Sarah Hamill

This course departs from hegemonic accounts of modernism to tell the story of modernism through the work of underrepresented artists—artists of the Black Atlantic, queer and trans artists, artists of color, women artists, and artists seen as “outside” the canon. Looking geographically to Europe, North America, South America, and East Asia, we will investigate how artists responded to fascism, colonization and anti-colonial protest, war and mass migration, the legacies of enslavement, and rationalized forms of labor. We will look to discourses of leftist politics and collectivity, feminist struggle, abolitionism and antiracist discourse. What representational strategies did artists use to respond to modernity, to remake the world anew? The emphasis of this course is on the global plurality of modernism, shifting our understanding of where modernism was produced, when, and by whom. This course serves as an introduction to art history in the sense that it will equip students with the basic tools of close, slow looking and of descriptive writing about art, art historical research, and practices of curatorial display while also introducing students to broad and diverse histories of modern art. The course will also include field trips to New York City museums. This course is a lecture-seminar hybrid: One lecture a week will introduce you to the broader movements; weekly group conferences will look at specific case studies and scholarly approaches to writing about contemporary art.

This course looks closely at the art museum as a site of contest and critique: How are museums not neutral spaces but, rather, powerful institutions that shape narratives about the objects that they collect and display? Readings will consider the origins of the modern art museum in Europe in the 17th century and explore how the conventions of display impacted art’s reception and meaning. We will analyze histories of institutional critique to look at how artists have taken aim at the museum as a site of discursive power, raising questions about the kinds of value judgments that go into determining what counts as art. We will look closely at current discourses of decolonizing the museum, weigh how museums should confront their colonizing histories of systemic racism, and explore histories of exhibitions of Indigenous and African and African Diasporic art, as well as how museums shape historical memory. This course will include field trips and conversations with visiting speakers. Because this course considers the historiography of art, some previous course work in art history is required; but with its broad coverage, this course will have something for everyone regardless of their background.

This seminar introduces students to the relationships of art, science, and the environment from the 19th century to the present, along with what it means to look closely at visual representation. We will consider the European tradition of landscape painting as a cultural formation, telegraphing ideologies about industry and Western expansionism, and also look closely at indigenous representations of the land as a counterhistory. We will consider 19th-century discourses on ecology, pollution, and urbanization and painting and also take up sculptural Biomorphism in the early 20th century as a critique of industrialization. Readings will look closely at earthworks, site-specific sculpture, and body art in the 1970s, along with discourses on ecology and systems theory that were central to artists. And we will engage contemporary discourses across the globe on eco-aesthetics, eco-criticism, and artistic responses to climate change and globalization. How have artists and curators enacted ecological modes of thinking in visual form? What do those projects tell us about changing definitions of nature and human, of sustainability, climate change, and Anthropocene? Readings will cull from art history, ecology, geography, political theory, and environmental politics. This course will entail several field trips to area collections and include visiting speakers.

What is a photograph? This course looks at that question from many different vantage points, including photography theory, social history, art history, media theory, and material culture studies. How is a photograph both a transcription of the world—an index, decal, or one-to-one transfer of a thing—and a representation, a culturally-encoded image that tells us about how we see ourselves and others in the world? We each hold thousands of photographs on our phones, but they are digital, disembodied, and dematerialized images that are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. What can the history of photography (from 1839 to the present) teach us about the medium’s materiality—or how photographs were to be found in albums, lavish frames, photobooks, archives, the wall in a museum, or as slides projected on a screen? What do these material histories tell us about what photography was—and now is? This course will look closely at specific themes within the history and theory of photography, including: documentary aesthetics and discourses of colonization; photography’s archival practices and forms of social control; identity politics and the photographic representation of visibility; digitization and contemporary photography; globalization, labor, and photojournalism; and the ethics and politics of the photography of war and violence. Not a comprehensive survey, this course instead looks at focused case studies structured chronologically. We will do close readings of theoretical and primary source texts and consider scholarly, literary, and aesthetic texts. The course also places strong emphasis on what it means to write about and describe photographs. Whenever possible, we will look at photographs in person. Individual conference meetings will alternate biweekly with group activities that may include field trips to New York City collections, writing workshops, and research sessions in the library.

What can art tell us about humans’ relationships to land and environment? How does art shape our understanding of climate crisis and the Anthropocene or how humans have indelibly altered the Earth? This course offers a history of modern and contemporary art, from the 19th century to the present, through the lenses of the environment, ecology, and climate crisis. In the fall, we will explore the category of landscape painting, asking how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of imperialism, settler colonialism, and Western expansionism through the genre of landscape. We will also explore how Indigenous artists defined place, land, and embodiment as counter-histories to the dominant white, Western norm and look at representations of pollution, atmosphere, and climate across media. In the spring, we will consider how 20th- and 21st-century artists became environmentalists, ecofeminists, and environmental-justice activists across media. How have artists across the globe visualized the effects of climate change, making tangible geological shifts that might seem invisible or happening elsewhere? How can art help us understand the past and shape discourses for the future? As an FYS course in art history, this course will introduce you to the skills of close reading, visual analytical writing, and library research. Assignments will include visual analysis essays, reading responses, peer reviews, a Wikipedia editing project, and a curatorial project. In the spring, this FYS course will participate in the Mellon-funded Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) course cluster in climate justice, which will entail attending lectures and a student symposium on climate justice, as well as collaborative dialogues between students in different disciplines. Individual conference meetings will alternate biweekly with group activities that may include field trips to area museums, writing workshops, and research sessions. Conference projects will entail writing a long-form research paper or presenting your research in an alternate format, such as a podcast or an online exhibition.

What was modernism, and how do we describe the shift to what is called contemporary art? Beginning with Henri Matisse, the first half of the course will examine how modernists found a new visual language to navigate a world ravaged by fascism and war; altered by industry, technology, and rationalized forms of labor; and tested by shifting national, ethnic, and gendered identities. What representational strategies did artists use to respond to this upheaval? The fall semester serves as an introduction to the historical avant-gardes in the United States, Mexico, and Europe—including Fauvism, expressionism, cubism, Dada, surrealism, muralism, and abstract expressionism—but it will be organized around thematic questions: What is abstraction as a turn away from the modernized world? What is the relationship between high art and mass culture? What were the political ambitions of modern art, and how were they vocalized materially? How were artists working at the margins speaking back to what they saw to be dominant forms of representation? The second half of the course examines a sea-change that began in the 1960s, as artists tested modernist categories of painting and sculpture; challenged relationships between high art and mass media; incorporated new technologies such as television and video into their art; and questioned the hierarchies of art’s production, reception, and display through protest, activism, and participation. By the end of the ’60s, art faced a crisis that affected its production, medium, spectatorship, and institutions, leading German philosopher Theodor Adorno to note the loss of art’s self-evidence. Looking closely at the art of Europe and the United States and at exchanges with Japan and Brazil, the second half of the course explores a moment of radical artistic critique in which artists transformed traditional categories of artistic production and challenged social, political, and cultural norms. In the last 20 years, all of this shifted with the return to traditional categories of painting and sculpture and the rise of the global art market. We will conclude with a look at contemporary practices as a shift away from avant-garde radicality. Although the course introduces students to some of the issues surrounding art since the 2000s, the main focus in the spring will be to provide a historical context for art from roughly 1960 to 2000—and students will be introduced to major movements, including happenings, pop art, Fluxus, minimalism, conceptual art, site-specificity, Earthworks, feminism, video art, institutional critique, installation, and activist art. Readings will vary from theoretical and scholarly appraisals to artists’ writings and manifestos. Visits to area museums will be part of the curriculum.

How have artists visualized the climate crisis from the vantage point of environmental justice? How can art help us understand the past and shape discourses for the future? This course looks closely at modern and contemporary art through the lenses of the environment, ecology, and climate justice. We will ask how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of settler colonialism through the genre of landscape and explore how Indigenous artists have defined place, land, and embodiment as counter histories to a dominant settler norm. We will take up the sanitization of enslavement through landscape painting and consider contemporary representations of reparative landscapes by Black artists working in the wake of enslavement, including artworks that engage the effects of climate crisis on BIPOC communities. We will look at the aesthetics and politics of representations of climate change and what it means to visualize petrochemical and extractivist sites and the communities impacted by them. We will consider artists engaging in forms of attention, slowness, indigenous futurity, and care work in dialogue with a Heimbold Gallery exhibition on climate justice and care. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations and field trips. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Conference projects will entail writing a long-form research paper or presenting your research in a digital humanities format.

This course is an introduction to modern and contemporary art from 1880 to the present. In the fall semester, we will explore modernist histories of art, investigating how artists responded to a world that was ravaged by fascism, colonialism, and war; altered by industry, technology, and rationalized forms of labor; and tested by shifting national, ethnic, and gendered identities. What representational strategies did artists use to respond to those upheavals? How is the history of Western avant-gardist art also one of colonization and cultural appropriation? The course serves as an introduction to the historical avant-gardes in the United States, Mexico, and Europe—including Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Vorticism, Dada, Surrealism, Muralism, the Harlem Renaissance, and Abstract Expressionism—and to alternative modernisms that fall outside the canon, including so-called “outsider” art, queer modernisms, and modernisms in India, Japan, and Latin America. In the spring, we will explore a sea change that began in the 1960s—against a changing social, economic, and political sphere—as artists tested modernist categories of painting and sculpture; incorporated new technologies such as television and video into their art; and questioned the hierarchies of art’s production, reception, and display through protest, activism, and audience participation. We will look closely at how artists embraced radicality by protesting for civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights and by claiming an antiwar politics. In the last 20 years, all of this shifted with the return to traditional categories of painting and sculpture and the rise of the global art market. Although we will look at art since the 2000s, the main focus is art from 1960 to 2000, including Gutai, happenings, neoconcretism, pop art, Fluxus, minimalism, global conceptual art, site-specificity, earthworks, the Chicano Art Movement, AfriCOBRA, feminism, video art, institutional critique, installation, activist art, participatory art, relational aesthetics, craft, and new media. Throughout, we will focus on specific artworks and gain a vocabulary for close looking while also attending to primary sources (manifestos, letters, statements, poems) and secondary art historical and theoretical accounts. Group conferences will closely investigate works by a single artist. Assignments will include visual analysis papers based on works in New York City collections, exams, and reading responses.

This course is an introduction to modern and contemporary art from 1860 to 1955 and the first of two sequential surveys offered this year. (Students may take either or both.) What was modernism? And how did artists respond to a world ravaged by war, fascism, and imperialism? How did they engage or escape from industrial forms of life and explore shifting national, ethnic, and gendered identities? A central topic of the course is how the history of the Western avant-garde was also the history of colonization and cultural appropriation. And even as the course serves as an introduction to canonical historical avant-gardes in the United States, Mexico, and Europe (Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Vorticism, Dada, Surrealism, Muralism, the Harlem Renaissance, and Abstract Expressionism), we will also explore alternative modernisms—including so-called “outsider” art, queer modernisms, and modernisms in India, Japan, and Latin America. This course is an introduction to the discipline of art history, so students will gain a vocabulary for slow looking, learn the values of different kinds of writing about art (manifestos, letters, statements, poems, and art historical and theoretical accounts), and consider art in its social and political contexts. Lectures will offer a broad overview, and 90-minute weekly group conferences will closely investigate artworks by a single, underrepresented artist. Assignments will include visual analysis essays, weekly informal worksheets, brief reading responses, short Zoom presentations, and research essays on underrepresented artists. Students will have the opportunity to work with librarians to research and write new pages on modernist artists across the globe who are not represented on Wikipedia and upload them to that site. Throughout, we will be thinking about the kinds of assumptions and value judgments that go into deciding a modernist canon and how we can create and contribute alternative histories to the discipline.

How do we understand sculpture’s literalism, its insistent presence in time and space? Taking our cues from the histories of sculpture, readings in sculptural aesthetics, and theories of objects and social space, this focused seminar examines how modern and contemporary artists have defined sculpture in relation to the body, light, and touch; the pedestal, museum, and public sphere; commodities and everyday objects; and other media such as photography, film, video, and sound. We begin with the legacies of neoclassicism and the fraught status of sculpture in modernism and conclude our story with large-scale, immersive installations in contemporary art. Along the way, we find artists remaking the category of sculpture by blurring the boundaries between public and private; using reproducible and two-dimensional media; and making objects that incorporated commodities, things, bodies, and detritus. The course will touch on discourses of modernism, surrealism, minimalism, site-specificity, installation, and participatory art while offering students a toolkit for thinking about theories of objects and relational aesthetics; race, representation, and monumentality; social and public space; and histories of installation and display. Exploring a range of focused case studies—whenever possible, in situ—this course asks what a 20th-century sculpture was and how it operated in the public realm. This course will also entail a focused consideration of the Bruce Nauman exhibition at MoMA and a field trip to Dia:Beacon; students will be encouraged to focus their conference papers on works seen locally.

This course looks closely at the art museum as a site of contest and critique: How are museums not neutral spaces but, rather, powerful institutions that shape narratives about the objects they collect and display? Readings will consider the origins of the modern art museum in Europe in the 17th century and explore how the histories and conventions of display impacted art’s reception and meaning. We will analyze the history of institutional critique in the West in the 1970s to look at how artists have taken aim at the museum as a site of discursive power, raising questions about the kinds of value judgments that go into determining what counts as art. We will also explore recent trends in curatorial practice toward the artist as curator: What happens when the museum becomes a medium for contemporary artists? Lastly, we will investigate recent protests at museums around issues of representation, patronage, and power. We will use the opportunities opened by remote learning to engage with and interview curators and activists across the globe in our Zoom seminars. And we will investigate what access and protest looks like in this virtual age, as museums take their collections online and activism takes different shapes. Because this course considers the historiography of art, some previous course work in art history is expected; but with its broad historical and topical coverage, this course will have something for everyone—regardless of their background in art history.

What is a photograph? The question seems simple enough, given the pervasiveness of photographs in our image-saturated world. Yet, as this course will explore, a photograph is a representational framework with competing rhetorical meanings. On the one hand, it is a verisimilitude of the visual world, a proof, resemblance, or transcription. On the other, a photograph is a pictorial invention, a fabricated image that is shot through with its own social and pictorial conventions, located in part through the photograph's framing, lighting, cropping, and point of view. Tracing these contradictory definitions, this course explores how the photograph has been defined and tested from its origins. The seminar will engage—through methodologies of close reading—the canonical texts of photographic theory from key 19th-century sources to modernist and postmodernist texts, as well as more recent writing on race, photography, and the colonization of the body; photography and identity; theories of the archive and representations of labor; photography, war, and violence; and intersections between photography and film. Our discussions of theoretical texts will also be grounded in a consideration of photographs themselves, so that students learn close, analytical visual reading. We will learn to think broadly and diversely about a photograph as an image, an archive, a display, a material thing, and a commodity. We will rely on New York’s rich photographic collections to ground our discussions, and students will be encouraged to focus their conference papers on works seen locally.