KEY: Readings marked in bold. Do them in time for the class that lists them.
PDA = Paradigmatic History of Art (link to left). The individual pages are printable.

Useful Link(s)

New Britain Museum of American Art - limited but good selection of American artists.

1.

INTRODUCTION TO COURSE
Ground rules, syllabus, navigating website, term paper assignment

2.

PARADIGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS (1) PDA on Classicism & Sensualism
Print out and read the Classical Truth, and Greatness pages
Print out and read Sensualism's Introduction, Moral Confrontation, and Taste pages
The Classical and Sensual Paradigms - recognizing and interpreting their forms of beauty and their spiritualized figures (the Idealization and the Romanticization, respectively). Understanding their spiritual and moral purposes and their effect on the appearance of art.

3.

PARADIGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS (2) PDA on Dangerous Beauty & Quietism
Print out and read Sensualism's Dangerous Beauty, page
Print out and read Quietism's Introduction, Relevance, and Paradox pages
The Quietist Paradigm and its forerunner - the discrediting of beauty, the need for the Sublime, recognizing and interpreting Temporal Plainness and the Objectified figure. Understanding the meditative purpose of Quietist art and the role of shock and paradox.

4.

PARADIGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS (3) PDA on Truth-Types
Print out and read the Truth Types page, and the ones linked to it if necessary (e.g. Compositional Types, False Picture Plane, Jumping Colors)
Recognizing and interpreting the five "truth-types" and what they contribute to the paradigms.

5.

CHAPTER 4 - AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, 1870s (207-269)
Europe and the Ideal: Powers (207-236); Europe and the Sensual: Whistler, Sargent (237-256)

6a.

Impressionism: Cassat (256-261), Chase (262-264)

6b.

CHAPTER 5 - THE GRITTY CITIES, c.1870-1914 (271-335)
Architecture (273-286)

7.

Eakins (286-303), Homer (303-316), Other Impressionists (264-269 from end ch4); Nostalgia: Harnett & Peto (316-320)

8.

The Ashcan School (323-335)
Metropolitan Lives - very nice virtual exhibition of the Ashcan School

9.

CHAPTER 6 - EARLY MODERNISM, c.1910-c.1930 (337-401)
Americans and Paris (337-348); Steiglitz (348-53); The Armory Show (353-357) reception of European artists (357-362) reception of American artists (362-370), Hartley 365-370

10.

City as subject (370-386); Precisionism: O'Keeffe, Demuth, Sheeler (386-395);

11.

Frank Lloyd Wright (395-401)
The Robie House - nice pair of pages showing inside & out, and linking to many other works by FLW. Useful "quick and dirty" way to get a sense of FLW's approach and intentions. See also this elevation to see what effect he originally intended for the street side of the Robie house.
Johnson Wax Buildings - lots of pics, inside and out, and links to many other FLW works, including several not covered by the link above.

12.

CHAPTER 7 - STREAMLINES AND BREADLINES, 1930s & 1940s (403-463)
Depression and the Manhattan skyscrapers (403-19)

13.

Realists: Hopper, Stuart Davis (422-437);

14.

Regionalists: Wood, Benton, Curry,

14b.

"Outsiders": Rivera and Lawrence (437-457);

15.

Industrial Design (458-63)

16.

CHAPTER 8 - THE EMPIRE OF SIGNS, 1945 ff (465-541)
European issues in the US, Picasso and the MOMA, Surrealists and Peggy Guggenheim, Mondrian in New York, overview of Cubism, Suprematism and Mondrian

17.

The (pure) Abstractionists: Calder (419-21 from ch 7); The Abstract Expressionists: Clement Greenberg (critic), Gorky, Graham, de Kooning (456-482)

18.

Pollock, Rothko (482-492)

19.

Still, Newman (491-497)

20.

Pop: Johns, Rauschenberg, (505-525)

21.

Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Warhol (525-541)

22.

CHAPTER 9 - THE AGE OF ANXIETY, 1960s ff (543-620)
Growing crisis in the Avante Garde, the role of museums, critics, and speculative business Post Painterly Abstraction (543-549)

23.

Reaction against Abstract Expressionism: Minimalism (557-570);

24.

Earth Art and Conceptual Art, (570-74) and (574-582);

25.

Figurative Art: Guston (582-588); Rothenberg (588-590);

26.

Art and business: 1980s art market & the collapse of art's credibility, bad artists & credulous collectors; art of social issues (590-620)

27.

CONCLUSION
Addressing the introduction's issue: What drives art? Whose issues does it address? What does a society need to provide artists if it wants them to produce art worthy of remark? Does America want this?