| Course Description |
The aim of this course is to explore the history and discourses of modern art, modernism, and the
avant-garde via the social and theoretical questions understood to have driven the development
of artistic modernism around the globe from roughly 1789 to 1968. The course will be organized
according to four major lenses of inquiry: “Aesthetic Categories within Social Art Histories,”
“Formalism and Autonomy,” “Perception and Artistic Production,” and “the Role of the Mind,
or, the Beholder’s Share.” Each of these lenses, or themes, will be driven by a set of readings,
images, and key terms that together constitute “conversations,” or orientations toward the history
of modern art. An aim of this course is to enable students to identify and ultimately enter into
focused, art-historical conversations and to understand their positioning within the broader
discourse. However, because there is a fair amount of conceptual overlap among the course’s
themes, the foremost goal is to enable critical analysis of modern, visual artworks from multiple
perspectives, or within multiple frameworks. In considering the many, dynamic engagements of
theory, history, and visual artworks, this course will provide not only a strong knowledge of
modern art, modernism, and the avant-garde, it will also help students develop a sense of the
methods used to study the histories and theories of modern art.
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