Humanities Dept ARTH 1106 Modern Art 3 class hours, 3 credits Catalog Description: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Non-Objective Art, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Op, Minimalism, Color Field Kinetics, Conceptual and Artificial Realism. Prerequisite: CUNY certification in reading and writing Required Text: H.H. Arnason, History of Modern Art, 6th edition, Prentice Hall, 2009 Suggested Texts: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory, 1815-1900 and 1900-2000, 2001-2002 Grading: Exam #1 15% Exam #2 25% Museum Research Paper 25% Final 25% Participation (In-class assignments, journal) 10% Assessment: Exams consist of slide identifications (artist s name, title of work, date, significance of work), short answer questions, comparison essays, and definition of terms. The 5-page paper is based on a work of art in a New York collection and must discuss the artist and style associated with the work. Class participation is assessed on student performance in class and in online discussion blogs. Attendance and Lateness Policy: Students are expected to attend all classes. College policy allows absences equivalent to 10% of class time, that is, 3 absences if class meets twice a week, or 1.5 absences if class meets once a week. Absences beyond that limit may result in a grade of WU. Three latenesses are equivalent to one absence. Course Objectives: The underlying goal of art history courses is to increase the visual literacy of the student.
The study of major works of modern painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts, and the social, historical and artistic contexts of their development will help students attain an understanding of modern art. Students will recognize the stylistic features of modern art and be able to describe the primary materials and techniques used in different media. They will learn how to use visual evidence to support analysis and they will develop visual vocabulary and theoretical methods to analyze relationships between formal elements (i.e., style, composition) and the ideological or thematic contexts of the art object. Works of art will be compared and contrasted to reveal the ways they articulate meaning. The museum paper will emphasize logical organization, the development of ideas, research skills, formal analysis, and interpretation. Lecture Schedule WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION ART OF THE PRE-MODERN PERIOD Modern art as a departure from tradition: Ancient art of the Greco-Roman period, the Renaissance revival of Greco- Roman ideals, Rococo, Neoclassical and Romantic art in France. WEEK 2: REALISM Various meanings of the term as a stylistic designator, reasons for interest in Realism. Works by Courbet, Manet, Degas, and Mary Cassat. WEEK 3: IMPRESSIONISM Impressionism as a different kind of real-ism by Monet and Pissaro, attitudes towards nature and direct painting, color theories of the Impressionists, and the spread of the Impressionist movement. WEEK 4: POST-IMPRESSIONISM Criticism of Impressionism by later artists: Post- Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and their offshoots. The paintings and ideas of Vincent Van Gogh, Rousseau and the noble savage, Thoreau on the simple life, Gauguin s paintings and the Symbolists, and Cezanne as the father of modern art. WEEK 5: ORIGINS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND ART NOUVEAU Architecture around 1900 and artists and architects of the Art Nouveau movement, including Alphonse Mucha, Gustav
Klimt, Victor Horta, Antoni Gaudi, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. WEEK 6: MATISSE AND FAUVISM The reaction to Fauve painting in the Salon d Automne exhibition. EXAM #1 WEEK 7: GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM AND CUBISM Distortion versus abstraction in Expressionism and Cubism, German Expressionism as the continuation of the Romantic movement, and Expressionism outside Germany. WEEK 8: EARLY 20TH CENTURY SCULPTURE AND CUBISM Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger. WEEK 9: FUTURISM, SUPREMATISIM, CONSTRUCTIVISM, DE STIJL Futurism and Fascism in Italy, Suprematism and Constructivism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. WEEK 10: DADA TO SURREALISM Dada and the revolt against reason, the influence of Freud s writings on the Surrealists, and the inner world as an alternate landscape in Surrealist painting. WEEK 11: 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE Architecture of Art Moderne, the Bauhaus school and the International Style, to Deconstructivism. EXAM #2 WEEK 12: AMERICAN MODERNISM AND ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM Art in the United States prior to the Armory Show, and prior to World War II, the New York School and the first generation of De Kooning, Kline, Pollock, Gottlieb, Guston, and Motherwell. WEEK 13: ART OF THE 1950s AND 1960s Pop, Op, Minimalism, and other movements. WEEK 14: PHOTOREALISM Photorealism and the return to the object, kitsch and the redefinition of taste. WEEK 15: REVIEW FOR FINAL EXAM
Select Bibliography Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, Princeton Univ. Press, 1986. Erika Doss, Twentieth-century American Art, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002. Jonathan Fineberg, Art Since 1940, Prentice Hall, 2003. Hal Foster, et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimode rnism, Postmodernism, New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, New York: Harper & Row, 1982. Francis Frascina, Charles Harrison, and Gill Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Robert L. Hebert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Mary Tompkins Lewis, Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Univ. of California Press, 2007. Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious, MIT Press, 1994. Paul Wood, ed., The Challenge of the Avant-Garde, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. New York City College of Technology Policy on Academic Integrity: Students and all others who work with information, ideas, texts, images, music, inventions, and other intellectual property owe their audience and sources accuracy and honesty in using, crediting, and citing sources. As a
community of intellectual and professional workers, the College recognizes its responsibility for providing instruction in information literacy and academic integrity, offering models of good practice, and responding vigilantly and appropriately to infractions of academic integrity. Accordingly, academic dishonesty is prohibited in The City University of New York and at New York City College of Technology and is punishable by penalties, including failing grades, suspension, and expulsion. The complete text of the College policy on Academic Integrity may be found in the catalog. Prepared by Sandra Cheng, Assistant Professor, Humanities Department, October 2009