This course will consider various aspects of modernist and avant-
garde art in the period from 1900 to the early 1920s. Topics include
the phenomenon of “primitivism,” the attempts made by various
artists to identify and depict a “modern” consciousness shaped by
urbanization and technological change, and the critiques of the
institution of art that occurred both before and after the First
World War. Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and others will be
examined in depth, but the course will include many others, for
example, women artists of the period: Suzanne Valadon, Sonia
Delaunay, Kathe Kollwitz, and Natalia Goncharova.