VIS 1 Syllabus For Fall 2006

Introduction to Art-Making: Two-Dimensional Practices

Fall 2006
Mondays
19:00-20:50
PETERSON HALL 108
Course VIS 1
Section A00
Office hours: Mondays 15:00 to 17:00 VAF 602

Prerequisite: none required.

Instructor: Rubén Ortiz-Torres

General Course Description

An introduction to the concepts and techniques of art-making with specific reference to the artists and issues of the 20th century. Lectures and studio classes will examine the nature of images in relation to various themes. Drawing, painting, found objects and texts will be employed to construct a series of projects generated from visual and narrative sources.

Individual course description

Through a series of lectures the student will be encouraged and stimulated to engage art as a form of expression. The lectures will relate the work of different artists (mostly modern and contemporary) to different subject matter of interest. After each lecture the student will develop an art project in relation to it. Hopefully contemporary art will become a language to be understood, practiced and enjoyed by students as much as popular culture usually is.

Course requirements

The student is expected to attend a series of lectures and to create an art project in relation to each of them. The TA’s will supervise the realization of such projects.

Attendance

Three unjustified absences = F

Grading

The student will be evaluated according to the general guidelines of the school.

60 % Work produced in the class.
The whole purpose of the course is to enable the student to produce and understand art, therefore the evaluation of the work produced as a result of this will be the most important thing to consider. Form (30%), content (30%), professionalism (20%), and the technical skills acquired and displayed (growth and development [20%]) will be considered.

40% Class participation and critiques.
Attendance to the lectures is essential since they are the source of information and contact not just with contemporary art but more importantly with practicing artists.

Artistic merit has to be considered in order to award grades of excellence.

Ten Week Syllabus

Week 1. Art and self expression.
Sep 25 Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura, Eleanor Antin, American Splendor, Richard Bellingham, Orlan, Sadie Benning.
Project Create an artwork about yourself or using yourself as a mean of expression

Week 2. Art, simultaneity, collage, assemblage and fragmentation.
Oct 2 Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, Schwitters, Hockney, Rauschenberg, Bruce Conner, David Hammonds, Dinh Q. Lee.
Project Create an artwork, assembling, juxtaposing, collaging or remixing.

Week 3. Art, design, reason and function.
Oct 9 Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevitch, Leger, Lissitsky, Bauhaus, Op art and Minimalism, Sol Lewitt, Ligya Clark, Jorge Pardo, Pae White.
Project Create an artwork with a sense of synthesis, efficiency and/or functionality.

Week 4. Art and the irrational.
Oct 16 Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Grosz, Matta, Wilfredo Lam, Jackson Pollock, Paul Mc Carthy, Mike Kelley.
Project Create an artwork that deals with emotion, the unconscious, poetics or the irrational.

Week 5. Art and photography.
Oct 23 Degas, Manet, photorealism, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Lucas Samaras, Jeff Wall, Amy Adler.
Project Create an artwork that uses or is affected by the principles of the camera oscura or photography.

Week 6. Art and appropiation, resemantization & culture jamming.
Oct 30 Duchamp, John Heartfield, Guy Debord Barbara Kruger, Haim Steinbach, Bruce Conner, Jeff Koons, Yolanda Lopez, Craig Baldwin, hip hop.
Project Create an artwork recontextualizing, reorganizing or rearranging a previous object or image changing its meaning.

Week 7. Art and popular culture.
Nov 6 Rivera, Warhol, Jeffrey Vallance, Jeff Koons, Murakami, Cameron Jamie.
Project Create an artwork that uses or responds to popular culture. What is “high” and what is “low” culture? Who defines this?

Week 8. Art, site specifity and landscape.
Nov 13 Muralism, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, BAW/TAF, InSite, Krysztof Wodiczko, Center for Land and Use Interpretation.
Project Create an artwork for a specific context and place.

Week 9. Art , freedom and censorship.
Nov 20 “Degenerate” art, social realism and Mc Carthyism, Rivera, Siqueiros, Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Guerrilla Girls, Critical Art Ensemble.
Project Final Project

Week 10. Art and war.
Nov 27 Goya, Picasso, Golub, Sandow Birk.
Project Final Project