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Torch of the Mystics Spring 2017

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Torch of the Mystics Spring 2017 AART320R-01 520R-01 TORCH OF THE MYSTICS SPRING 2017 Instructor: Scott Benzel Graduate Assistant: Owen Hutchinson Mondays 9:30-12:20 am A216 Office Hours by appointment Mondays and Thursdays please email to make an appointment: [email protected] or [email protected] Required texts: ALL TITLES REFER TO TEXTS IN THE PDF FOLDER Course Description: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”- Sol Lewitt Torch of the Mystics is a seminar class addressing the strong historical interaction between art and 'outsider', utopian, non-Euclidian, vitalist, and 'mystical' philosophies. Approximately one third of class time will be devoted to lectures and two-thirds of class time will be devoted to discussions of readings and presentations. Presentations are periods for 2 class members to share writing, lectures, presentations or work related to thematic threads of the class. A final project is due on the last day of class. The final project may be an artwork or a written essay. Regular attendance, class participation, a presentation, and a final project must be completed for a passing grade. Grading will be as follows: 1. Attendance and participation in discussions = 50% 2. Presentation = 25% 3. Final Project= 25% Attendance and Behavior: Please arrive on time. 2 or more unexcused absences for lectures or critiques will result in a lowered grade, more than 3 will result in a failing grade. Please do not sleep, talk, text, use the internet, laptop, or phone for non-class-related purposes during class or you will be asked to leave and counted absent. Introductory Readings: Theodor Adorno, Theses Against Occultism, Arthur Evans, Introduction from Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, Deleuze and Guattari, Memories of a Sorcerer I from A Thousand Plateaus 1. Jan 23 Overview and Introduction 2. Jan 30 Super illius specula: Khalid ibn Yazid, Hildegaard von Bingen's Riesencodex, Nicolas Flamel, Hans Memling, Hieronymous Bosch, John Dee, Passing of the Torch, Francis Bacon and the New Atlantis, The Voynich Manuscript, Albrecht Durer, Melancholia I, Michael Meier, Robert Fludd, Caterina Sforza, Hypnerotomachia Pooliphili, Omar Khayyám, Ibn Arabi, Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum AART-320R-01 520R-01 TORCH OF THE MYSTICS SPRING 2017 Readings: Meredith K. Ray, Caterina Sforza's Experiments with Alchemy, Dame Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (excerpt), Reza Negarastani, The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo Listening: Hildegaard von Bingen 3. Feb. 6 The Sophic Hydrolith, Thomas and Rebecca Vaughan, Il Guercino, Et in Arcadia Ego … Nicholas Poussin, The Shepherds of Arcadia, Paracelsus, Inquisition: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais, Illumination and Naturphilosopie: Blake, Goethe, Mozart Readings: Kenneth Rexroth, The Spiritual Alchemy of Thomas Vaughan, Arthur Evans, Joan of Arc: Transvestite and Heretic in Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture , Silvia Federici, excerpts from Caliban and the Witch, Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation Screening (excerpts): Carl Theodor Dryer, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Benjamin Christensen, Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages 4. Feb. 13 A Season in Hell, Eliphas Levi, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme‘, Lautremont, Hélène Smith, Gustav Moreau, Jean Delville, Erik Satie, H.D., W.B. Yeats, Pamela Coleman Smith, Aubrey Beardsley, A.O. Spare, Fulcanelli, Margaret Macdonald Macintosh, New Jerusalem: Ann Lee, Shaker Gift Drawings, Harriet Powers Reading: Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (read Introduction and skim), Gavin Semple, Zos-Kia Screening (excerpts): Dan Graham, Rock My Religion 5. Feb. 20 Zelators: Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Rudolf Steiner, Malevich, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Nicholas Roerich, Johannes Itten, New Atlantis: Arthur Dove, Agnes Pelton, The Transcendental Painting Group, The Fourth Dimension: Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp, Georgia O'Keefe, Poincare', and Jouffret Reading: Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (skim), Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (excerpt), Sixten Ringbom, Art in the Epoch of the Great Spiritual, Rebecca Quaytman on Hilma af Klint Screening (excerpts): Marcel Duchamp, Rotoreliefs, Anemic Cinema 6. Feb. 27 Coincidentia oppositorum, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Marcel Duchamp / Rrose Selavy, Claude Cahun, Max Ernst, Forrest Bess; Documents/Minotaure/ Acephale, Andre Breton, George Bataille, Kurt Seligmann, Man Ray Reading: Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa (excerpt), Lanier Graham, Duchamp and Androgyny (skim), Claude Cahun, Heroines (skim), Daniel Zamani, Embodying the AART-320R-01 520R-01 TORCH OF THE MYSTICS SPRING 2017 Androgyne, Psychoanalysis and Alchemical Desire in Max Ernst’s Men Shall Know Nothing of This, 7. Mar. 6 Femmes Sorcieres: Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, Unica Zurn, Ithell Colquhoun, Maya Deren, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, Dorothea Tanning, The Surrealist Arcana, Frieda Harris Screening (excerpts): Maya Deren, The Witches Cradle, The Divine Horsemen, Jean Rouch, Les Maîtres Fous Reading: Judith Noble, The Magic of Time and Space: Occultism in the Films of Maya Deren, Robert Graves, The White Goddess (excerpts), Joao Ribas, Unica Zurn, Oracles and Spectacles 8. Mar. 13 Black Mountain Zen: John Cage, The I-Ching, D.T. Suzuki, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Fluxus, Yoko Ono, James Lee Byars, American Magi: Harry Smith, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Navajo Sand Painting, Sun Ra Screening (excerpts): Harry Smith, Heaven and Earth Magic, Yoko Ono, Selected Works, Sun Ra, Space is the Place Reading: Lamonte Young et al., An Anthology of Chance Operations (skim), Marques Redd, Astro-Black Mythology, The Poetry of Sun Ra 9. Mar. 20 Aleph Semina, Cameron, Wallace Berman, Jess, Kenneth Anger, Jay DeFeo, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs Cosmoconception: Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys Screening (excerpts): Curtis Harrington, Wormwood Star, Kenneth Anger, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Wallace Berman, Aleph, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, et al., The Ghost at no.9 Reading: Chelsea Behle, Transmission of the Aleph (excerpt); Max Heindel, The Rosicrucian Cosmoconception (skim); Thomas Mcevilley, Conquistador of the Void (excerpt) 10.Apr. 3 Psychedelic Shamanism: Brian Jones, the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka, Kenneth Anger, Nam June Paik, Jud Yakult, Yayoi Kusama, Donald Cammell, Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Robert Fraser, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sigmar Polke, Storm de Hirsch, Jordan Belson, Funkadelic Hon: Niki de St. Phalle, Carolee Schneeman, Fay Pomerance Reading: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psychomagic (excerpt), Jorg Heiser, Sigmar Polke, Cosmic Rays Screening (excerpts): Kenneth Anger, Lucifer Rising, Nam June Paik and Jud Yakult, Beatles Electronique, Jud Yakult, Kusama's Self-Obliteration, Donald Cammell, Performance, Storm de Hirsch, Peyote Queen, Jordan Belson, Samadhi, Jodorowsky, Holy Mountain, Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy, Fuses, Niki de St. Phalle, Tarot Garden AART-320R-01 520R-01 TORCH OF THE MYSTICS SPRING 2017 and Daddy (excerpts) 11. Apr. 10 Mathesis and Mathematikoi, Sol Lewitt, Hanne Darboven, and the Pythagorean Tradition, Dematerialisation: Robert Barry, Adrian Piper, John Mckracken, Eliane Radique, Eric Orr, Bas Jan Ader Screening (excerpts): Sol Lewitt, Hanne Darboven, Bas Jan Ader, Broken Fall (Geometric) Listening: Eliane Radigue, Trilogie de la Mort Reading: Sol Lewitt, Sentences on Conceptual Art, Robert Barry Interviewed by Arthur R. Rose, Frederic Paul, Robert Barry: One Billion Colored Dots, Gilles Deleuze, Mathesis, Lucy Lippard, The Dematerialization of Art 12. Apr. 17 Ana Mendieta, Betye Saar, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Genesis P'orridge, COUM, Senga Nengudi, David Hammons, and Maren Hassinger, Judy Chicago, Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, David Askevold, Derek Jarman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Peggy Awesh, Philip K. Dick Screening (excerpts): Cosey Fanni Tutti, Selected Works, Barbara McCullough, Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeways Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space, Derek Jarman, In the Shadow of the Sun, Jubilee, Peggy Awesh, From Romance to Ritual Reading: Siona Wilson, The Emergent Queer Aesthetic of COUM Transmissions, WITCH, WITCH Documents from Sisterhood is Powerful, Philip K. Dick, Tractates Cryptica Scriptura 13. May 4 Chaos to Collapse: I.O.T., Thee Temple of Psychic Youth, Linder, Collapse, Hyperstition, Eternal Present: Anicka Yi, Linda Stupart, Maria Lobota, Joachim Koester, Lili Renar-Dwyer, Juliana Huxtable, Georgia Horgan, Sophie Jung, Gaspar Noe, Die Antwoord, The Center for Tactical Magic Screening (excerpts): Gaspar Noe, Enter the Void (excerpt), Juliana Huxtable, Selected Works AART-320R-01 520R-01 TORCH OF THE MYSTICS SPRING 2017 .
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