298. Experimental Courses
The Construction of Early Modern Gender
By looking at visual production linked to virility, courtly love, marriage, homo-sociality and power, this course studies the connections between natural philosophy, humanist ideals, and social status in early modern Italy and France. The students will look at the sexualization of power and its visual expression, the idea of gender in a highly regulated social system and the impact of women, marriage and birth on domestic material culture.
Postwar and Contemporary Art: 1945-2000
This course surveys the diversity of art making since 1945 using a thematic approach. We study postwar modernism (Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Neo-Dada and Minimalism) in conjunction with more recent work that challenges its discourses. By focusing on selected concepts (body, identity, activism, narrative, historical memory, e.g.) we consider critical and creative relationships across periods, cultures and media (painting and sculpture, photography, performance, installation, film and video). Analysis of individual works, museum/gallery visits, screenings, and writings by artists and critics form the basis of the course.
Art of the Avant-Gardes, 1900-1945
This course examines the artistic avant-gardes during the first half of the 20th century. We study individual artists and their associated movements (Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, e.g.) through select themes: the influence of mass culture, non-western arts and new forms of technology; representations of sexual and racial identity; and the relationship between art, nationalism, war and revolution. Critical analysis of individual works of art and primary texts, especially those by artists, forms the basis of the course.