VA 420_520 CONCEPTS & DEBATES IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Course Instructor: Lanfranco Aceti FASS 2082 phone: 9292 e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: 1 to 2pm T, by appointment Class times and location: Tuesday, 14.40-17.30 ; Wednesday, 14.40-17.30

Course Description and Objectives There is perhaps nothing else that characterizes contemporary art as the debates and controversies that surround its practice and theory. The value of art, its meaning, purpose or even its very existence are hotly debated. This course will review thematically these debates, from the XXth century to the XXIst century. It will explore issues related to Art and Violence, Art and Politics, Art and Ecology, Art and Money, Art and Gender, Art and Public Space, etc. The course will also review and compare the definitions of modern art and contemporary art. The classes are characterized by screenings, debates and formal lectures to create a critical environment conducive to students' engagement and active participation. Some trips in the city may be required in order to visit contemporary exhibitions in local museums and galleries.

Learning Outcomes The students will: Describe the key concepts of contemporary art Define the styles and themes of contemporary art Recognize the significant works and of contemporary art Develop a critical perspective to today's art world Discuss the relevance of contemporary art to their specific discipline

Lecture 1: Introduction to Contemporary Art

Readings: Julian Stallabras, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2006). Arthur C. Danto, "Introduction: Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary" in After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Brian O’ Doherty and Thomas McEvilley, “Notes on the Gallery Spaces,” in Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (University of California Press, 2000), 13-34.

Screenings: Art in the Twenty-First Century, a production of Art 21, Inc. - Season 1, 2001. Segments "Place" and "Identity." Lecture 2: Violence and Art

Readings: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Futurist Manifesto," 1909. Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012). Lanfranco Aceti, "Without Visible Scars: Digital Art and the Memory of War," Leonardo 42, no. 1 (2009): 16-26.

Screenings: Körper, dir. Sasha Waltz, 2011. Kara Walker in segment "Stories," Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 2, 2003. Funny Games, dir. Michael Haneke, 1997.

Lecture 3 & Lecture 4: Politics and Art

Readings: Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel, "Chapter 3: Place" and "Chapter 4: Identity," in Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After 1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Screening: Jasper Johns: Ideas in Paint (American Masters), dir. Rick Tejada-Flores, 1989. Andy Warhol, dir. Kim Evans and Lana Jokel, 1987. Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 3, 2005. Segments "Power" and "Memory."

Lecture 5 & Lecture 6: Money and Art

Readings: Jonathan Harris, ed., Art, Money, Parties: New Institutions in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004). William D. Grampp, Pricing the Priceless: Art, , and Economics (New York: Basic Books, 1989). Brian Wallis, ed., Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Robert Lacy, Sotheby's: Bidding for Class (Boston, New York: Little, Brown, 1998).

Screening: Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 1, 2001. Segment "Consumption." Waste Land, dir. Lucy Walker, João Jardim, and Karen Harley, 2011. Art Safari, dir. Ben Lewis, 2005. Lecture 7: Protest and Art

Readings: Irit Rogoff, "We - Collectivities, Mutualities, Participations." Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les Presses Du Reel, 1998). Lieven De Cauter, Ruben De Roo, Karel Vanhaesebrouck, eds., Art and in the Age of Globalization (Rotterdam: NAi, 2011).

Screening: Art in the Twenty-First Century, a production of Art 21, Inc. - Season 4, 2007. "Protest." Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, dir. Alison Klayman, 2011.

Lecture 8: Ecology and Art

Readings: Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds., "Chapter 6," in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996). T. J. Demos, ed., "Eco-Aesthetics: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology," special issue, Third Text 27, no. 1 (2013).

Screening: Art in the Twenty-First Century, a production of Art 21, Inc. - Season 4, 2007. "Ecology." Smithson and Serra: Beyond Modernism? (1992), http://vimeo.com/28727127.

[Week 5: NO CLASS]

Lecture 9 & Lecture 10: Gender and Art

Readings: Diane Raymond,“Popular Culture and Queer Representation,” in Gender, Race, and Class in Media, eds. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, 98-110. Thousand Oaks: CA, 2011. Sandy Flitterman and Judith Barry, “Textual Strategies: The Politics of Art-making,” Screen 21, no. 2 (1980): 35-48. Judith Butler, “Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion,” in Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993): 121-140. Thomas Peele, ed., Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Tavia Nyong’o, “Lady Gaga’s Lesbian Phallus” (from bullybloggers). Screening: Paris is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990. La piel que habito, dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2011.

Lecture 11: Public Space and Art

Readings: Henri Lefebvre, Right to the City. Nicolas Lampert, “Struggle at Haymarket: An Embattled History of Static Monuments and Public Interventions,” in Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland eds. (AK Press, 2007), 254-271.

Screening: Insitu, dir. Antoine Viviani, 2011.

Lecture 12: Street and Art

Readings: Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds., "Situationist International," in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996). Gary Shove and Patrick Potter, : You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat (Carpet Bombing Culture, 2012).

Screening: Exit Through the Gift Shop, dir. Banksy, 2010. Bomb It, dir. Jon Reiss, 2007. Rash, dir. Nicholas Hansen, 2005. Urbanbugs: A Documentary, dir. Aykut Alp Ersoy, 2011.

Lecture 13: Color and Art

Readings: David Batchelor, Colour (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Mark Rothko, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). Barnett Newman, Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

Screening: Rothko's Rooms / Mark Rothko, dir. David Thompson, 2008. Lecture 14: Race and Art

Readings: Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, "Postcolonial Critiques," in Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005). Edward Lucie-Smith, Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994). Jennifer A. González, Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

Screening: Carrie Mae Weems in segment "Compassion," Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 5, 2009. Left of Black, episode 21, featuring Carrie Mae Weems and Thabiti Lewis. Glenn Ligon: Talking Art, interview by Patricia Bickers (Art Monthly), 2008.