This course aims to provide students with a critical and theoretical vocabulary for the analysis and understanding of contemporary art. It examines the way artists from the 1970s reconsidered the artistic object, the role of the artist, and status of the viewer in artistic production. The course focuses on the readymade and the concept of appropriation, the redefinition of the medium and the relations between the body of the viewer and the art work, and the relations between the political and the aesthetic in critical artistic practices. Special emphasis will be given to the status and role of contemporary art in the context of globalization surrounding issues of participation, collectivity and activism.