The Persona of the Artist: Contemporary Visual Artists and Their Writings

3 units

An art movement is located as much in the writing that surrounds it as in the body of objects that apparently comprise it. In the art world today, it is generally accepted that artists are also artist-writers. This course explores this phenomenon by examining the writings of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century visual artists. In addition to studying social and political contexts, we will analyze the various modes of writing that artists employ, look for specific points of intersection between their art and writing, consider the circumstances and venues of the writings' publication, study how the writings figure into the contemporary reception of the artists' visual practices, and evaluate art historians' uses of artists' writings. In exploring a range of case studies, we will contemplate the motivations and critical function of writing versus or in combination with art-making as well as the role that the practice of writing plays in forming the identity of the contemporary artist-subject.