What is the meaning of contemporary? What is the meaning of critique? What are models for sustainable and ethical artistic practice? What is the role of the artist in contemporary culture? These are but a few of the frameworks we will use to explore an array of new tools for thinking, feeling, perceiving, and analyzing the textures of our inter-subjective environment. Together, we will address the challenges implicit in the willful consideration of what exists beyond what we think we know; beyond what we have been told is true about our chosen field as artists. We take up this exploration through a selection of readings, films, lectures and class discussions. Some of the discourses we engage include the relationship between politics and aesthetics, critical race theory, myriad feminist theories, theories of institutional critique, and methods of radical practice in contemporary art.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.  

Registration process:

First-year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.

Incoming transfer students and sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates should register into section 27.  

Major Requirement | BFA

While definitions of “performance art” remain vague and contested, this introductory class examines the practice as it emerges in the early 20th century as a tool to explore shifting understandings and experiences of embodiment. We will return to the open questions of how artists engaged the locus of 'the body' to evaluate and reevaluate the rapid changes of the 20th and 21st centuries, in all of their ethical unclarity. We will consider recurrent themes of ephemerality, time, technology, documentation, and the shifting roles of artists, cultural institutions, and audiences. Students will develop the skills to describe languages of the body, both in stillness and in movement, interrogate theoretical texts and frameworks of performativity, and develop a sense of historical narrative to contextualize the thematic questions broached by “performance art.” We will keep a journal to ground interpretations of key works and readings in close analysis, attend a performance artwork and write a critical response, and craft a final project with the option for a research paper or performance work.

Elective