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Martin - Modern+Art - Spring Syllabus
Martin - Modern+Art - Spring Syllabus
Content
includes the Neoclassicism and Romanticism of David, Goya, Ingres, Turner, Delacroix; the
Realism of Courbet; the Impressionists; parallel developments in architecture; the new sculptural
tradition of Rodin; Postimpressionism to Fauvism, Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, geometric
abstraction in sculpture and painting, modernism in architecture in the 20th century, and after the
First World War, Dadaism and Surrealism. Also covers some developments since 1945, such as
Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and aspects of contemporary art. Study of the
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim
Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art is included.
Readings: You have two textbooks for this course: Petra Chu, Nineteenth-Century European
Art (3rd edition, 2011, ISBN-10: 0205707998, softcover); and H.H. Arnason/Elizabeth
Mansfield, History of Modern Art (6th edition, 2010, ISBN-10: 0136062067, softcover). Copies
of the Chu textbook are available at the NYU bookstore, and there is also a copy on reserve at
Bobst. Because of the exorbitant cost of the Arnason and Mansfield textbook, we are not using
the newest (7th) edition; we recommend that you purchase a used copy of the 6th edition online
(the NYU bookstore should also have some used copies). A copy of the Arnason and Mansfield
textbook is also at Bobst. Additional readings for lectures and sections appear as scanned PDFs
on our NYU Classes site.
Attendance policy: Class attendance and participation are absolutely mandatory and will be
factored into your final grade.
Students with special needs: Students who require accommodations should contact Professor
Martin, Francisco or Ben at the beginning of the semester to make the necessary
arrangements. Because art history exams require special equipment, we need to know of your
needs as far in advance as possible.
*NB: Readings should be done prior to the lecture or section under which they are listed
Further reading: Andrew McClellan, Watteaus Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in
Eighteenth-Century Paris, Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 3 (1996), 439-453
Further reading: T.J. Clark, Painting in the Year Two, Representations, 1994, 3-63
2/12 NO CLASS (College Art Association annual conference; make up with museum visit
TBD)
Further reading: T.J. Clark, Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of Olympia in 1865, in Art
in modern culture, ed. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (1992), 104-120
Further reading: Anne Wagner, Art and Propriety, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1986), 209-244;
300-306
2/26 Impressionism
Chu, 385-407
Griselda Pollock, Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity, in Art in modern culture, 121-135
Further reading: Edmond Duranty, excerpts from The New Painting (1876), in Art in Theory
1815-1900, 576-585
3/3 Post-Impressionism
Chu, 409-414; 425-37; 472-80
Further reading: Joris-Karl Huysmans, A Rebours (Against the Grain), 1884, access online
through Bobst
3/12 MIDTERM
SPRING BREAK
Further reading: Rosalind Krauss, In the Name of Picasso, in The Originality of the Avant-
Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1986), 23-40
Leo Steinberg, The Philosophical Brothel [1972], reprinted in October, 1988, 7-74
4/2 Dada
Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 11
Marcel Duchamp, Apropos of Readymades (1961)
4/9 Surrealism
Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 15