SYLLABUS – ARTH 260

ARTH 260 Dada and Surrealism: Image, Mind, and Authority

Course Description

Supplemented by film screenings and museum visits, and emphasizing artworks in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, this course will survey Dada and Surrealist art and literature, focusing on its sources in idealism, materialism and psychoanalysis. Major emphasis will be placed on issues of paternal authority and transgressive sexuality; the role of women both as the subject matter of Dada and Surrealism and as artists in their own right; problems of language and representation, including relationships of text and image; and especially how Dada and Surrealism radicalized our understanding of painting, sculpture, collage, photography and film.

The text for this course is a course-pack containing PDF-formatted (or photocopied) materials.

Course Requirements

20% of your final grade will be based on a midterm exam, and 30% of your final grade will be based on a (non-cumulative) final exam. Exams will only test images that we have seen in class, which are also reproduced on the class website: [URL]. (Please check the website regularly, as it will be updated every week or so. Identification questions will require that you be able to give the last name of the artist, the full title of the artwork and its date (+ / - 3 years); in addition, short-answer and essay-format questions will test your familiarity with important ideas, themes or influences, as well as significant questions of style and subject matter, artistic and historical context and influence.

30% of your final grade will be based on three response papers, which will count equally, and will be due in class on [__] (first paper); [__] (second paper); [__] (third paper). (Please see the attached instructions for the response papers.)

20% of your final grade will be based on class participation, including keeping up with the reading assignments, and being able to discuss them effectively in class. (Please note that attendance is mandatory: 2 unexcused absences will result in a lowered final grade, and 3 unexcused absences will result in a final grade for the entire class of “F”. 2 unexcused latenesses count as 1 unexcused absence.)

Class Meetings, Reading Assignments, Field Trips, Important Dates

Week 01: Where’s Dada? From Cubism and Futurism to Dada. Readings: Marcel Duchamp: “I Propose to Strain the Laws of Physics” (1968); “Painting at the service of the mind” (1946), in Chipp, pp. 392-395; “The Richard Mutt Case” (1917), in Stiles / Selz, p. 817; “The Creative Act” (1957), ibid., pp. 818-19; “Apropos of ‘Ready-mades’” (1961), ibid, pp. 819-20. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), in Harrison / Wood, pp. 512-20.

Week 02: An Aesthetics of Indifference: The Ready-mades. Readings: Selections from: Rosalind Krauss, “Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi”. William Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Aesthetic Object, Icon, or Anti-Art?”. Paul Franklin, "Object Choice: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and the Art of Queer Art History".

Week 03: Seduced by the Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Man, Mechanomorph and Machine. Readings: David Hopkins, "Questioning Dada's Potency: Picabia's 'La Sainte Vierge' and the Dialogue with Duchamp. Selections from: Leah Dickerman, ed., Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris.

Week 04: Risky Business: Strategies of Chance. FIRST RESPONSE PAPER DUE. Readings: Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto” (1918), in Harrison / Wood, pp. 248-253; “Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter Love” (1920). Hugo Ball, “Dada Fragments” (1916-17), in Harrison / Wood, pp. 246-248. Richard Huelsenbeck: “First German Dada Manifesto” (1918-20), ibid., pp. 253-255; “En Avant Dada” (1920), ibid., pp. 257-260; with Raoul Hausmann, “What is Dadaism and what does it want in Germany?” (1918-19), ibid., pp. 256-257. Kurt Schwitters, “Merz” (1921), in Chipp, pp. 382-384.

Week 05: Dada Film. Francis Picabia, “Scenario: Entr’acte” (1924).

Week 06: Museum Visit.

Week 07: Midterm Exam + Individual Meetings [re: Response Papers].

Week 08: In Defiance of Painting: New Techniques in Surrealist Art. Readings: Giorgio de Chirico: “Meditations of a painter” (1912), in Chipp, pp. 397-401; “Mystery and Creation” (1913), ibid., pp. 401-402. Max Ernst, “Beyond Painting” (1936), ibid., pp. 427-431. Briony Fer, “Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis”. André Breton: “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924), in Harrison / Wood, pp. 432-439; “Second Manifesto of Surrealism” (1929), ibid., pp. 446-450; “What is Surrealism” (1934), in Chipp, pp. 410-417.

Week 09: The “Second Wave”: Painting and Film. René Magritte, “Words and Images” (1929). Salvador Dalí, “The Rotten Ass” (1930), in Harrison / Wood, pp. 478-481; with Luis Buñuel, “Scenario: An Andalusian Dog” (1929). Louis Aragon, “The Challenge to Painting” (1930).

Week 10: “Littérature”: Surrealist Literature & Philosophy. SECOND RESPONSE PAPER DUE. Readings: Selections from: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. André Breton, Nadja (1928).

Week 11: The Object of Surrealism: Sculptures, Objects, Environment. Readings: Rosalind Krauss, “A game plan: the terms of Surrealism”. Salvador Dalí, “The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment” (1932), in Chipp, pp. 417-427. André Breton, “Crisis of the Object” (1936).

Week 12: Constructing Gender: Dada and Surrealist Photography. Readings: Joan Rivière, “Womanliness as Masquerade” (1929).

Week 13: Surrealism, International – and the Beginnings of the New York School. THIRD RESPONSE PAPER DUE. Readings: Selections from: Martica Sawin, Surrealism in Exile – and the Beginning of the New York School. Dickran Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen: Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde, 1920- 1950.

Week 14: Museum Visit.

Week 15: Final Exam