Schedule of Readings and Discussion Topics

Additional materials such as study questions, handouts, supplementary readings, etc. will be made available online through the links below.

EH = Electronic Text ( HTML); CP = Course Packet (Hardcopy); PA = Frascina Text; PDF = PDF file format

I. The Critical Background

Session 1

Course Introduction

Session 2

Required Reading
> Susan Noyes Platt, "Modernism, Formalism, and Politics" [PDF]
Meyer Schapiro, "The Nature of Abstract Art" [CP]
Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" [PA]

Supplementary Materials
> Study Guide: "The Nature of Abstract Art" [EH]
> Study Guide: "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" [EH]
> Summary: "The Nature of Abstract Art" [PDF]
> Summary: "Avant-Garde and Kitsch [PDF]
> T. R. Quigley, "Introduction to Marx and Historical Materialism" [PDF]
Slides: > Impressionism; > Neo-Impressionism; > Futurism; > Cubism; > Surrealism; > Kandinsky; > Misc. Artists

Subway Reading
> Marshall Berman, "Meyer Schapiro: The Presence of the Subject" [HTML; off-site]

Session 3

Required Reading
Clement Greenberg, "Towards a Newer Laocoon [PA]
> Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting" [PDF]
T. J. Clark, "Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art" [PA]
Michael Fried, "How Modernism Works: A Response to T. J. Clark" [PA]
T. J. Clark, "Arguments About Modernism" A Reply to Michael Fried" [PA]

Supplementary Materials
> Summary of Greenberg's "Modernist Painting" [EH]

II. The End of Art

Session 4

Required Reading
> Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism" [PDF]
> Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Lawrence Alloway, "Pop Since 1949" [PDF]
> Rough outline of Sartre's Essay [PDF]
> Slides: American Painting in the First Half of the 20th Century

Session 5

Required Reading
> Donald Judd, "Specific Objects" [PDF]
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Eye and Mind" [CP]

Supplementary Materials
> Summary of "Eye and Mind" [PDF]
> T. R. Quigley, "Brief Introduction to Phenomenology" [PDF]
Mel Bochner, "Primary Structures" [CP]
Barbara Rose, "A B C Art" [CP]
> Slides: Specific Objects

Session 6

Required Reading
Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood" [CP]
> Robert Smithson, "Letter to the Editor" [PDF]
Robert Morris, "Notes on Sculpture" [CP]

Supplementary Materials
> Slides: Minimalism

Session 7

Required Reading
Arthur Danto, After the End of Art [AE]

Supplementary Materials

Session 8

Required Reading
Arthur Danto, After the End of Art [AE]

Supplementary Materials

III. After The End of Art?

Session 9

Required Reading
Chrissie Iles, "Between the Still and Moving Image" [CP]
> Annette Michelson, "About Snow" [PDF]
Jean-Louis Comolli & Jean Narboni, "Cinema/Ideology/Criticism" [CP]

Supplementary Materials

Session 10

Required Reading
Robert Smithson, "Towards the Development of an Air Terminal Site" [CP]
Rosalind E. Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" [CP]
Rosalind E. Krauss, "Introduction" in The Originality of the Avant-Garde [CP]

Supplementary Materials

Session 11

Required Reading
> Craig Owens, "Einstein on the Beach: The Primacy of Metaphor" [PDF]
> Donald Kuspit, "Art Criticism: Where's the Depth?" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials

Session 12

Required Reading
> Robert C. Morgan, "Introduction", The End of the Art World [PDF]
> Michael Brenson, "Resisting the Dangerous Journey" [PDF]
Michael Brenson, "Interview", 1992 [CP]
> Raphael Rubinstein, "A Quiet Crisis" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials

Required Reading
Doris von Drathen, "Time for a New Approach to Art" [CP]

Supplementary Materials

Revised 25 March 05