Readings

Required Texts

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. 7th ed. Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN: 9780321101440.

[Harrison] = Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishing, 2002. ISBN: 9780631227083.

[Foster] = Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, et al. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Vols. 1&2. 2nd ed. Thames and Hudson, 2011. ISBN: 9780500289518.

[Frascina] = Frascina, Francis, and Jonathan Harris, eds. Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts. Phaidon Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780714828404.

LEC # LECTURE TOPICS READINGS
Week 1–Modernity, Modernism, Modernization
1 Introduction to Theories of Modernism and Modernity

Berger, John. Chapters 1 and 7 in Ways of Seeing. Penguin Group, 2009. ISBN: 9780141035796.

Optional

View John Berger's BBC program, "Ways of Seeing," Episode 1. 1972.
Week 2–Mass Culture and Revolution
2 Introduction to Theories of Mass Culture

Williams, Raymond. Entries on "Art," "Culture," "Masses," "Modern," and "Popular". In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780195204698.

Williams, Raymond. "When Was Modernism?" In [Frascina].
3 Eugène Delacroix, or How to Imagine Liberty Pointon, Marcia. "Liberty on the Barricades: Woman, Politics and Sexuality in Delacroix (1986)." Chapter 3 in Naked Authority: The Body in Western Painting, 1830-1908. Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780521409995.

Week 3–Field Trip

Field trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to see Monet's La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume), 1876, and other paintings.

 No readings
Week 4–Post–Revolutionary France
4 Caricature and the Safehouse of "High Art" Merriman, John M. "'Philipon Versus Philippe': The July Monarchy and its Enemies." In The Pear: French Graphic Arts in the Golden Age of Caricature. Edited by Elise K. Kenney and John M. Merriman. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, 1991.
5 Courbet, Realism, and Popular Images / ASCO preview

Schapiro, Meyer. "Courbet and Popular Imagery (1941)." In Modern Art, 19th and 20th Centuries: Selected Papers. George Braziller, 2011. ISBN: 9780807616079.

Nochlin, Linda. "Courbet's Real Allegory: Rereading the 'Painter's Studio.'" In Courbet Reconsidered. Written by Sarah Faunce and Linda Nochlin. Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780300042986.
Week 5–Manet's Realism and the Painting of Modern Life
6 Manet: Flâneurs and Flâneuses in the Modernizing City / ASCO

Baudelaire, Charles. "The Salon of 1846: On the Heroism of Modern Life." In Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison. Sage Publications Limited, 1982. ISBN: 9781853960321. 

Clark, T. J. "The Painting of Modern Life," and "Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of Manet's Olympia in 1865." In [Frascina].

Wolff, Janet. "The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity." Theory, Culture and Society 2, no. 3 (1985): 37–46.

Also available in:

———. Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture. University of California Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780520070745.

Romo, Tere. "Conceptually Divine: Patssi Valdez's Vírgen de Guadalupe, Walking the Mural." In ASCO: Elite of the Obscure. A Retrospective 1972 – 1987. Edited by C. Ondine Chavoya and Rita Gonzalez. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011. ISBN: 9783775730037.

Chavoya, C. Ondine, and Rita Gonzalez. "Asco and the Politics of Revulsion." In ASCO: Elite of the Obscure. A Retrospective 1972 – 1987. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011. ISBN: 9783775730037.
7 European Orientalism: Camille's Kimono and Gauguin's Skir

Said, Edward. "Orientalism." In [Frascina].

Expanded version available in:

———. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. ISBN: 9780394740676.

Perry, Gill, Francis Frascina, and Charles Harrison. "Primitivism and the 'Modern'." In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780300055160.

Nochlin, Linda. "The Imaginary Orient." In The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Westview Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780064301879.

Spate, Virginia, Gary Hickey, and Claude Monet. "Introduction," "Modern Life. Modern Vision," and "The Forces of Nature." In Monet and Japan. National Gallery of Australia, 2001. ISBN: 9780642541352.
Week 6–Impressionism & Photography
8 The Impressionist Eye as Camera

Baudelaire, Charles. "The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and Photography." In Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison. Sage Publications Limited, 1982. ISBN: 9781853960321. 

Varnedoe, Kirk. "The Artifice of Candor: Impressionism and Photography Reconsidered." Art in America 68, no. 1 (1980): 66–68.

Also available in:

Perspectives on Photography: Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall. Edited by Peter Walch and Thomas Barrow. Olympic Marketing Corp., 1986. ISBN: 9780826308627.
Week 7–Serialism & Semiosis
9 Serial Impressions (Print and Eye)

Eisenman, Stephen. "The Intransigent Artist or How the Impressionists Got their Name." In [Frascina].

Isaacson, Joel. "Impressionism and Journalistic Illustration." (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF - 1.7MB) Arts 56 (1982): 95–115.

Goldwater, Robert. "l'Affiche moderne: A Revival of Poster Art After 1880." Gazette des Beaux Arts 22, no. 910 (1941): 173–82.
10 Picasso's Cubism: Politics and/or Semiosis

Leighten, Patricia. "The White Peril and L'Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism." (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF - 5.6MB) Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 609–30.

Krauss, Rosalind. "In the Name of Picasso." 1981. In [Frascina].

Expanded version available in:

———. The Picasso Papers. Diane Publishing Co., 1998. ISBN: 9780756760250.

[Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 78–84 and pp. 106–17 
Week 8–New Subjects for Modernity
11 The Soviet Avant-Garde

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." 1936. In [Frascina].

Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." 1939. In [Harrison].

Crow, Thomas. "Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts. " In Modern Art in the Common Culture. Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780300076493.

 [Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 130–4 and pp. 180–5.

Optional

Gough, Maria. "Formulating Production." Chapter 3 in The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution. University of California Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780520226180. [Preview with Google Books]

Buy at MIT Press Kiaer, Christina. "The Socialist Object." Chapter 1 in Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism. MIT Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780262112895.
12 Futurism's and Dadaism's Popular Mechanics

Marinetti, F. T. "The Founding Manifesto of Futurism." 1909. In [Harrison].

Jones, Caroline A. "The Sex of the Machine: Mechanomorphic Art, New Women, and Francis Picabia's Neurasthenic Cure." In Picturing Science, Producing Art. Edited by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison. Routledge, 1998. ISBN: 9780415919111.

Freud, Sigmund. "Fetishism." In The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, Vol. 21. Edited by James Strachey. W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. ISBN: 9780393011289.

[Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 90–7 and pp. 172–9.
Week 9–Production and (Commodity) Fetish
13 In and Around Duchamp

Duchamp, Marcel . "The Richard Mutt Case." 1917. In [Harrison].

Marx, Karl. "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret." In Capital, Vol.1: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Penguin Classics, 1992. ISBN: 9780140445688.

[Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 160–5.

Optional

Pietz, William. "Fetish." In Critical Terms for Art History. 2nd ed. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226571683.

Wood, Paul. "Commodity." In Critical Terms for Art History. 2nd ed. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226571683.
14 Irrational / Rational Production: Surrealism vs. The Bauhaus Idea

Breton, Andre. Excerpts from "The First Manifesto of Surrealism." 1924. In [Harrison].

Bataille, Georges. "The Lugubrious Game." 1929. In [Harrison].

Gropius, Walter. "The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus." 1923. In [Harrison].

Koss, Juliet. "Bauhaus Theater of Human Dolls." The Art Bulletin 85, no. 4 (2003): 724–45.

[Foster]. Vol. 1, pp. 191–5, pp. 196–201, pp. 214–9 and pp. 224–7.
Week 10–Postwar Primitives
15 Anti-culture? Dubuffet, Pollock, and Premonitions of the Postmodern

Dubuffet, Jean. "Notes for the Well-Lettered." 1946. In [Harrison].

———. "Crude Art Preferred to Cultural Art." 1949. In [Harrison].

Greenberg, Clement. "Modernist Painting." In [Frascina].

Guilbaut, Serge. "The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America." In [Frascina].

[Foster]. Vol. 2, (Dubuffet) pp. 369–74 and (Pollock) pp. 387–91.

Foster, Hal. Excerpt from "Postmodernism: A Preface." In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. The New Press, 2002, pp. ix–xii. ISBN: 9781565847422.

Jameson, Fredric. Excerpt from "Conclusion." In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780860913146.
Week 11–Marketing Mass Culture
16 Robert Rauschenberg's Coca-Cola Plan / International Pop

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1969. ISBN:9780826400932.

Alloway, Lawrence. "The Arts and the Mass Media." 1958. In [Harrison].

Jones, Caroline A. "Coca-Cola Plan Or, How New York Stole the Soul of Giuseppe Panza." In Panza: The Legacy of a Collector. Written by the Museum of Contemporary Art. Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999. ISBN: 9780914357735.

Hamilton, Richard. "For the Finest Art, Try Pop." 1961. In [Harrison].

[Foster]. Vol. 2, (Rauschenberg) pp. 406–10, (Independent Group), pp. 423–8, (Johns) pp. 442–8 and (Cold War) 459–63.
17 The "Business Art Business," Globalism vs. Globalization

Oldenburg, Claes. "Documents from The Store." 1961. In [Harrison].

"Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson." 1963. In [Harrison].

"Roy Lichtenstein: Lecture to the College Art Association." 1964. In [Harrison].

Jones, Caroline A. "Globalism / Globalization." In Art and Globalization. Edited by James Elkins, Zhivka Valiavicharska, and Alice Kim. Penn State Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780271037172.

Jameson, Fredric. "Periodizing the 60s." Social Text, no. 9/10, The 60's without Apology (1984): 178–209.

Buy at MIT Press Camnitzer, Luis. "Contemporary Colonial Art." In Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson. MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780262511179. [Preview with Google Books]

Buy at MIT Press Meireles, Cildo. "Insertions in Ideological Circuits." In Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson. MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780262511179. [Preview with Google Books].

[Foster]. Vol. 2, (Lichtenstein, Warhol, etc.) pp. 483–7, (Oldenburg) pp. 488–93 and (more Warhol) pp. 530–5.
Week 12–Simulation, Spectacle, & the Postmodern
18 Postmodernism, Spectacle, and Institutional Critique

Huyssen, Andreas. "Mapping the Postmodern." In After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008. ISBN: 9781597405553.

Steinbach, Haim, et al. "From Criticism to Complicity." 1986. In [Harrison].

Wodiczko, Krzysztof. "Public Projection." 1983. In [Harrison].

Debord, Guy. "Writings from the Situationist International." 1957–1961. In [Harrison].

Baudrillard, Jean. "The Hyper-realism of Simulation." 1976. In [Harrison].
19 Postmodernism and Feminism

Huyssen, Andreas. "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other." In After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008. ISBN: 9781597405553.

Owens, Craig. "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism." In Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. Edited by Scott Bryson, et al. University of California Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780520077409.

[Foster]. Vol. 2, (Baudrillard and artists) pp. 624–33, (Jameson and artists) pp. 640–3 and (appropriation) pp. 644–8.
Week 13–New Media & Biennial Culture
20 New Media / Mass Media / Sensory Reconfigurations

Jones, Caroline A. "The Server/User Mode: The Art of Olafur Eliasson." Artforum International 46, no. 2 (2007): 316–25.

Buy at MIT Press ———. Excerpt from "The Mediated Sensorium." In Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art. MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262101172.
21 Biennial Culture and the Aesthetics of Experience

Von Hantelmann, Dorothea. "Experience." In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601.

Moore, Jenny. "Future." In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601.

Smith, William S. "Optics." In Carsten Höller: Experience.  Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601.

Celant, Germano. "Participation." In Carsten Höller: Experience. Skira Rizzoli, 2011. ISBN: 9780847837601.

Jones, Caroline A. "Troubled Waters: Caroline A. Jones on Globalism and the Venice Biennale." Artforum International 44, no. 6 (2006): 91–2.

[Foster]. Vol. 2, pp. 758–69.
Week 14–Present Strategies
22

Present-day Strategies Vis-a-vis Art and Mass Culture

Guest lecturers: Star TAs, Rebecca Uchill and Niko Vicario!

 

Spiegler, Marc. "When Human Beings Are the Canvas." (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF). Art News 102, no. 6 (2003): 94–7.

Fraser, Andrea. "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique." (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF) Artforum 44, no. 1 (2005): 278–83.

Riding, Alan. "Alas, Poor Art Market: A Multimillion-Dollar Head Case," New York Times, June 13, 2007.

Buy at MIT Press Thompson, Nato, and Gregory Sholette, eds. "Foreword to the Second Printing." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press Thompson, Nato. "Trespassing Relevance." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "Krzysztof Wodiczko." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "Michael Rakowitz." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "The Reverend Billy." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "The Yes Men." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "The Atlas Group." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Buy at MIT Press "Critical Art Ensemble with Beatriz da Costa." In The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. 2nd ed. Edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. MASS MoCA, and MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262201506.

Lambert-Beatty, Carrie. "Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism." (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 2 (2008): 309–28.

 
23 Last class: concluding discussion of class themes, review for exam, and discussion of student research paper abstracts. No readings