ARTHIST 149S:
Art After the A-bomb: American and European Art, 1945-1989
This course surveys the major movements, figures, and themes in American and European art during the Cold War, from the drop of the A-bomb in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It examines the formative relationship between art and politics in this explosive period. We will consider the changed role of the avant-garde after the catastrophes of World War II; the use and abuse of modern art as propaganda; spectacular postwar affluence and the rise of the culture industry; multimedia, intermedia, and the invention of new communications technologies; the burgeoning military-industrial complex and the Vietnam War; the revolutionary efforts of second-wave feminism, sexual liberation, and the counterculture; and the charged debates of the ¿culture wars¿ and the crisis of representation in the 1980s. What was art¿s social, cultural, and political function in the recent past¿and how is this role instructive in the present? Topics include Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Neo-Dada, Pop, Op, Fluxus, Happenings, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance, Institutional Critique, Process Art, Systems Art, Earth Art, Video Art, and theories of modernism and postmodernism. We will visit the Cantor Arts Center to view original works.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 4