As registration for Spring 2012 academic
courses begins, I have been fielding questions regarding new courses I will be
teaching in January. In addition to previously taught courses which I will be
instructing again, FPA
111: Issues in Fine and Performing Arts (SFU) and ARTH
1130:Introduction to Film Studies (Kwantlen), I will also be involved
with teaching a new upper level seminar—see detailed description below. Once again I am
looking forward to a dynamic and engaging term in all classes!
Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Thursdays
4:00-6:50pm, Fir D128)
This seminar examines the shifting field of
visual art and culture in Europe and North America during the first half of the
twentieth century (c. 1900-1955) with special emphasis given to the movements
of the historical avant-garde. Considering these major movements (such as Fauvism, Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism) in the context
of the social, economic and political upheavals of this complex and
multi-faceted time period, key to the course will be the broader question of
modernity itself and its transformation through a time of radical
technological, social and political change.
 |
Blindman. Ed.
Henri-Pierre Roche, Beatrice Wood,
and Marcel Duchamp. New York, 1917.
|
Topics such as the social and
representative meanings of abstraction, the internationalization of art
production, the development of modernism and its attendant theories, and the
impact of new technologies on the production and dissemination of art objects
will be explored. And while the seminar itself will be organized around the
familiar “isms” that have historically constructed the canon of avant-garde
studies, careful consideration will be given to the fabricated nature of these
designations, reading instances of art practice for aesthetic significance
together with connections and responses to specific historical and social
developments. Traditional media such as painting, drawing and sculpture will be
examined alongside the newer media of photography, assemblage, film and
collage.