WWII American and European Painting and Mass Culture (HAA 272M)

This graduate seminar (qualified undergraduates will be admitted after interview), will investigate the complex relationships between painterly practices and mass cultural formations (photography, advertisement, television) from 1955 – 1965. The limited focus on two American and two European artists, and on one specific decade will allow us not only to study individual works in greater detail, but it will also provide time to pursue parallel readings in historical contextualization. These would include not only the study of actually occurring interactions with the newly expanded culture of technological and industrial media (e.g. exhibition design, advertisement commissions for artists), but also the more specifically art historical questions concerning the belated reception of Duchamp, Dada and photography in post WWII cultural production. The critical reflection of the epistemological shifts defining the nature of painting in the changing dialogues with action painting and abstract expressionism will be of equal importance, as will be the questions concerning the redefinition of the place and functions of the artist in post WW II consumer and spectacle culture.