Art History 374 - SEM:STUDIES IN 20TH CENT ART

Topics course. The 1980s saw both the ?end of painting? and a resurgence of expressionism. Artists extended Duchamp?s legacy in practices of appropriation, allied with poststructuralist critiques of authorship and originality. Postmodernism emerged in contested forms, as style or period, ?complicit? with or ?critical? of late consumer capitalism. Neo-conservatism deployed a rhetoric of ?traditional values,? while postmodernism gave voice to identities traditionally excluded from public discourse. The Berlin Wall came down in 1990, yet the overarching world-historical event of the 1980s was the AIDS crisis. HIV/AIDS decimated and galvanized the art world. Lines between artist and activist were blurred; ?representation? was understood at once in terms of aesthetic and political action. By the late 1980s, the ?culture wars? had begun. This seminar explores cultural production of the 1980s in relation to its dark historical moment.

Topic:The 1980s: Art in the Age of AIDS. Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores