Introduction to Modern Art

Undergraduate

What was the social life of modernism? What might it still be today? This course is an introduction to European and North American modern art through its social networks and structures: gathering spaces, salons, schools, and stomping grounds, along with political solidarities and coalitions. We meet key figures from the history of modernism and the avant-garde (artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Augusta Savage, and Isamu Noguchi) in the context of their pedagogical, political, and intimate associations. Along the way, lectures introduce a fresh cast of characters whose vision, labor, or material support made possible more familiar narratives of art history. We focus on artworks that ask us to think anew about modern art’s collective purpose as well as its communal pleasures. HU 0 Course cr HTBA