IGRPH 5400 Contemporary Strategies in Photography + Integrated Media
In the belief that all art comes from other art, and that the great artists tend to be those most deeply invested in their field, this course will discuss the last fifty years or so of contemporary art, with special attention paid to questions of subject matter and content, artistic strategies, and the relation of evolving technologies, especially lens-based, to the course of art. Topics include the indexical, Pop, Conceptual Art and photoconceptualism, feminism, activism, Relational Aesthetics, identity politics, narrative, projection, and opacity. We will examine the history of recent art with an eye on its resonances for artistic practice in the present, and its lessons for students' individual studio practices. In a way, this is art history for artists, and it provides a means of contextualizing the student's own work within contemporary art. Much of the course will be devoted to readings in the history of contemporary art, supplemented with selected works of critical theory. Close readings of selected works of art and exhibitions, viewed in person or online, will comprise another fundamental component of the curriculum. Junior and Senior BFA students may take this course with instructor consent.