In 1967, critic Michael Fried famously declared that "theater is the death of art." Fried never clarified what kind of theater, nor did his widely influential text cite specific theater artists. Rather, his indictment was against the condition of theater in general -- its association with spectacle, commercialism, an appeal to popular culture and mass media. But above, Fried's concern was with the way in which, in the postwar period, social forces were increasingly part of modern art practices, including a growing international exchange of artists shifting the paradigm of art away from Western tenets to which Fried (and other like him) desperately clung. This course will examine the relationship between theater, performance, and the visual arts from the postwar period to the present -- paying close attention to what the notions of "theater" and "theatricality" as artists grappled with an increasingly political and global field of practice, in which the boundary between art and everyday life was continually blurred. We will consider the way visual artists embraced time-based and embodied practice, the way theater and performance artists explored objectified and material relations to the body, and the influence of art practices from across the world in which such dichotomies held little sway. We'll draw our cast studies from the canons of performance art and theater from throughout the world (including the US, France, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, India, Senegal, and more). Students will gain critical language for understanding performance in the context of the visual arts, and visual arts in the context of performance. We'll discuss contemporary case studies and meet with practicing artists to understand the way they relate to the concept of "theater" and "theatricality." And we'll develop our own critical and creative approaches to rethinking what being an interdisciplinary artist might look like in the future. |