Topics in Contemporary Art: Art and the Everyday

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This seminar concentrates on art made within the last forty years and looks at the everyday as it relates theoretically, materially, and historically to such practices. By examining artwork that takes the everyday as its source, subject, or material point of departure, we will consider how that realm is useful for its position as a place outside of the sphere of professional artistic practices. Looking at the use of amateur and domestic materials and objects in art, as well as works that mimic daily routines (eating, housekeeping, childrearing, playing, etc.) will play a large role in our investigations. Additionally, we will examine theories of the everyday and those problems that accompany attempts to concretize abstract ideas such as routines and habits. In so doing, we will aim to question those biases that conventionally accompany everyday experience that often deem it to be altogether mundane and apolitical, and look at how artists counter such notions by mining its common experiences for its politicized potential. Some of the artists we will look at include Louise Bourgeois, Robert Gober, Anna Maria Maolino, Amalia Mesa-Baines, Ree Morton, Martha Rosler, Do Ho Suh, and Rikrit Tiravanija.