6 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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