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Description 

We might agree that any successful invocation of the art object in the present, whether painting or other, requires mediation on the part of the artist. That is to say, the artist begins by necessity with questioning “What is art?” As such, the work of art passes through several permutations of mediation, the means of which vary greatly. Mediation can be technological in nature, as with the computer-configured painting of Inka Essenhigh, Franz Ackermann, and John Pomara. It can also be performative and borne of the theatrics of placement and the human body, as in the work of Richard Tuttle and Coco Fusco.
Mediation, what might be considered a form of productive doubt, marks the supercession of what began over a century ago in the writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, with his teleological ordering of art’s development through time. For Hegel, art was but the material incarnation of spirit. According to his philosophy, spirit would ultimately move beyond the need to take form as art and dematerialize into pure thought. Art, the physical thing, would thus become obsolete, or so it seemed. Though conceptual artists are wont to distance themselves from the Hegelian trajectory, the “dematerialization of the work of art” at the hand of conceptual artists in the 1970s seemed to be but the apotheosis of Hegel’s aesthetics. After this temporary death of the art object arose new forms of art, largely bereft of the traditional tenets of the avant-garde. No longer would art pose a social promise or mode of resistance. Rather, artists made art that went along with the market place, mimicking it and selling to the highest bidder. Cast in another light, the transformation, if not demise, of “critical thinking” in art (modes of resistance and the critique of capitalism, for example) marks perhaps not the end of the avant-garde but the trigger of its mutation into something entirely other.

This seminar aims to:

1.) Investigate the disappearance and reappearance of the object over the last forty years according to at least three lines of intermingling but distinct inquiry: the Hegelian sublation of art into philosophy; the Marxist-situationist critique of the commodity; and emergent art practices – painting, photography, and video – in the present based on new forms of technology.
2.) Query the standing of form, process and beauty within this rubric of dematerialization.
3.) Query the existence of the avant-garde in the twentieth century and the avant-garde in the present.
4.) Develop a new discussion of aesthetics based on the coalescence of art, technology and political economy.

Course Requirements

1.) REVIEW – The Art of Richard Tuttle is an exhibition currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art.  You must write a three- to four-page journalistic review of the show.  Your models for writing are the reviews of art, architecture, books and film in the New York Times.  No research other than familiarizing yourself with the review format and critic’s voice is necessary.  Due date:  Tuesday, October 3. [25%]

2.) PRESENTATION – Students will be required to make an introductory presentation on an artist or critic.  Each presentation should include visuals.  Each of you is responsible for guiding thirty minutes of class time.  The length of the presentation should not exceed fifteen minutes, leaving fifteen minutes for discussion during the class.  This presentation will provide each student with the opportunity to do preliminary research for the larger research assignment of the course, the essay described below.  Please be certain to sign up for a presentation in one seminar during the term.  Dates of presentations: November 7, 14, 21, and 28. [25%]

3.) ESSAY – Each student will write one essay that is fifteen pages in length.  The subject of the essay will emerge from the seminar presentations.  This assignment is to be an exercise in research, critical thinking and persuasive writing.  While falling under the greater themes of the seminars, the subjects of the essays should be highly focused.  Students should arrange to meet with the professor in office hours to discuss topics.  The essay must be double-spaced and include a title page with the title of the essay underlined and student’s information, a bibliography, and end or footnotes.  Due date:  Tuesday, December 5. [25%]

4.) ATTENDANCE and PARTICIPATION – Each student is required to do the reading before class, to attend each seminar, and participate with authenticity and critical verve. [25%]

Texts

There are books available for you at the bookstore and on reserve at Hamon Arts Library. The following is a list of required, optional and reserve texts for the course.

Required-
Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art (Aesthetics) Volume 1, trans. by T. M. Knox
Rosiland Krauss,
“A Voyage on the North Sea”: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde

Reserve-
Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, eds., Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations
Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties
Thierry de Duve, Arielle Pelenc, and Boris Groys,
Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century
Jonathan Gilmore, book review of Hegel’s Art History and the Critique of Modernity & Art of the Modern Age:
Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger in The Art Bulletin, Sept. 2002; available on-line at JSTOR
Ken Knabb, ed., Situationist International Anthology
Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art
David A. Ross, ed., 010101: Art in Technological Times
Michael Rush, Video Art
Sohnya Sayres, ed., The 60s without Apology
Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason
Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, eds., The New Media Reader

Policy on Attendance