This course looks at issues at play in the work of individual artists and art movements in the first half of the twentieth century. Lectures and class discussions will contextualize art-making and its theorization in a framework of the effects of modernization (i.e. urbanization, industrialization, and global capitalism). Significant themes to be addressed include the character and history of the avant-garde, the effects of mass culture, the changing identities and aims of the artist, and the relation of art to politics. The course is not intended as an all-inclusive survey, but rather an introduction to the complex set of aesthetic, philosophical and political concerns in which select figures produced art at the time.

This course is subject to priority rules; see here.