INST 2603 - Art and Social Change: Modern Art, 1860s-1960s

Hours: 3
As technology has allowed the mass production and rapid dissemination of images through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, art, and more broadly visual culture, has been increasingly able to introduce new ideas and perceptions to larger and more diverse audiences. In this class, we will explore the role of visual culture in changing perceptions and values of society during the Modern Period, roughly 1860-1970. Course readings and discussions focus on the development of the Modern in relation to issues of gender, sexuality, community building, social reform, surveillance, domesticity, historic preservation, and so on. Particular aspects of visual culture for study include photography (especially documentary and photojournalism), architecture, and avant-garde art movements focused on social change and subverting traditions. Since the nineteenth century, certain artists have worked to enact social change through their creative projects. From Jacob Riis’s photojournalism and A. W. Longfellow’s model tenements in the nineteenth century, to Diego Rivera’s murals and the Fluxus non-movement in the twentieth, this class surveys the role of art in challenging, subverting, and changing social norms and values in the Modern Period.
Notes: Cross-listed with ARTH 2100.

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INST 2603 - Art and Social Change: Modern Art, 1860s-1960s