AHIS 250: Modernity and Difference: Critical Approaches to ...



AHIS 255g Culture Wars: Art and Social Conflict in the USA, 1900 - present

Prof. Richard Meyer Dept. of Art History

Teaching Assistants: General Education, Category VI

Sarah Hollenberg, Karen Huang, and Megan Mastroianni

Course Description:

This course examines social conflicts and political controversies in American culture through the lens of visual art and photography. We will consider how visual images both reflect and participate in the social and political life of the nation and how the terms of citizenship have been represented—and, at times, contested—by artists throughout the 20th century. Students in this course will consider the relation between American art and the body politic by focusing on issues of nationalism, war, government patronage, poverty, activism, censorship, consumerism, class identity, and race. In examining American art and social life, students will combine close attention to selected images with the broader study of historical context and conflict.

Requirements:

Students will be required to attend all course lectures and to participate actively in class discussion. There will be a mid-term examination and cumulative final exam, both of which will involve slide identifications and longer essay questions. Students will also be required to write a short paper (3-4 pp.) which links a close visual analysis of a work of art on display in a local museum to questions of political history and a 8-10 page paper which analyzes one of the core themes of the course in relation to the work of two artists from different halves of the 20th century.

attendance, participation, and contribution to discussion sections……………………………...25%

first paper...............................................................………….……………………..……….........10%

midterm.............................................................................................................…….…..…….....20%

final paper…………………………………………………………………..……………………20%

final exam..........................................................................……………………..……….….........25%

Required Texts

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (New York: Penguin, 1990).

Patricia Hills, Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century (Upper Saddle River,

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001). [Hills]

Richard Meyer. Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century

American Art (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). [Meyer]

Recommended Texts:

Erika Doss, Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). [Doss]

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York [1890]

(New York: Penguin, 1997, Introduction by Luc Sante). [Riis]

Course lectures and discussions may not be recorded, nor information related to the course (e.g. lecture notes, class handouts) posted on the Internet without the express permission of the instructor. This course addresses controversial episodes in American art and cultural history. Students will be expected to engage all course readings, images, and discussions in a spirit of serious intellectual inquiry and civility.

Class Schedule

Tuesday, January 11: Culture Wars and the Politics of Representation

Reading: John Berger, Ways of Seeing(New York: Penguin, 1990).

Thursday, January 13: “How the Other Half Lives”:

Jacob Riis and the Slums of New York

Reading:

• “Introduction,” “Genesis of the Tenement,” “The Awakening,” “The Mixed Crowd,” ”The Italian in New York,” “Chinatown,” “The Sweaters of Jewtown” in Riis []

• Edward T. O’Donnell, “Pictures vs. Words: Public History, Tolerance, and the Challenge of Jacob Riis,” The Public Historian, vol 26, no 3 (Summer 2004): 7-26.

Tue, January 18:

Part I: Lewis Hine and the Problem of Child Labor

Part II: George Bellows and the Arena of Masculinity

Reading:

• Lewis Hine, “Social Photography,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction (1909) in Hills: 30-32.

• Robert Haywood, George Bellows's "Stag at Sharkey's": Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity, American Art, Vol. 2, No. 2, (Spring, 1988), pp. 3-15

Thu, January 20: Art for The Masses

Reading:

• John Sayer, “Art and Politics, Dissent and Repression: The Masses Magazine versus the Government, 1917-1918,” The American Journal of Legal History

Vol. 32, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 42-78 [read 42-47, 64-78].

• Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt, "New Masses" and John Reed Club Artists, 1926-1936,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 12 (Spring, 1989), pp. 56-75

Tue, January 25: Lynching and Visual Representation

Reading:

• Helen Langa, “Two Antilynching Art Exhibitions: Politicized Viewpoints, Racial Perspectives, Gendered Constraints.” American Art 13 (1) (Spring 1999): 10-39.

***First Paper Assignment Distributed 1/25/11***

Thu, January 27: The Armory Show and World War I

Reading:

• “Armory Show, Independents Show of 1917, and New York Dada,” Hills, 32-42.

Tue, February 1: The Harlem Renaissance and the Politics of Blackness

Reading:

• Edward Alden Jewell, “A Negro Artist Plumbs the Negro Soul,” (1928) and Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” (1926) in Hills, 67-69, 76-79

Thu, February 3: America in Crisis—The WPA and the Great Depression

Reading:

• “Cultural and Historical Context for the Depression Years,” Stuart Davis, “Why an Artists’ Congress,” in Hills, 88-91, 103-105.

Tue Feb 8: Radical Politics and Mexican Muralism in the U.S.

Reading:

• “Mexican Artists in the United States,” and Diego Rivera, “The Radio City Mural,” Hills, 110-115.

***First Paper Due in Class 2/8/11***

Thu, Feb 10: Midterm Review (details tba)

Tue, Feb 15: Midterm

Thu, Feb 17: Public Censorship and the Limits of Pleasure

Reading:

• Chapter 2, “A Different American Scene,” in Outlaw Representation, Meyer: 32-93.

Recommended: Chapter 1, “The Red Envelope,” Meyer: 2-31.

Tue, Feb 22: Documenting Poverty: FSA Photography in the 1930s

Reading:

• Berenice Abbott, “Civic Documentary History” (1940) in Hills 110-111

• Dorothea Lange, “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget,” Popular Photography 46 (February 1960).

Thu, Feb 24: Weegee and the Tabloid City

• Weegee, Naked City (1940), Selections.

Tue, March 1: Artists and World War II

Reading:

• Roy Stryker, “Memorandum” (1942) reprinted in Hills, 125-128.

• Cultural and Historical Context for World War II in Hills, 140-144.

Thu, March 3: Picturing Imprisonment—Inside the Japanese Internment Camps

Reading:

• ShiPu Wang , “Japan against Japan: U.S. Propaganda and Yasuo Kuniyoshi's Identity

Crisis,” American Art, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 28-51

Tue, March 8

Action Painting and the Rhetoric of Freedom

• Jackson Pollock, “My Painting,” Hills: 171-172.

• Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb (with Barnett Newman), Letter to New York Times,

June 1943.

Thu, March 10:

The Cold War and the Arts

Reading:

“The Cold War and the Arts” in Hills: 187-195.

George Dondero, “Modern Art Shackled to Communism” Hills: 190-192

Alfred Barr, “Truth, Freedom, Perfection,” Hills: 193-195.

FBI File on Ben Shahn, 10/3/51, Hills: 195-197.

SPRING BREAK

Tue, March 22

On the Road with Robert Frank

Reading:

• Jack Kerouac, “Introduction,” Robert Frank, The Americans

Thu, March 24:

Warhol’s America

Reading:

• Anne M. Wagner, “Warhol Paints History, or Race in America,” Representations, No. 55, (Summer, 1996), pp. 98-119

• Andy Warhol, “Love (Puberty),” The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, From A to B and Back Again: 17-27.

***Final Paper Assignment Distributed: 3/24/11***

Tue, March 29: The Watts Riots and the Geopolitics of Los Angeles

Reading:

• Ronald H. Silverman, “Watts, the Disadvantaged, and Art Education,” Art Education, Vol. 19, No. 3, (Mar., 1966), pp. 17-20

Tue, March 31: Second Wave: Feminist Art in the 1970s

Reading:

• “Women’s Movement” in Hills: 317-319,

Tue, April 5: Chicano Art and the U.S./Mexico Border

Reading:

• Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, David Avalos, “Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation,” in Hills; 414-415.

• Guillermo Gomez-Pena, “Documented/Undocumented,” in Hills: 389-391.

• Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino, “Murales del Movimiento: Chicano Murals and Discourses of Art and Americanization,” in Hills: 445-449.

Thu April 7: Postmodernism and the Politics of Identity

Reading:

• Martha Buskirk, “Interview with Fred Wilson,” (1994) reprinted in Hills: 427-430.

• James Luna, “The Artifact Piece” (1988) reprinted in Hills: 406-411.

• Guerrilla Girls, “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist,” and “Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum,” in Hills: 449.

• Rene Ricard, “The Radiant Child,” Artforum (December 1981) in Hills: 359-361.

• “The Art of Public Address,” Interview with Barbara Kruger by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve,

Art in America, November 1997.

Tue April 12: Robert Mapplethorpe and the Culture Wars

Reading:

• “Framing Sadomasochism,” “Censored,” “Projections,” “The Click of the Shutter, “ and

“Shockers,” in Meyer: 183-223, 324-336.

Recommended: Carol S. Vance, “Porn in the USA: The Meese Commission on the Road,

The Nation, August 2-9, 1986: 1, 76-82.

Thu April 14: Censorship and The Public Sphere: The Case of “Titled Arc”

Reading:

• Harriet Senie, “Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc": Art and Non-Art Issues,” Art Journal, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 298-302

• Richard Serra, “Art and Censorship,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 3, (Spring, 1991): 574-581.

• Alan Wallach, “Editorial: Which Way The Tilted Arc?” Hills: 442-445.

Tue, April 19: Contested Memories: Maya Lin and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial

Reading:

• Karal Ann Marling and Robert Silberman, “The Statue near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering,” American Art, Vol. 1, No. 1, (Spring, 1987), pp. 5-29.

• Elizabeth Hess, “An Interview with Maya Lin (1983), Hills: 439-442.

* * Final Papers Due: 4/19/11 * *

Thu, April 21: Kara Walker and the Historical Grotesque

Reading:

• James Hanaham “The Shadow Knows: An Hysterical Tragedy of One Young Negress and Her Art (1996) reprinted in Hills: 395-398.

Tue, April 26: AIDS Activist Art

Reading:

• “Vanishing Points,” in Meyer: 224-275, 336-343.

• Gran Fury, ACT UP Poster, in Hills: 451-452.

Thu April 28: Globalism and Contemporary Art

Reading:

• Margo Machida, “Out of Asia: Negotiating Asian Identities in America”

in Hills: 392-395.

Final Examination: TBA

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