ARTH144

Description

A survey of the major trends in art since 1970, focused primarily, but not exclusively, on the art scene in Europe and the U.S. We will begin with the art movements of the 1970s that challenged the traditional definition of "a work of art," including conceptualism, performance art, the Black Arts Movement, and feminist art. The course will examine, in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of post-modernism, appropriation, and the death (and resurrection) of the author, and in the post-2000 decades will explore the expanded field of painting, sculpture, video, and installation art. We will study art made in recent decades in light of contemporary social and political concerns, such as racial justice, the pervasiveness of commercial culture, and the increasing globalization of identity. While the earlier part of the semester is grounded in historical chronology, the latter two-thirds will be devoted discussion of the structures of power in the art world and to thematic explorations of art in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. We will devote extended attention to artists whose identities have been historically under-represented in the predominantly white art world.