In order to present certain issues in greater depth, the course will concentrate on the 1960s and
1970s with selected attention to art since then. Overall the period extending from 1945 to the end
of the 20th century saw first the triumph of modernism, as embodied in the writings of Clement
Greenberg, and then a series of attacks on modernist "purity" that have continued to the present
day. In this period we find a radical rethinking of the boundaries between art, popular culture, and
consumer society; we find art dealing with social issues, history, autobiography, memory, and
mortality; we find various "returns" to realism; and especially at the end of the century we find
sharp controversy over acceptable limits of expression.
After a brief survey of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, the course will focus on
the 1960s, with attention not only to Pop art but to less mainstream phenomena and to the
international art world. Various forms of social activism, including women's art, will constitute
another segment of the course, carrying us from the end of the 1960s through the beginning of the
1970s. Yet another significant segment will be devoted to the 1970s, with special attention given
to the persistence of painting as both a rear guard and an avant-garde phenomenon. In the final
weeks of the semester we will consider selected artists from the last two decades of the century.
Required readings consisting of articles and excerpts from books will be available in a
course pack and in the Fine Arts library. A number of assignments will be made from Ellen
Johnson, American Artists on Art, which you may wish to purchase.