AHT 280 Contemporary Art: From the New York School to the Present
This course offers an introduction to the history of contemporary art from 1945 to the present, paying particular attention to aesthetic developments in increasingly global and interconnected cultures. Our topics include: reactions to modernism and its discourses, the dematerialization of art and the rise of conceptualism, activist art and institutional critique, site-specific and time-based art, postmodernist discourses and aesthetics, artistic research in the 21st century. The course will place a particular focus on the relation between the art object and the artist’s intention/idea. The role of institutions within the art world will be analyzed in relation to the development of process-based practices. Particular emphasis will be put on the theoretical writings of artists and critics. The course addresses all aspects and approaches of the Art Histories, Ecologies, Industries major.