ART 345 - Ideas in Contemporary Art

Literature has been called the “theatre of the mind;” it is an art of pure conjury. But where reading is usually internal, solitary and disembodied, the visual arts are always external, social forms in which groups of people with actual bodies gather around tactile, material phenomena, also with actual bodies. Much scholarship has explored the zone of overlap between these two seemingly disparate art forms - the visuality of literature, the narrative power of painting/sculpture - and in this class we will indeed look at that research. But we also need a more utilitarian term to cover the shared territory and help us develop an understanding of the actual mechanisms that ally the theatre of the mind with the theatre of objects. That term is “fantasy.” In three movements, the class will identify different species of fantasy as they have flowered in our contemporary cultural ecosystems. Using the methodologies of the naturalist as our model, our goal will be to analyze these species, name them, and ask why they have taken root amongst us now. What are the favorable conditions that have made their appearance possible? How long have they been with us? How long might we predict that they will stay? And how do they transcend the supposed boundaries between visuality and the verbal? This course may be repeated once for credit.
Units: 4
Enrollment is exclusive to students in the M.A. in Art or Master of Fine Arts programs.
Course Type: Seminar