Tel Aviv University

Art History Department

Postwar: Art After the Atomic Bomb (1945-1969)

Spring Semester

Dr. Rachel Perry

Thursday 14-16:00. 

Office Hours: By appointment.  I can be reached at 054-772-1169.  Email: perryrub@bezeqint.net

Course Description: 

This course surveys artistic production in Europe and the United States in the postwar period, from the atomic bomb and the liberation of the camps to the student protests of the late sixties (1945-1969).  Beginning with Abstract Expressionism, we will place major artists and movements (Color Field Painting, Pop, Independent Group, Happenings, Arte Povera, Cobra, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Performance, and Earthworks) in their broader cultural and sociopolitical context.  Across Europe, the reconstruction was marked by purges and denazification, ambitious rebuilding programs and the impact of the Marshall Plan, the creation of UNESCO, the painful process of decolonization.  Did New York “steal” the idea of modern art?  How did American artists engage with and respond to the Cold War, Existentialist philosophy, the rise of a consumer “culture industry,” the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war?  Course readings combine art historical accounts with artists’ own writings and art criticism from the period.  Particular attention will be given to reception.

Course Requirements and Grade Distribution:

1. Class Participation                                                  10%
2. In Class Mid-Term Exam                                       40%
3. In Class Final  Exam                                                50%

Class participation: Regular and punctual attendance is crucial.  Because this class only meets once a week, it is critical that you come to class having done all of the required reading and ready to discuss new concepts and arguments in class discussions.  PDF files of assigned articles and other documents may be downloaded or printed directly from the Moodle website.  Most of the readings for the course come from these major textbooks:

• David Joselit, American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, 2003).
• Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent  (Yale, 1996).
• Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, and David Joselit, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, third edition, volume 2 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016).

oA Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Blackwell).

• Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965, Okwui Enwezor, Katy Siegel, Ulrich Wilmes eds. (Munich: Haus der Kunst, 2016).

Midterm exam: Consists of identifications, comparisons and a short essay question to be selected from a list of options, this in-class examination covers the first half of the course.  

Final exam: Covering the second half of the course, this in-class examination is identical to the midterm in all but one respect: it features an additional, longer essay question of a cumulative nature. The identifications and comparisons are not cumulative.

Film Screenings: Film screenings are scheduled throughout the semester both in class and as homework. 

• Jackson Pollock ’51 (Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg), 1951
• Warhol, Empire, Blow job, 1964
• Emile Antonio, Painters Painting, 1972 https://youtu.be/k9P-4Xzv0ho
• Robert Hughes, American Visions https://youtu.be/ZI-BjmNoxdk
• Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 https://youtu.be/0CqDVbZdK3I

There are no pre-requisites for this course.  All reading material is in English.

Course Outline

Week 1 (March 8): Introduction: The Fall of Paris?

• Okwui Enwezor, “The Judgment of Art: Postwar and Artistic Worldliness,” in Postwar

Week 2 (March 15): Europe After the Rain: Zero Hour

Readings:

• Foster, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Wols
• Jean Dubuffet, “Anti-cultural Positions” (1951) in Selz
• Rosenberg, “The Fall of Paris”
• Serge Guilbaut, “Brushes, Sticks & Stains: Addressing Some Cultural Issues in New York and Paris After World War II,” Be-Bomb
• Guilbaut, “Postwar Painting Games”

Week 3 (March 22): Made in the USA?  Abstract Expressionism

• Joselit, 9-32.
• Foster, 380-386; 387-391
• Harold Rosenberg, “American Action Painters”
• Artists’ statements in Stiles and Selz: Pollock, 22-24; de Kooning, 197-199; Newman, 24-26; Rothko, 26; Alfred Barr, “The New American Painting,” 1952, 42–43.

Pesach: March 28 – April 6

Week 4 (April 12): Action Painting, Color Field, Post Painterly Abstraction

• Joselit 33-50
• Foster, 400-404; 477-482
• Artists’ statements in Stiles & Selz: Frankenthaler, 28-31; Noland, 94-98.

Recommended:

• Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”; “American Type Painting,” (1958); “Avant-Garde and Kitsch" 1939, in Art in Theory, 539-49.

• Michael Fried, “Three American Painters” (1965)

Yom Haatzmaut (April 19) NO CLASS

Week 5 (April 26): Neo-Dada and Pop: Cage, Johns and Rauschenberg

• Joselit, 56-63
• Foster, 406–10; 442–448; 462 (Cold War)

Week 6 (May 3): Midterm Exam

Week 7 (May 10): Independent Group, Nouveaux Réalisme, Cobra, POP

• Joselit, 64-94
• Crow, 15-37; 39-67; 69-103
• Foster, 483–7; 530-5 (Lichtenstein, Warhol); 513-517; 530-535
• Claes Oldenburg, “Documents from The Store"; “I am for an art…”
• Richard Hamilton, "For the Finest Art, Try Pop." (1961)
• "Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson." (1963)
• "Roy Lichtenstein: Lecture to the College Art Association." (1964)
• Lawrence Alloway, “Popular Culture and Pop Art”

Week 8 (May 17): The Beats, Environments, Happenings, Black Mountain, Fluxus

• Joselit, 50-55;  97-106; 117-126
• Crow, Rise of the Sixties, 123-133

• Foster, 375-379; 453-458; 488–93; 498-501

• Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock” Art News 57 (October 1958); “Guidelines for Happenings” (1965) in Stiles and Selz, 833-8.

Week 9 (May 24): Minimalism, Process, and Anti-Form

• Joselit, 106-115
• Foster, 508-512; 536-539; 544-548; 578-581
• Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power”
• Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood”
• Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture,” “Anti-Form” (1968)
• Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” “Jackson Pollock,”
• Bruce Glaser, “Questions for Stella and Judd”

Week 10 (May 31): Conceptual Art: The Dematerialized Object           

• Joselit, 129-139; 161-165
• Foster, 571-577
• Stiles & Selz: LeWitt, 822-827; Kosuth, 840-847; Baldessari, 890-894; Joseph Kosuth, “Art after Philosophy” [1969]
• Tony Godfrey, “What is Conceptual Art?”
• Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October (Winter 1990), 105-43.

Week 11 (June 7): Art Workers: Activist art, Feminism and Institutional Critique

• Joselit, 165-7
• Foster, 589-592
• Crow, 135-159; 161-181
• Art Workers Coalition Statement of Demands, 1970
• Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Maintenance Art,” 1960
• Lucy Lippard, ed., Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
• Dan Graham, “Presentation to the Art Worker’s Coalition”
• Hans Haacke, “Artist’s Statement”

Week 12 (June 14): FINAL EXAM