Into the nineties
Proposed to be offered next in 1997
M Plant
8 points * 3 hours per week * Second Semester * Clayton * Prerequisite: Two visual arts second-year subjects
Current issues and figures in art will be discussed with the intention of addressing both the practice and criticism of recent art. Areas of study will include: neo-expressionism and figurative art in the 1980s (with discussion of the Zeitgeist exhibition of 1982); the related focus on Neo-primitivism; feminist practice and criticism in the 1980s; the shifting centres of the 1980s - Germany and Italy; theoretical positions in the 1980s with reference to Lacan, Baudrillard, Derrida, and others; institutions and their critics; the role of the museum and private gallery; the stance of Post-modernism - political and social critiques of arts; a consideration of shifts in practice from the 1970s to the 1980s will focus on the reputation of such artists as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Keifer and American artists Robert Morris and Frank Stella and Cindie Sherman.
Assessment
Class paper (1500 words): 40% * Research essay (4500 words): 60%
Prescribed texts
Burger P Theory of the avant-garde U Minnesota, 1984
Foster H Recodings: Art spectacle, cultural politics, Bay Press, 1985
Foster H The anti-aesthetic: essays on post-modern culture also published as Post-modernist culture Bay Press, 1983
Huyssen A After the great divide, modernism, mass culture, postmodernism Indiana UP, 1986
Lyotard J-F The post modern condition: a report on knowledge Manchester UP, 1984
Wallis B (ed) Art after modernism: rethinking representation New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984