HART244 - 01 - What Is Modern Art?

Who, what, and when was modernism? And why is "modern" art? This course situates modernism from its fraught beginnings to its unverifiable demise. Rather than providing a total account of modernism, or an overview of modern art (broadly understood as the art of the twentieth century), the course seeks to provide guiding questions for further research by focusing on specific issues in its development. Students will be introduced to modernist and avant-garde responses and to the shifts in the social and political climate of specific contexts. We will focus on defining "the modern" and how this period had transformative effects on the notion of art: the indictment of the relationship between past and present, the avant-grade and its commitments, and the problematic engagement with the 'Other' at the root of the modernist revolution.