Day Jobs and Their Influence

Graduate / Professional

This course will examine the porous boundaries between the painting studio and the work outside the studio that supports it. We will look to historical and conceptual models of artists who have bridged and acknowledged the disparate identities that have supported their practices. By incorporating seminal texts such as Helen Molesworth’s introductory essay for the Work Ethic show catalog (an overview of postwar American art that contended with labor and atomization), as well as Lauren Berlant’s introduction to Cruel Optimism (looking at how self-thwarting desire can be produced, culturally enforced and internalized), and De Certeau’s chapter titled ‘A Common Place: Ordinary Language’ from The Practice of Everyday Life (the concept of ‘the wig’ as a practice of masking creative work inside the non-creative work environment is outlined here), the class will consider questions such as: how do critical ideas from an avant garde position resist, circumvent, or re-purpose the making of commercial work? Similarly, the class will consider traditional applied arts (decorative painting, lacemaking, embroidery, hairdressing, set-design, etc.) and how these trained skills can be deployed in ways that ask critical questions about labor and skill in our contemporary art context. For this approach, we will read Graham Bader’s essay on the military technology that was incorporated into Lichtenstein’s drawing education (‘Lichtenstein Before Pop’ from Hall of Mirrors) and Raoul Vaneighem’s writing on the differences in the work of Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali in how they related the question of the sub-conscious in their work to advertising (A Cavalier History of Surrealism). The class will be a place to reflect on the creative benefits of ‘walling off’ versus ‘letting in’ of occupational influences and skills. Can role playing as a non-fine-art laborer be a productive subject-position for making paintings? What perceptions and experiences could that allow into the studio-work and creative methodology that would otherwise not be possible? 3 Course cr M 1:30pm-4:30pm