Stony Brook University Department of Art Modern Art

Fall 2017 ARH 206.90 - Monday/Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm, Staller 3216 Instructor: Nicole Georgopulos

Email: nicole.georgopulos@stonybrook.edu Office Hours: Monday/Wednesday, 5:30pm-6:30pm, or by appointment, Staller 4291 Course Description An introduction to the history of modern art from the French Revolution through the end of the Second World War. What is (was?) modernism, and what are its limits? Particular attention will be paid to questions of the status of the image and its material conditions, and a critical examination of the so-called “death of painting” in the mid-twentieth century. While the focus of the course will be European and American art, a global perspective will be considered throughout the course. Over the course of the semester, we will challenge our definitions of “modern” and “modernity” as they relate to art, politics, and society at large. Fulfills DEC D requirements. Course Objectives Visual Literacy: Students will come to understand how ideas and concepts are communicated through visual forms. Students will develop the knowledge required to recognize key works of art and broader cultural styles, as well as the ability to perform iconographic and formal analyses. Art Historical Vocabulary: Students will become well versed in the discourse, terminology, and methodologies of art history so that they may engage in productive discussion and write papers in an informed manner within the field. Historical Understanding: Students will gain an understanding of how cultural production reflects broader historical situations and tendencies in social, political, and economic realms. Interdisciplinary approaches will bring the arts, politics, economics, and social history into dialogue. Discursive Skills: Through writing exercises, both long- and short-form, students will develop their abilities in researching and constructing a thorough scholarly analysis.

Course Requirements Attendance & Participation: Because this class will be heavily discussion-based, your regular attendance and participation in class will account for a considerable portion of your grade. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of class, typically by a brief response to a writing prompt. Tardiness will not be tolerated, and will negatively impact your grade - if you are more than 5 minutes late, you will not receive the writing prompt, and will not be given a chance to make it up at a later time. See below in “Classroom Policies” for excused absence policies. Readings: There is no required textbook for this course. There will be, however, short reading assignments and occasional videos posted on Blackboard as detailed on the syllabus. You are responsible for keeping up with the readings; part of being prepared for class will be coming to class having already done the reading assigned for that day. The in-class writing prompts may ask you to respond to the reading in some way, and readings will often be incorporated into class discussion. If you would like to consult a textbook for background reading, HH Arnason and Elizabeth Mansfield’s History of Modern Art (7th Edition) is recommended; many primary texts will be taken from two volumes of the Art in Theory series (1815-1900 and 1900-2000). All three books are on reserve at the library. Museum Visit & Response At some point in the semester, you are required to visit a museum of your choice and write a brief response to an object of your choosing. Proof of museum of visit (i.e. a ticket stub) will be required. Further instructions will be circulated at the beginning of the semester. Take-Home Midterm: While there will be no in-class midterm, there will be a take-home exam that will ask you to respond to a series of short-answer questions relating to the material and readings covered up to that point in semester. Final Paper: Over the course of the semester, you will develop and research a topic for a final paper in consultation with the instructor. This is meant not only to give you an opportunity to go more in-depth into a particular topic that is of interest to you, but also to help you to develop your writing skills. As such, you will be asked to turn in, at various points in the semester, a paper topic and research question, an annotated bibliography, and a first draft as well as in-class peer editing. The final paper will be due Monday, December 18. Further instructions will be given throughout the semester. Classroom Policies Attendance & Absences Your attendance is a crucial part of your learning experience. As such, more than three absences will result in a reduction of your grade. If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to get notes from a classmate or otherwise recuperate the information communicated in class; the instructor will not review class material nor share lecture notes in order to make up for a missed class. Electronic Devices: The use of cellphones and other electronic devices for phone calls, texting, social media, games, etc., is not permitted at any time during class. Laptops and tablets may be used only for note-taking purposes; if you choose to take electronic notes on these devices, you are required to sit in the first two rows of the classroom. The use of these devices is a privilege; if the instructor feels that your use of a device has become detrimental to your concentration in class, that privilege may be revoked. Make-Ups: The opportunity to make up any given assignment will only be given at the instructor’s discretion, and only in cases of emergency. Documentation may be required, also at the instructor’s discretion.

Grade Calculation Grade Breakdown Attendance & Participation 25% Museum Visit & Response 20% Take-Home Midterm Exam 20% Final Paper 35%, distributed as follows:

Research Question & Annotated Bibliography 5% First Draft & Peer Edit 10% Final Paper 20% Extra Credit: Opportunities for extra credit will be available to you throughout the semester in the form of written or verbal reports on current events and news related to the course material. In order to qualify for extra credit points, all course assignments must be completed and handed in. Grading Scale 93.0-100+% A 80.0-82.9% B- 67.0-69.9% D+ 90.0-92.9% A- 77.0-79.9% C+ 60.0-66.9% D 87.0-89.9% B+ 73.0-76.9% C 0-59.9% F 83.0-86.9% B 70.0-72.9% C- Disability Support Services (DSS) Statement: If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact your course work, please contact Disability Support Services, ECC (Educational Communications Center) Building, room 128, (631) 632-6748. They will determine with you what accommodations, if any, are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation is confidential. Students who require assistance during emergency evacuation are encouraged to discuss their needs with their professors and Disability Support Services. For procedures and information go to the following website: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ehs/fire/disabilities Academic Integrity Statement: Each student must pursue his or her academic goals honestly and be personally accountable for all submitted work. Representing another person's work as your own is always wrong. Faculty are required to report any suspected instances of academic dishonesty to the Academic Judiciary. Faculty in the Health Sciences Center (School of Health Technology & Management, Nursing, Social Welfare, Dental Medicine) and School of Medicine are required to follow their school-specific procedures. For more comprehensive information on academic integrity, including categories of academic dishonesty, please refer to the academic judiciary website at http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/academic_integrity/index.html Critical Incident Management Statement: Stony Brook University expects students to respect the rights, privileges, and property of other people. Faculty are required to report to the Office of Judicial Affairs any disruptive behavior that interrupts their ability to teach, compromises the safety of the learning environment, or inhibits students' ability to learn. Faculty in the HSC Schools and the School of Medicine are required to follow their school-specific procedures.

Course Schedule Week I Aug. 28 Course Introduction: What is Art History and how do you do it? Aug. 30 Defining Modern Art and Setting the Scene: Rococo and Neoclassicism Smarthistory, “Art historical analysis (painting), a basic introduction”; Elizabeth

Mansfield and HH Arnason, “The Origins of Modern Art.”

Week II Sept. 4 Labor Day – No Class Sept. 6 Romanticism Charles Baudelaire, excerpts from “The Salon of 1846.”

Optional: Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Cannibalism: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, 1819.”

Week III Sept. 11 Naturalism & Realism Gustave Courbet, “The Realist Manifesto” and “Letter to Young Artists.”

Optional: Werner Hofmann, “The Painter’s Studio: Its Place in Nineteenth-Century Art”; Linda Nochlin, excerpts from Realism.

Sept. 13 Manet, Degas, and The Modern City Charles Baudelaire, excerpts from “Painter of Modern Life”; Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting.”

Optional: TJ Clark, “Olympia’s Choice.” Week IV Sept. 18 The Birth of Photography Charles Baudelaire, “The Modern Public and Photography.”

Optional: Walter Benjamin, Little History of Photography; Rebecca Solnit, excerpt from River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West.

Sept. 20 Impressionism Edmond Duranty, excerpt from “The New Painting”; Théodore Duret,

excerpts from “The Impressionist Painters.” Optional: Tamar Garb, “Morisot and the Feminizing of Impressionism.”

Week V Sept. 25 Post-Impressionism I: Cézanne and Seurat Félix Fénéon, excerpt from “Neo-Impressionism”; Paul Signac, excerpt from From

Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism; Optional: Gustave Geffroy, “Paul Cézanne”; Linda Nochlin, “Seurat’s Grande Jatte: An Anti-Utopian Allegory.”

Sept. 27 Post-Impressionism II: Gauguin and Van Gogh GA Aurier, “The Isolated: Vincent van Gogh”; Smarthistory, “Vincent van

Gogh, The Bedroom, 1889”; Susan Stamberg, “Gauguin’s Nude Tahitians Give the Wrong Impression.”

Optional: Meyer Schapiro, “On a Painting of Van Gogh”; Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism.”

Week VI Oct. 2 Auguste Rodin & Midterm Prep Oct. 4 The Fin-de-Siècle: Symbolism and Fauvism Jean Moréas, “Symbolism - A Manifesto”; Henri Matisse, “Notes of a Painter.”

Optional: André Derain, “Letters to Vlaminck”; Yve-Alain Bois, “On Matisse: The Blinding.”

Week VII Oct. 9 Expressionism: Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter

Ernst Kirchner, “Programme of the Brücke”; Franz Marc, “Foreword to the second volume of Der Blaue Reiter”; Wassily Kandinsky, excerpts from Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Optional: Hermann Bahr, Expressionism; Shawn Roggenkamp, “Kirchner, Self-Portrait as a Soldier.”

Oct. 11 Cubism **Midterm distributed** Georges Braque, “Thoughts on Painting”; Pablo Picasso, “Picasso Speaks.”

Optional: Guillaume Apollinaire, “On the Subject in Modern Painting” and “The New Painting”; Margaret Werth, “Representing the Body in 1906”; Yve-Alain Bois, “Kahnweiler’s Lesson.”

Week VIII Oct. 16 “Art is Dead”: Dada, De Stijl, Suprematism **Midterm due**

Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act”; De Stijl, “Manifesto I.” Optional: Kasimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting”; Nikolai Tarabukin, “From the Easel to the Machine”; Rosalind Krauss, “Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi.”

Oct. 18 Interwar German Art: Bauhaus, Neue Sachlichkeit, Entartete Kunst Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program”; Lucy Burns, “Degenerate art: Why Hitler hated modernism.” Optional: Olaf Peters, “Genesis, Conception, and Consequences: The ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibition in Munich in 1937.”

Week IX Oct. 23 Surrealism

André Breton, “The First Manifesto of Surrealism”; Jenny Holzer and Anne Umland, “Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936.” Optional Georges Bataille, excerpts from Critical Dictionary; Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny.”

Oct. 25 Writing Workshop & Info Session Final Paper Resources folder on Blackboard. Week X Oct. 30 Mexican Muralism

Diego Rivera, “The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art”; José Clemente Orozco, “New World, New Races, New Art.” Optional: Janice Helland, “Aztec Imagery in Frida Kahlo’s Paintings: Indigenity and Political Commitment.”

Nov. 1 Interwar American Art **Research Question Due** Grant Wood, “Revolt Against the City.”

Optional: Fionnghuala Sweeney, “Memory, Mobility, Modernity: Archibald Motley’s Portraits and the Art of ‘Serious Painting.’”

Week XI Nov. 6 Abstract Expressionism & Assemblage Jackson Pollock, “Two Statements”; Smarthistory, “Robert Rauschenberg, Bed.”

Optional: Robert Motherwell, “The Modern Painter’s World”; Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters.”

Nov. 8 Pop Art Andy Warhol, “Warhol in his Own Words”; Claes Oldenburg, “I am for an Art.” Optional: Benjamin Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art”; Roy

Lichtenstein, “Lecture to the College Art Association.” Week XII Nov. 13 Minimalism and Color Field Painting

Mark Rothko, “The Romantics”; Robert Morris, excerpts from “Notes on Sculpture 1-3.”

Optional: Michael Fried, “Shape as Form: Frank Stella’s New Paintings.” Nov. 15 Figurative Art of Postwar Europe Francis Ponge, “Reflections on the Statuettes, Figures, and Paintings of Alberto

Giacometti”; Francis Bacon, Interview with David Sylvester; Paul Tillich, “Prefatory Note, New Images of Man.” Optional: Werner Hofmann, “Picasso’s Guernica in Its Historical Context.”

Week XIII Nov. 20 The Death of Modernism: Performance Art, Land Art, Conceptual Art

Allan Kaprow, “Assemblages, Environments, Happenings”; Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art.” Optional: Robert Smithson, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects”; Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition.”

Nov. 22 Thanksgiving Break – No Class Week XIV Nov. 27 Art as Activism: Feminist Art and ACT UP Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

Optional: Edward Saïd, “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community.” Nov. 29 In-Class Peer Editing **First Draft Due** (Bring two hard copies to class) Week XV Dec. 4 Snow Day/TBD Dec. 6 Approaching the Modern: A Final Discussion