HART680 Graduate Contemporary Art 3cr

In this course we analyze selected contemporary artworks by applying concepts from writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some of the assigned essays come from the fields of philosophy, psychology, literary criticism, and cultural studies but now have a far broader significance across the arts and humanities. We will consider to what degree this popularity is justified. Throughout the semester, students determine where these essays are most and least useful for thinking about their experience of contemporary art. Close reading and close viewing enable students to come to understand the complexity of trying to translate one’s unstructured interactions with art into words-a different medium that often seems to promise greater communicability than the original imagery, object, act, performance, and so on.

Fall