HART280 - 02 - Art Since 1945

In this course we analyze several individual practices and group movements from 1945 to the present. Instead of adhering to the distilled summaries of a textbook, we engage art of this period at less of a remove. Students come to comprehend the difficulty and subjectivity involved in formulating a history of art by struggling to grasp one viewpoint, and then by considering similarities, differences, and distinctions of degree between it and other viewpoints. Through this firsthand experience, students weave together an understanding of art history that acknowledges the true variety and complexity of art at any given moment in the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first.