Postwar: Art After 1945

This course examines developments in the art of Europe and the Americas from 1945 to roughly 1975. We will focus on major paradigms of this period: Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada and New Realism, Neo-concretism, Happenings, Pop, Minimalism and Post-minimalism, Arte povera, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, and Feminist strategies. Key questions include the following: How were notions of artistic skill--and of the artist's function--reimagined in the postwar period? How did artists intervene in the construction of identity, whether along the lines of nationality, race, class, gender, or sexuality? How did artists of the postwar period participate in strategies of mourning? What new roles did artists imagine for youthe spectatorduring this period? A final question will haunt our discussions: In what ways did artists of this period anticipate, participate in, or disrupt the emergent systems and technologies of globalization and exchange that manage our lives today?