What is Modern Art?

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course charts artistic modernism and aesthetic responses to modernity from the 1840s to the 1960s. We will learn key theories of modernism in nineteenth and twentieth-century art criticism and discourse, including theories about how art and visual culture pictured, mediated, or affected modern politics, urbanization, technology, imperialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. In our explorations of these theories, we will engage with a wide range of visual culture and media, including painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography, performance, and film. This course is intended to be an introduction to art historical study and is suitable for those with no prior experience in art history.