From Modern To PostModern Art

AY2015/2016 Semester 1

The course examines a period of forty years of European and American art from post World War II late-Modernism until 1980s Postmodernism. Broadly chronological in approach, the course begins with an in-depth study of the different approaches to abstract art in the post-war period, before considering: new approaches to the human figure; the reinvention of sculpture seen in combines, assemblage and Arte Povera; Neo-Dada and Pop Art; Minimalism; Conceptual Art; Performance Art, Fluxus and Feminist Art; Land Art and Installation, Postmodernism. New approaches to artmaking, and critical frameworks used to discuss and interpret modern art will also be covered, and diverse examples of twentieth-century visual material will be considered in relation to the socio-political and historical contexts in which they were produced, including, but not limited to: the politics of the Cold War period; the rise of consumerism in the 1950s and 60s; the civil rights movement; the institutional critiques of the 1960s, the growth and influence of feminism in the 1970s and the crisis of representation and meta-narratives in the1980s.