Mitchell Herrmann

This course follows the transition from late modernist art after World War II to the heterogeneous practices of contemporary art in the 21st century. Attention will be paid to formative artistic movements—such as Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance, and Institutional Critique—as well as to how marginalized artists continually challenged the hegemony of the mainstream artworld with political activism along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and class. The final section of the course will examine current trends, including postcolonial art, digital technologies, Indigenous art, and ecological art in an era of climate change. The course will include a field trip to a New York City museum, where students will select artworks for their own research papers. Other assignments will include visual analysis, a comparative research paper, and a group presentation. Alternative proposals for final projects, such as exhibition designs, are also welcome. One weekly lecture on the history and theory of each topic will prepare students for weekly group conferences involving close reading of primary and secondary sources, visual analysis of artworks, and guided discussion.

This seminar in art theory and curatorial practice will explore ecological aesthetics in the era of anthropogenic climate change. The course’s guiding question will be: What forms might an aesthetic experience of nature take when it no longer privileges the human observer but, rather, cultivates an equality and reciprocity between all forms of life? Possible answers will be drawn from recent work in critical theory, Black studies, Indigenous studies, queer theory, continental philosophy, and science and technology studies. Case studies on the work of selected contemporary artists will complement the theoretical frameworks under consideration. The course’s topics will include: post-Enlightenment aesthetics of nature, biopower, vitalism, post- and antihumanisms, plant philosophies, bacteria and fungi studies, and deep time. The course will also incorporate a curatorial practicum that will allow students to participate in the production of an on-campus exhibition exploring ecological themes. In addition to exercises on exhibition writing, model making, and art installation, we will meet with artworld professionals working at museums in the New York area.