AHST 3320 Section 501
Course in Contemporary Art: Kinetics of Urban Sprawl
Dr. Charissa N. Terranova
Spring 2008
Monday, 7:00-9:45

                  
John Baldessari, National City Blvd, 1996
Dan Graham, Picture Window Piece, 1974

             
This course is a lecture survey that focuses on the movement, transformation, and cultural production -- or "kinetics" -- of urban sprawl. Lectures will focus on the following subjects: Pop art and domesticity, Conceptual art and the automobile, the Federal Highway Act of 1956 and Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" speech of 1961, urban sprawl as a military defense mechanism, Case-Study houses in Los Angeles, Eichler Homes in San Francisco, Levittown, films of Charles and Ray Eames, the highway aesthetic of Eero Saarinen's architecture, Russel Wright and the invention of "lifestyle," and Googie architecture. The final portion of the class will be devoted to a discussion of the automobile, highway, and urban sprawl in terms of cybernetics and the idea of a cybernetic totality.

Goals of Course

• Learn and engage the history of postwar urbanization and its cultural and political ramifications.
• Learn and engage the history of postwar modernism in the field of home and industrial design.
• Learn and engage the history of Pop Art and Conceptualism.
• Learn and engage the discourse of cybernetics.
• Learn how to think critically about contemporary art and architecture, and its cultural and political ramifications.
• Learn how to identify the salient and successfully formal components of a work of art, whether a painting, work of conceptual art, or a performance.
• Habituate close and analytical reading of texts.
• Hone critical writing skills through two short written assignments.
• Habituate engagement with the arts community of DFW through assigned visits to a museum and gallery.

Requirements

Attendance is mandatory.  After two unexcused absences, your grade will be lowered by one-half of a letter grade for each subsequent unexcused absence.  You are required to attend every lecture that is scheduled on the syllabus and complete the assigned reading prior to class.

                  Quizzes, Exams, Assignments and Grading

Your grade is calculated based on the following:

1.) Weekly in-class quiz on assigned reading.  At the beginning of each class, you will be given one question based on the reading assignment to be answered in no more than one paragraph.  30% of your final grade
2.) Mid-term and final exam.  There will be two exams, a mid-term on March 3 and final on May 5. The exams will consist of slide identification, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and matching.  The exam material will be culled from the lectures, reading assignments and class discussions.  The final exam will be cumulative. 40% of your final grade; 20% each
3.) Three two-page written assignments:  30% of your final grade; 10% each.

• Assignment #1 Due February 18 The Wendy and Emery Reeves Collection is located on the third floor of the Dallas Museum of Art.  Please write a 2-page analysis of the interior of the couple’s bedroom.  Your analysis should describe the setting not in terms of “beauty” conventionally understood but in terms of “taste” as a construct of political economy.  I want you to think about how the space of their bedroom signifies in terms of class and social structure, or how “beauty” in this instance is a matter of “taste” – and the display of luxury and collected objects.
• Assignment #2 Due March 31 Please take a photograph through your car or DART window while on the road.  Identify where you were when you took the image.  Using digital technology, glue or adhesive tape, upload or mount the photograph to your paper and describe the experience of seeing the landscape from the automobile.  Your essay may describe the architecture, roads, highways, frame of the automobile, others in surrounding cars and on street corners, and the space-time experience of movement through the landscape.
• Assignment #3 Due April 28 Please choose a neighborhood in the city, identify it by photograph and street or area name and explain how it constitutes an “automotive ecology.

Books for Purchase

The reading assignments are on reserve except for the following three texts, which are available for you at the bookstore:

• William Gibson, Neuromancer.
• Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies
• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media:  the Extensions of Man

Reserve Readings

All additional course readings are available through Electronic Course Reserves.  You may access those readings at the following URL using the password “sprawl.”

http://utdallas.docutek.com/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=370

Film Lab/Film Screenings

You will have four days where you have mandatory film labs, screenings outside of the class of assigned films to be discussed the following week in class.  Exact time, date and location are TBA.  The film labs are as follows:

• Week of January 28: Screening of Film and Film Clips by Charles and Ray Eames
• Week of April 7: Screening of Film:  Falling Down
• Week of April 14: Screening of Film: Blade Runner
• Week of April 21: Screening of Film:  Death Proof from Grindhouse