Description

In this module we think about the changing conditions of the sculptural object since the mid-1950s in America and Europe.  We track the legacies of the surrealist objet trouvé and Duchampian readymade, strategies of the neo-avant-garde, the rise of the Minimalist object, and its later dematerialization into a range of ‘conceptual’ and process-based and performative works.  We approach these various reconfigurations of the object through a range of theoretical approaches, drawing on art critical and historical writing both from the period and subsequently, as we track the various ways in which the ‘object’ has been understood in the modern period. 

We spend some time thinking about the paradigm shifts that occurred to the sculptural object throughout the period, from its dominance in the mid-sixties to its subsequent disintegration.  The consequences of those shifts continue to shape much of today’s art practice, and we look at the persistence of the modernist object in the work of some contemporary artists.

Objectives

By the end of the module, students should have acquired:

• familiarity with a range of artistic and critical practices in modern and contemporary art.
• knowledge of a range of theoretical and art historical texts and art works relating to questions of installation, participation, and display and why these came to matter to how histories of the period have subsequently been written.
• the ability to think critically and carefully about the art studied from both a theoretical and historical perspective.
• the skills required to both prepare and present a coherent, well-structured and suitably illustrated oral presentation to a group of peers, including the ability to convey not only information but a clearly mapped argument.

Preliminary Reading

• Applin, Jo, Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012)
• Fer, Briony, The Infinite Line: Re-making Art after Modernism, (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2005)
• Krauss, Rosalind, Passages in Modern Sculpture, (New York and London, 1977)
• Minimalism, ed. James Meyer, (London, 2001) 
• O’Doherty, Brian, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986)
• Phillips, Lisa, The American Century: Art and Culture 1950-2000, (New York, 2000)
• Potts, Alex, The Sculptural Imagination, (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000) 
• Williams, Richard J., After Modern Sculpture: Art in the United States and Europe 1965-70, (Manchester, 2000)