4.651
Art Since 1940
Instructor: Caroline Jones
Office: 3-303a
Phone: 617-253-5932
cajones@mit.edu
Units: 3-0-9
Level: U
Prerequisites:
This course presents objects, histories, and social and critical contexts for art since 1940. Because of the burgeoning increase in art production during this period, the course is necessarily selective. With a strong focus on art of the U.S., lectures will also cover postwar developments in Europe and parts of South America and Asia, up to the present moment of globalism, new media, and biennial culture. We will trace major movements in art as well as art that has been overlooked by the mainstream critical press, but may have a broad cultural base in its own community. We will ask what function art serves in its various cultures of origin, and why, in recent years, art has been such a lightning rod for political issues here in the USA and elsewhere in an ever-more visual world.
