1. Wed, Jan 19: Introduction and Overview

2. Mon, Jan 24: As We Were Saying When We Were So Rudely Interrupted, Or: The 1930s Continued

Readings:
Pablo Picasso, “In Painting, All is Merely Signs,” interview with André Warnod, in Arts (Paris), June 29, 1945, trans. in Dore Ashton, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, 1972 (paperback ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 18-19.
Clement Greenberg, “Picasso at Seventy-Five,” 1957; reprinted in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 26-35.
Additional suggested reading (not in course packet): Dora Vallier, “Braque, la peinture et nous (interview),” in Cahiers d’art, vol. 29, #1, Oct. 1954, pp. 13-24

3. Wed, Jan 26: The Would-Be Barbarians: Art against Art

Readings:
Wylie Sypher, “The Zero Degree of Painting,” in Wylie Sypher, Loss of the Self in Modern Literature and Art (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 110-138.
Jean Dubuffet, excerpts from “Anticultural positions,” 1951, trans. in Sypher, Loss of the Self, pp. 170-176.
Additional suggested reading: Pepe Karmel,“Jean Dubuffet: The Would-Be Barbarian,” Apollo, vol. CLVI, no. 489 (New Series), October 2002, pp. 12-20.

The United States, 1940-1955

4. Mon, Jan 31: The War Years: Surrealism, Myth and Abstraction

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 18-27
Gail Levin, “Miró, Kandinsky, and the Genesis of Abstract Expressionism,” in Robert Carleton Hobbs and Gail Levin, Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years, 1978, pp. 27-40.

5. Wed, Feb 2: Pollock Breaks the Ice

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 9-18
Pollock reviews, 1943-50, in Karmel, Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews, p. 49-71.
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Art News, December 1952; reprinted in Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, 1965 (paperback Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 23-39.
Additional suggested readings:
Kirk Varnedoe, “Comet: Jackson Pollock’s Life and Work,” and Pepe Karmel, “Pollock at Work: The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth,” in Varnedoe and Karmel, Jackson Pollock, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998), pp. 15-137.
Pepe Karmel, “A Sum of Destructions,” in Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, Jackson Pollock: New Approaches (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1999), pp. 71-99.

6. Mon, Feb 7: Gorky and De Kooning: New Old Masters

Readings:
Elaine de Kooning, “Gorky: Painter of His Own Legend,” 1951; reprinted in Elaine de Kooning, The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism: Selected Writings (New York: George Braziller, 1994), pp. 89-96
Thomas Hess, Willem de Kooning (New York: George Braziller, 1959), pp. 18-23.
Willem de Kooning, “What Abstract Art Means to Me,” 1951 lecture, and excerpt from “Interview with David Sylvester,” 1963; reprinted in Clifford Ross, Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), pp. 36-42 and 45-47.
Suggested Additional Reading:
Pepe Karmel, “Arshile Gorky: Anatomical Blackboard,” Master Drawings, vol. 40, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 9-23.
Donald Kuspit, “Venus Unveiled: De Kooning’s Melodrama of Vulgarity,” in Bill Beckley and David Shapiro, eds, Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics (New York: School of Visual Arts and Allworth Press, 1993), pp. 279-295.

7. Wed, Feb 9: The New York School: Gestural Abstraction

Readings:
Elaine de Kooning, “Franz Kline: Painter of his Own Life,” 1962; reprinted in de Kooning, The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism, pp. 189-200.

8. Mon, Feb 14: The New York School: Non-Gestural Abstraction

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 33-46
Barnett Newman, “The Sublime is Now,” 1948, in David Shapiro and Cecile Shapiro, eds., Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record (Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 325-28
Lawrence Alloway, “Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross and the Subjects of the Artist,” 1966, in Shapiro, Abstract Expressionism, pp. 336–43.
E.C. Goosen, "The Big Canvas," Art International, vol. 2, no. 8 (November 1958); reprinted in Gregory Battcock (ed.), The New Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966, revised edition 1973, pp. 57-65.
Elaine de Kooning, “Stuart Davis: True to Life,” 1957; reprinted in de Kooning, Spirit of Abstract Expressionism, pp. 155-158. Expressionism, pp. 155-158.

The United States, 1955-1975

9. Wed, Feb 16: Between Art and Life: Rauschenberg, Johns, and the Italian Connection

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 56-63
Calvin Tomkins, “Robert Rauschenberg,” from The Bride and the Bachelors, 1965, pp. 189-237.
Leo Steinberg, “The Flatbed Picture Plane,” from “Other Criteria,” 1968/1972, in Steinberg, Other Criteria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 82-91.
Robert Rosenblum, “Jasper Johns,” Art International, vol. 4, no. 7, September 1960; reprinted in Rosenblum, On Modern American Art: Selected Essays (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), pp. 147-152.
Kenneth E. Silver, “Modes of Disclosure: The Construction of Gay Identity and the Rise of Pop Art,” in Donna De Salvo, Paul Schimmel, and Russell Ferguson, eds., Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition: 1955-1962 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art and New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1992), pp. 178-190 (part on Johns; remainder to be read later).
Additional Suggested Reading:
Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, chapters on Marcel Duchamp and John Cage.

10. Wed, Feb 23: Popular Culture and the American Empire

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 28-32
Russell Lynes, “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow,” Harper’s, February 1949; reprinted in Lynes, The Tastemakers (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1954), pp. 310-322, 331-333.
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review, Fall 1939; reprinted in Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, 1961, pp. 3-21
Leo Steinberg, “The Corporate Model of Developing Art,” from “Other Criteria,” 1968/1972, in Steinberg, Other Criteria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 77-82.
Suggested additional reading:
Dwight Macdonald, “Masscult and Midcult,” Partisan Review, 1960, reprinted in Against the American Grain, 1962, pp. 3-78.

11. Mon, Feb 28: Happenings and Funk, Relics and Refuse

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 50-55, 65-68, 72-75, 96-106, 116-126
Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” 1958, and “Happenings in the New York Scene,” 1961, in Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 1-9, 15-26
Susan Sontag, “Happenings: an art of radical juxtaposition,” 1962, in Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1966), pp. 263-274.
Additional Suggested Reading:
Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, chapter on Merce Cunningham

12. Wed, Mar 2: Prelude to Pop: The British Invasion

Readings:
Modern Dreams: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pop, exh. cat. (New York: Institute for Contemporary Art and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988):
Brian Wallis, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: The Independent Group and Popular Culture,” pp. 9- Thomas Lawson, “Bunk: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Legacy of the Independent Group,” pp. ? -29.

13. Mon, March 7: Pop Art: Commodified Desire

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 65-68, 75-85, 93-94
Additional Readings:
Marshall McLuhan, “Love-Goddess Assembly Line” and “The Mechanical Bride,” in The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), pp. 93-101.
Max Kozloff, “The Poetics of Softness,” in Maurice Tuchman, ed., American Sculpture of the Sixties, exh. cat., (Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, 1967), pp. 26-31.

14. Wed, Mar 9: Andy Warhol, Pop Hamlet

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 69-72
Thomas Crow, “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol,” in Modern Art in the Common Culture (New Haven: Yale, 1996), pp. 49-65.
Kenneth E. Silver, “Modes of Disclosure: The Construction of Gay Identity and the Rise of Pop Art,” in Donna de Salvo and Paul Schimmel, eds., Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955-62, 1992, pp. 192-202 (part on Warhol).
Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” 1964, reprinted in Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux), 1966, pp. 275-292

15. Mon, Mar 21: Mid-term exam

16. Wed, Mar 23: Realisms

Readings:
Fairfield Porter, “Non-Objectivity and Realism,” 1960, in Art in Its Own Terms, 1979, pp. 91-95
Sanford Sivitz Shaman, “An Interview with Philip Pearlstein,” Art in America, vol. 69, no. 7 September 1981, pp. 120-126, 213-215
Linda Nochlin, “The Realist Criminal and the Abstract Law,” Parts I and II, Art in America, vol. 61, no. 5, September 1973, pp.54-61, and no. 6, November 1973, pp. 96-103
Frank O’Hara, “Why I Am Not a Painter,” and “How to Proceed in the Arts” (written with Larry Rivers), in Art Chronicles, 1954-1966, pp. iii and 92-98.

17. Mon, Mar 28: Photography: From Studio to Street

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 86-92
Tod Papageorge, “Introduction,” in Garry Winogrand, Public Relations, exh. cat. (NY: MoMA, 1977)
Susan Sontag, “America: Seen Through Photographs, Darkly,” in On Photography (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux), 1977, pp. 27-48
Additional Suggested Reading:
Pepe Karmel, “Photography--Garry Winogrand, Public Eye,” Art in America, Nov. 1981, pp. 39-41.

18. Wed, Mar 30: Post-Painterly Abstraction, Op Art, and Industrial Expressionism

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 46-50
Michael Fried, excerpt from Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, exh. cat. (Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, 1965), pp. 19-48.

19. Mon, April 4: Minimalism

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 106-113
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” 1964; reprinted in Against Interpretation, pp. 1-14.
Donald Judd, “Nationwide Reports: Hartford [review of ‘Black, White and Gray’ at the Wadworth Atheneum],” Arts Magazine, March 1964; reprinted in Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and New York: New York University Press, 1975), pp. 117-119.
Bruce Glaser, "Questions to Stella and Judd," interview conducted February 1964 for radio station WBAI-FM; edited by Lucy R. Lippard and printed in Art News, September 1966; reprinted in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, E.P. Dutton, 1968, pp. 148-164.
Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America, October-November 1965; reprinted in Gregory Battcock, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968), pp. 274-297.
Additional Suggested Reading (not in course packet):
Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture, Parts 1 and 2,” Artforum, 1966; reprinted in Battcock, Minimal Art, pp. 222-235.
“Robert Morris: Formal Disclosures [interview],” Art in America, June 1995, pp. 88-95, 117, 119.
Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts, January 1990, pp. 44-63
Hal Foster, “The Crux of Minimalism,” in Julia Brown Turrell, ed., Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art: 1945-1986, pp. 162-183
Pepe Karmel, “What It Meant to be Minimal [review of James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties],” Art in America, vol. 90, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 35-37
Pepe Karmel, “The Year of Living Minimally,” Art in America, December 2004, pp. 90-101, 149.

20. Wed, April 6: Post-Minimalism: Serialism and Anti-Form
Basic Reading: Joselit, pp. 113-115, 131-135
Additional Readings:
Roland Barthes, "The Structuralist Activity," 1963, translated by Richard Howard, Partisan Review, vol. 34, no. 1 (Winter 1967), pp. 82-88; reprinted in Richard and Fernande DeGeorge (eds.), The Structuralists: From Marx to Lévi-Strauss, Garden City: Doubleday/Anchor, 1972, pp. 148-154.
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Aspen 5/6, Fall/Winter 1967; reprinted in Barthes, Image/Music/Text, pp. 142-148
Mel Bochner, "Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism," Arts, vol. 41, no. 8, Summer 1967, pp. 39-43; reprinted in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, E.P. Dutton, 1968, pp. 92-102.
Robert Morris, "Anti Form," Artforum, vol. 6, no. 8 (April 1968), pp. 33-35; reprinted in Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris, Cambridge, M.I.T Press, and New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, pp. 41-50.
Rosalind Krauss, "Sense and Sensibility: Reflection on Post '60's Sculpture," Artforum, vol. 12, no. 3 (November 1973); reprinted in Amy Baker Sandback (ed.), Looking Critically: 21 Years of Artforum Magazine, Ann Arbor, U.M.I. Research Press, 1984, pp. 146-149.
Additional Suggested Reading:
Pepe Karmel, Robert Morris: The Felt Works, exh. cat., (New York: Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, 1989), pp. 1-17, 39-68
Pepe Karmel, "[Mel Bochner:] Old Master of the Utterly New," ARTnews, May 1996, pp. 122-125.

21. Mon, April 11: Conceptual Art and Performance

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 129-130, pp. 151-172
Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, June 1967; reprinted in Alicia Legg (ed.), Sol LeWitt, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1978, pp. 166-167.
Lawrence Weiner, Daniel Buren, Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt, "Documentation in Conceptual Art," Arts, April 1970; reprinted in Gregory Battock (ed.), Idea Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, E.P. Dutton, 1973, pp. 174-183
Cindy Nemser, "Subject-Object: Body Art," Arts, vol. 46, no. 1, September-October 1971, pp. 38-42.
Rosalind Krauss, “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” October 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 51-64.

22. Wed, April 13: Feminist & Black Art

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 173-191
Cindy Nemser, “[Interview with] Eleanor Antin,” in Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations with 12 Women Artists, New York: Scribner’s, 1975, pp. 266-301
Judy Chicago [Judith Gerowitz], Through the Flower: my struggles as a woman artist, Garden City, Doubleday, 1975 (revised ed. Garden City, Anchor Books, 1982): pp. 52-57 and 70-92.
Pat Mainardi, “Quilts: The Great American Art,” Feminist Art Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, Winter 1973; reprinted in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), pp. 330-346.
Melissa Meyer and Miriam Schapiro, “Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled [Femmage],” Heresies, Winter 1978

23. Mon, April 18: Earthworks (and West Coast Post-Minimalism)

Readings:
Joselit, pp. 136-151
Robert Smithson, "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey," Artforum, December 1967
Sam Wagstaff, Jr., "Talking with Tony Smith," Artforum, vol. 5, no. 4, December 1966, excerpt on driving on the New Jersey Turnpike
Paper Due

24. Wed, April 20: Germany and Austria

Readings:
Gerhard Richter. “Programme and Report: the exhibition Leben mit Pop – eine Demonstration für den Kapitalistischen Realismus, Düsseldorf, 11 October 1963.” In Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and London: Anthony D’Offay Gallery, 1995), pp. 18-21.
Herman Nitsch, various writings and scripts, in Günter Brus et al, Writings of the Vienna Actionists ( London: Atlas Press, 1999), pp. 157-167.

25. Mon, April 25: England, France, and Belgium

Readings:
“Jean Tinguely,” in Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, pp. 145-187

26. Wed, April 27: Spain, Italy, and Japan

Readings:
Y. Taillandier, “Encounter with Saura,” in Saura: Recent Paintings, exh. cat. (New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1964)
Emily Braun, ed., Italian Art in the 20th Century, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts and Prestel, 1989):
Maurizio Calvesi, “Informel and Abstraction in Italian Art of the Fifties,” pp. 289-294
Germano Celant, “From the Open Wound to the Resurrected Body: Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni,” pp. 295-299
Giuliano Briganti, “Cultural Provocation: Italian Art of the Early Sixties,” pp. 301-307
Caroline Tisdall, “‘Materia’: the Context of Arte Povera,” pp. 363-368
Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, exh. cat. (New York: Guggenheim Museum and Harry N. Abrams, 1994):
“To Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun: The Gutai Group,” pp. 83-100
“A Box of Smile: Tokyu Fluxus, Conceptual Art, and the School of Metaphysics,” pp. 215-225
Suggested Additional Reading:
Munroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky:
“Morphology of Revenge: The Yomiuri Independent Artists and Social Protest Tendencies in the 1960s,” pp. 149-160
“Revolt of the Flesh; Ankoku Butoh and Obsessional Art,” pp. 189-201

27. Mon, May 2: Latin America

Readings:
Edward Lucie-Smith, Latin American Art of the 20th Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), chapter on “Geometric Abstraction,” pp. 121-143.
Jacqueline Barnitz, “New Figuration, Pop, and Assemblage in the 1960s and 1970s,” in Waldo Rasmussen, ed., Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, exh. cat. (New York: MoMA, 1993), pp. 122-133.
Paulo Herkenhoff, excerpt from “The Theme of Crisis in Contemporary Latin American Art,” in Rasmussen, Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, pp. 134-143.
Jacqueline Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), excerpt from chapter on “Political Art,” pp. 269-282.