Aims and objectives

The module aims to:

• examine the growth of Modernism in America and the Modernist lineage of movements from Abstract Expressionism to Conceptualism
• consider Modernist imagery in relation to the period of political and social upheaval during the post-war years
• posit Pop Art within the realist tradition of American Art and as a reactionary alternative to High-Modernism
• study Greenbergian Modernism as a theoretical critique and commentary on American Art in its relation to the Western European Tradition
• develop a critical scepticism of theory
• through seminars, enable students to study and discuss primary source texts in relation to images with a view to their mutual elucidation
• through seminars, enable students to a perform a comparative analysis of images

Objectives:

At the end of the module the student should possess:

• a concept of Modernism as a theoretical construct and template imposed upon and directing the module of post-war American art
• an understanding of Abstract art an embodiment of ideology and as a metaphor for certain political and philosophical concepts during the period
• a comprehension of the implicit tensions and dichotomy at the heart of Modernism resulting from the conflict of realist and abstract tendencies, high and low art
• a knowledge of key Modernist texts and a facility to test their assertions against an experience of Modernist images
• a capacity to comprehend and examine pictorial significance through the adaptation of Formalist theory