3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The Cold War years bore witness to some of the most radical developments in modern art. An abiding question for artists, writers, and political figures too during this period was what role—if any—could art perform in social and political life, and in the struggle between capitalism and communism in particular. This course examines the political viability of art as this concern was taken up by groups and individuals throughout the world in response to rapidly shifting geopolitical circumstances. Beginning with the visual cultures of the United States and Soviet Union, the course will also examine artistic responses to the conditions of Cold War existence in and beyond countries of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Proceeding roughly chronologically, the course is divided into twelve units following the art of the US, USSR, Western and Eastern Europe, China, and Japan, among others. It treats a wide variety of media as painting and sculpture, canonically privileged in the history of Western art, ceded ground to new forms of practice such as performance, film, and a deep, critical engagement with mass culture. In so doing, this course provides at once a global history of modern art and visual culture and a critical interrogation of their relationships to social change and political life during the 20th century and beyond.