Global Modern and Contemporary Art

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore the history of art in the 20th century from a global perspective, focusing on several locations and movements that were crucial to the development of an avant-garde and its legacies including places such as Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, Zurich, London, Rome, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Mexico City. The course will examine a wide variety of figures, movements, and practices within the visual arts, situating them within the social, political, and historical contexts in which they arose. The history of these artistic developments (e.g., abstraction, the readymade, conceptual art, feminist art) will be traced through the rise of mass-media technologies (such as photography and print media) alongside the aesthetic accomplishments of the avant-garde. Exploring the forces of feminism, capitalism, and urbanism, we will attempt to understand how artistic innovations fundamentally altered, negotiated, and framed the ways in which we understand and represent the world. Artists we will look at include Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothea Lange, Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and Andy Warhol. The curriculum will also include visits to the university museum. This course is largely taught in a lecture format and assessment is exam-based.