This module offers a critical survey of art from 1945 to 1980, with a particular emphasis on art's intersection with politics. While we will focus largely on art from Western Europe and the United States, we will place this work in dialogue with artistic developments in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The module will address several key developments between the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s and the various forms of civil unrest that occurred in the late 1960s. Potential topics will include: the politicization of abstraction; the relationship between the avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde; 1968 in art and politics. The module concludes by exploring minimalism, post-minimalism and conceptualism, including some ways in which bodies and gender politics shaped the production and reception of these strands of postwar art during the 1960s and 1970s.
- Module Supervisor: Matt Lodder
- Module Supervisor: Michael Tymkiw