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COURSES FALL 2008

Histart 192F.3

UG SEMINAR: 19th-20th CENTURY ART: MODES OF PRODUCTION (4 units) Mondays, 9-12 425 Doe, CCN: 05613 Tom McDonough

At a moment when contemporary art seems to be embracing the latest models of outsourcing and computerized fabrication, we pause to take a look back at modernism’s conflicted relation with industrial production. Just what was the artwork’s relation to the dominant mode of production during the period stretching from the 1880s to the 1960s? This seminar will open with a set of classic readings addressing industrial production, Taylorism, deskilling, and monopoly capital, as well as their social relations. We will then examine a series of case studies of the artwork’s imbrication with production and labor, from Seurat and Van Gogh through Robert Morris. Students will develop research projects that continue these investigations through to the present, as we enter a post-Fordist world of flexible production, telematics, and intellectual labor.

 

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