ART HISTORY_ 3065 Dr.

Nell Andrew
FALL 2010 Office: LDSOA_ N314
T/TH, 11am-12:15pm Office Hrs: Thurs, 3:30-4:30
LDSOA, room S150 Graduate Asst: Kristina Stoll

Modern Art: Post-Impressionism to WWII

Course Description: This course will address the visual arts from the first half of the 20th century
(roughly 1880-1935). We will cover artists, works and critical debates surrounding the historical avant-
garde in Europe and the Soviet Union. With close analysis of individual works of art, we will visually
engage the conversation surrounding the avant-garde, modernism and modernity, and definitions of
realism, abstraction, and the nature of the art object. Through critical readings and lectures we will
explore the influences of new technologies, popular culture, politics, war and genocide, as well as the
changing roles of institutions of art making and marketing, and the emergence of new audiences for art.
These contexts along with the issues of originality, identity, utopian visions and alienation will help us to
define artistic production during this dynamic period.

Requirements and rough grading breakdown

Course website. We will maintain a course website at https://www.elc.uga.edu. The website will
include all course documents, some assigned readings and an image bank for reviewing works of art
from class lectures that will help you prepare for exams.

Textbooks. Two required texts are available at the University Bookstore. You should also be able to find
discounted used copies both at local stores and online. Any edition is fine.
1) Harrison, Frascina and Perry, eds. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: the Early Twentieth Century.
New Haven: Yale U Press with The Open University, 1993.
2) Fer, Batchelor and Wood, eds. Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between the Wars. New
Haven: Yale U Press with The Open University, 1993.
Online Readings. You will also see readings assigned that are not from one of the 2 textbooks. These
readings indicate they are available on eLC (follow the Readings link on the menu).

Exams. There will be 2 hour-long midterm exams in class and a two-hour final exam at the end of the
semester. Each exam will follow more or less the same format. Part one consists of image ids,
discussions or comparisons. Youll be asked to identify each work by providing the name of the artist,
the title and the decade within which the work was created, and be asked to write a paragraph analyzing
the work in the light of its historical significance. Images will be drawn from works which have been
shown in class and have been made available on eLC (link Study Images on the course menu). Part
two of the exam will ask you to write an essay on a broader topic relating to class lectures and reading
assignments. No notes or other materials may be used during the exam.
Make-up exams. Conflicts with the exam dates must be brought to the professors attention before the
third week of class. Make-up exams for conflicts or illness will only be offered to students who provide a
written explanation from the appropriate authority. Exam dates: Th. 9/23, Th. 10/21, and Tues. 12/14

Attendance will also factor into your grade, either positively or negatively impacting the final sum at my
discretion. More substantially, it can also affect your grade insofar as exams will cover material from
both lectures and readings. Readings and lectures do not repeat one another; therefore you will only be
successful on exams if you attend to both. Audio recording of lectures is not permitted.

Midterm 1: 30% Midterm 2: 30% Final Exam: 40% Attendance

* You must pass each of the graded requirements in order to pass the course *
Schedule of Lectures and Readings.

WEEK 1
The Concept of the Avant-Garde
Tuesday, August 17 Introduction

Thursday, August 19 The Modernization of art making and viewing, The First Impressionist Exhibition
Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (eLC)
T.J. Clark, Clement Greenbergs Theory of Art (eLC)

WEEK 2
Post-Impressionism and Symbolism
Tues, August 24 Post-ImpressionismCzanne
T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, Introduction (eLC)
Paul Smith, Interpreting Czanne, (eLC)

Thurs. August 26 PrimitivismGauguin

Gill Perry, Introduction: Primitivism in art-historical debate, and The going away a preparation for
the modern in Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: 3-34

WEEK 3
Dcoration and the Moving Image
Tues, August 31 DecorationMatisse and the Nabis
Gill Perry, The decorative & the culte de la vie: Matisse & Fauvism, in Primitivism, Cubism,
Abstraction: 46-62

Thurs, September 2 Early Cinema, Lumire, Edison, Mlies (Screening and Lecture)
Tom Gunning, An Aesthetic of Astonishment and The Cinema of Attractions (eLC)

WEEK 4
Cubism
Tuesday, September 7 Picassos beginnings
Francis Frascina, Realism & Ideology: an intro to Semiotics & Cubism Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction:
87-104

Thursday, September 9 Analytic to Synthetic Cubism

Francis Frascina, Realism & Ideology: an intro to Semiotics & Cubism Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction:
104-174

WEEK 5
Expressionism
Tuesday, September 14 German Expressionism
Perry, The expressive & the Expressionist; Expression & the body Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction:
62-83
Thursday, September 16 Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art (eLC)
Charles Harrison, Abstraction Figuration, Representation Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: 185-212

WEEK 6

Tuesday, September 21 Politics and Publications, Futurism

Batchelor, This Liberty and this Order in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 3-30
F.T.Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism in (eLC)

Thursday, September 231st MIDTERM EXAM, In Class

WEEK 7
ABSTRACTION
Tuesday, September 28 Pure abstraction: Malevich
Charles Harrison, On Interpretation and Autonomy in Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: 212-249

Thursday, September 30 Malevich contd, Mondrian

Charles Harrison, Kasimir Malevich in Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: 250-262

WEEK 8
WWI and the Avant-Garde
Tuesday October 5 Return to OrderPicasso and Classicism
This Liberty and this Order in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 61-85

Thursday, October 7 Dada in Zurich

Batchelor, This Liberty and this Order in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 30-47
Hugo Ball, Dada Manifesto in (eLC)

WEEK 9
Dada and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Tuesday, October 12 Berlin Dada and Photomontage
Kleinschmidt, Berlin Dada in Dada Spectrum: the Dialectics of Revolt. Kuenzli and Foster, eds. 1979.
146-175 (eLC)

Thursday, October 14 Photography

Rosenblum, Naomi. Photography Between the Wars: Europe, 1920-1940 (eLC)

WEEK 10

Tuesday, October 19 Duchamp (Possible screening of Germany-Dada, 1968)

Demos, T.J. Duchamp's Bote-en-valise: Between Institutional Acculturation and Geopolitical
Displacement, Grey Room 8 (Summer 2002) (eLC)

Thursday, October 212nd MIDTERM EXAM, In Class

WEEK 11
Surrealism
Tuesday, October 26 Surrealism
Andr Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism in (eLC)
Batchelor, This Liberty and this Order in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 47-61
Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 170-203

Thursday, October 28 Surrealism contd

Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 204-231

WEEK 12

Tuesday, November 2 Cinema and the Avant-garde (Avant-Garde Film Screening)

Standish Lawder, Chapter 3, The Abstract Film: Richter, Eggeling Ruttmann pp.35-64. (eLC)

Constructivism

Thursday, November 4 Russian Constructivism

Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 87-115

WEEK 13

Tuesday, November 9 International Constructivism

Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 122-149

Thursday, November 11 Bauhaus

Walter Gropius, The Theory & Organization of the Bauhaus, (eLC)
Oskar Schlemmer, Man & Art Figure Theater of the Bauhaus, Gropius, Wensinger, eds. 16-32. (eLC)

WEEK 14
Social, Socialist, and New Realisms
Tuesday, November 16 Mexican Muralism, Soviet Socialist Realism
Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: 250-283
Andr Breton, Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, Towards a Free Revolutionary Art, (1938) (eLC)

Thursday, November 18 Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity)

Fer, Batchelor, Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism, 283-300
WEEK 15
German Art and the Third Reich
Tuesday, November 30 Socialist Realism and the Nazi exhibition of Degenerate Art
Adolf Hitler, speech inaugurating the Great Exhibition of German Art, (1937) (eLC)
Stephanie Barron, 1937: Modern Art & Politics in Prewar Germany 9-22 and Christoph Zuschlag, An
Educational Exhibition. The Precursors of Entartete Kunst and its Individual Venues, 83-97 in
Barron, ed.Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (New York: Abrams,
1991). (eLC)

Thursday, December 2 Surrealism in Exile and the beginnings of an American Avant-Garde

T.J. Demos. Duchamp's Labyrinth: First Papers of Surrealism, 1942 October 97. (Summer, 2001) 91-
119. (eLC)

FINALS WEEK

Tuesday, December 14 FINAL EXAM in our lecture hall, S150

12 noon 2:00pm (per the university schedule)