Professor Michelli
Location: Communication Arts 134 Tuesday, Thursday; 11.00 am - 12.15 pm	Final Exam: Tuesday, December 19th, 2000; 10.30-12.30

Required set book:

Edward Lucie-Smith, Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1996

BRING THIS BOOK TO CLASS

Introduction

This course focusses on the art and architecture of Europe in the twentieth century. In fact, though, you have to go some way back into the nineteenth century to make sense of the twentieth, so we will begin somewhere in the second half of the nineteenth century. We will then go as far as we can get towards the end of the twentieth century. But it's not quite that simple, because after the middle of the twentieth century, the art of Europe was increasingly affected by America, and the art of America was increasingly being produced by European artists who had gone to live there. So the course has to take all this into account.

We are going to take a somewhat unusual approach, which I think is a particularly powerful one. It comes in two sections. The first section provides you with a quick guide to the formal analysis of art and architecture and links that analysis to the changing Western thought systems that produced the work. Modern European art was mainly produced under the most recent system, but it is also the fulfillment of the two preceding ones - so we will look briefly at those too. The links you need are in the syllabus, and they will take you to the Paradigmatic History of Art section of this site. Note that while we are working through this material there will be short quizzes in each class.

Having equipped you to "read" and interpret the works, we will move to the second section of the course, which is also somewhat unusual and rather powerful. Instead of the grouped styles that are the more normal treatment, we are going to look at the work decade by decade. And we will set each decade's work against what I have called "social impactors". These are the events and changing conditions of life that had a conscious impact on the people who lived then - the kind of events that people talked about at work and at home, and that formed the lived-in context for the art that was produced.

You will find these social impactors listed in green in the review list, where most of them are linked to web sites that give you a very quick or clear overview. If you check out these links (which are equivalent to a reading list with about 60 texts), you'll "catch" the zeitgeist of the times very effectively. Feel free to recommend links or events that may be missing. Also in that review list, under the social impactors are lists of works you need to learn for the course. You need to learn the full identification and information about each work, as given in the review list, and there will be short in-class quizzes for identifications and terminology.

Apart from the quizzes, there will be a developing assignment over the semester. For this assignment, study (and fill out) the social impactors for any TWO consecutive decades, and the art that goes with the SECOND decade. Then you will prepare a 2000 word paper with annotated bibliography/web reference list in which you determine HOW LONG it takes for socially noticeable events to impact the artists, and what form that impact takes. For example, suppose you decide to work on the art of the 1960s for this assignment, then you need to study the impactors of the 1950s and 1960s both. You should have chosen your area of study and registered it with me by September 28th. You should give me a draft introduction, list of key works, and bibliography on October 12th; leave me a well-worked almost-final draft of the whole paper before you leave for Thanksgiving; and submit the final gradable copy on the last class, which is 14th December.

Your course grade will be an average of your quiz results and the main assignment. Keep all your assignments carefully. In the event of any queries, the professor's decision is final unless you can produce the original documentation.