From Modern To PostModern Art

The course examines a period of forty years of European and American art history that laid the foundations for today's art. It encompasses post-World War II High- Modernism, 1960s and 1970s Anti-Modernism, and 1980s Postmodernism. Broadly chronological in approach, the course begins with an in-depth study of the different forms of Abstract Art in the post-war period, before embarking into a survey across some of the most important artistic movements in the 20th century. It includes Art Brut and Outsider Art, Nouveau Realisme, Pop Art and Photorealism , Op and Kinetic Art, Fluxus and Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Arte Povera, Environmental and Land Art, Neo-Historicism and Graffiti Art. New approaches to art making, and critical frameworks used to discuss and interpret modern art will also be considered in relation to the 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; the civil rights movement and institutional critiques of the 1960s; the, the growth and influence of feminism in the1970s and the crisis of representation and meta-narratives in the1980s. Coursework assignments will include researching and presenting a group seminar on a specific topic, and final research paper in the form of an extended essay analyzing a case study relevant to the course.