Weekly Schedule of Readings and Discussion Topics -- Spring 2009

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

CP = Course Packet (Hardcopy); LL = Taylor Text; MD = Wood et. al.

Visual Studies and Visual Culture

Required Reading
> Course Introduction [PDF]

Approaches to Vision and Visuality

Required Reading
Joshua Taylor, 51-76; 139-158 [LL]

Supplementary Materials
> Slide Set 2
> Summary of Taylor's Approach [HTML]

Analyzing and Interpreting Visual Cultures

Case Study: NYC 1930-1960

Required Reading
> Ed Harris, Pollock (2000)
> Jonathan Harris, "Modernism and Culture in the USA, 1930-1960" [MD, 3-41; 42-74]
> Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"
> Clive Bell, "The Aesthetic Hypothesis"
> Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting"
> Meyer Schapiro, "The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art"
> Stuart Davis, "The Artist Today"
> Mark Rothko & Adolph Gottlieb, "Statement"
> Mark Rothko & Adolph Gottlieb, "Art New York"
> Barnett Newman, "The First Man Was an Artist"
> Barnett Newman, "The Sublime Is Now"
> Louise Bourgeois, "Artist's Statement"

Supplementary Materials
> Study Questions, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" [RTF]
> Notes from Class Presentation: "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" [HTML]
> T. R. Quigley, "Summary of Greenberg's Argument in 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch'" [PDF]
> T. R. Quigley, "British Empiricism and Inner Sense Theories" [PDF; links 18th C. moral theory and aesthetic judgment.]
> T. R. Quigley, "Philosophical Background to 19th Century Modernism" [PDF; a useful prelude to your reading of Kant.]
> T. R. Quigley, "Summary of Bell's Argument" [PDF]
> Anne Wagner, "Lee Krasner as L. K."
> Bradford Collins, "Life Magazine and the Abstract Expressionists, 1948-51
> Max Kozloff, "American Painting During the Cold War"
> Leon Golub, "A Critique of Abstract Expressionism"
> T. J. Clark, "A Defense of Abstract Expressionism"
> Matthew S. Witkovsky, "Experience vs. Theory: Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionism"
> Nancy Jachec, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg"
> Patricia Hills, "1936: Meyer Schapiro, Art Front, and the Popular Front"
> April J. Paul, "Byron Browne in the Thirties: The Battle for Abstract Art"
> Susan C. Larsen, "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936-1941"
> Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt, "Art on the Political Front in America: From The Liberator to Art Front"
> Gerald M. Monroe, "Art Front"
> Gerald M. Monroe, "The Artists Union of New York"
> Francis V. O'Connor, "The New Deal Art Projects in New York"

Slide Set 3a: > Impressionism; > Neo-Impressionism; > Futurism; > Cubism; > Surrealism; > Kandinsky; > Misc. Artists
> Slide Set 3b: Avant-Garde and Kitsch

Required Reading
> M. Underwood, "Code";"Code and Ideology";"Introduction to Semiotics" - "Criticism of Semiotics" [HTML]

[Underwood's texts are part of an electronic database of information about semiotics and communication theory. The titles above (in quotes) are the main sections in Underwood's database that you'll need to read for this week's discussion. There is a handy index of titles on the left side of his web page which help you locate most articles. After reading "Code", follow the link above and select "Ia" in the index, and under "ideology" select "codes and ideology". When you get to the end of "Codes and Ideology", select "Introduction to Semiotics" at the bottom of the page. Subsequent sections in the introduction will be found on this page. Be sure to read all sections from "sign" to "structuralism and poststructuralism", then go on to "Criticism of Semiotics".]

Supplementary Materials
> T. R. Quigley, "Saussure: From Structuralism to Poststructuralism" [HTML]
> T. R. Quigley, "Introduction to Semiotics" [PDF]
> Slide Set -- Semiotics

Postmodernism and the End of Art?

Required Reading
> Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text" [PDF; annotated version]
> Roland Barthes, Excerpt from "Rhetoric of the Image" [HTML]
> Fredric Jameson, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
> Arthur Danto, "Introduction", After the End of Art
> Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"

Supplementary Materials
> Summary of Barthes' Propositions in "From Work to Text" [HTML]
> Jacques Derrida, "Differance" [PDF]
> Rosalind Krauss, "The Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths" [CP]
> Paul Crowther, "Against Curatorial Imperialism" [CP]
> T. R. Quigley, "Rough Notes on the Truth Value of Images" [PDF]
> Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control" [PDF]
> Slide Set - Truth and Information

Advanced Topics and Readings

Technology, Aura, and the Work of Art

Required Reading
> Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" [PDF]

Critical Theory

Required Reading
> Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control" [PDF]

Psychoanalytic Theory and Surrealism

Required Reading
Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism" [CP]
> Christian Metz, "Photography and Fetish" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> T. R. Quigley, "Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory"
> Dylan Evans, Lacan's "Order" (Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real) [PDF]
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I" [CP]
> T. R. Quigley, "Metz: Summary" [PDF]
> Slavoj Zizek, "The Interpassive Subject" [PDF]
> Sue Taylor, "Uncanny Automata: Fetishism -- The Doll as Substitute" [PDF]
> Slide Set -- Hans Bellmer
> Slide Set 8: Surrealism and Psychoanalysis

Pastiche, the Abject, and the Monstrous Feminine

Required Reading
> Laura Mulvey, "A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Laura Mulvey, "Some Thoughts on Theories of Fetishism in the Context of Contemporary Culture" [PDF]
> T. R. Quigley, "Explanation, Understanding, Lacan, and Fetishism: A Follow-Up Discussion" [PDF]
> Slide Set 9: Cindy Sherman

Questions and Conundrums in the Production and Use of Visual Images

Required Reading
> Mark Singer, "Predilections" [PDF]
> Malcolm Gladwell, "The Picture Problem: Mammography, Air Power, and the Limits of Looking" [PDF]
> Linda Williams, "Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> T. R. Quigley, "Rough Notes on the Truth Value of Images" [PDF]
> Slide Set - Truth and Information

Last Update: 4 Jul 08