Syllabus

Updated: 2/10/04
The New York Art World, 2004
David E. Little

Duke University Leadership and the Arts in New York
Spring 2004

Course Description

This course examines contemporary art in New York and the institutional structure that supports it. Students will visit museums, galleries, and artists’ studios and look critically at a whole range of art objects. Some of the questions that we will investigate include: How is the art system in New York organized? What themes, materials, and ideas are artists investigating in their work? What does contemporary art suggest about culture and society today? We will speak first-hand with curators, gallery directors and artists about their important roles in shaping the production, display, and reception of contemporary art.

Assignments and Requirements

Weekly reading assignments will provide background information on historical and current art debates. Every week students will be responsible for submitting a one-page critical response to a question drawn from our class meeting and the readings. This question will be posted on the website. In addition, students will be required to write one research paper of ten or more pages due Friday, April 30th. The research for the paper should be culled from primary resources (works, artists interviews, original archival materials), class discussions, and the weekly readings. Paper topics can vary from a general theme to a close examination of an individual artist’s works. The best advice I can give you is to choose a subject that inspires you. You must submit a five-page summary of your project that includes a research strategy and a bibliography to me by Friday, March 19th (No Extensions). Students are required to use A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian for the bibliography, footnotes, and general format of the midterm and final papers. The Turabian format for the humanities (do not use the science format) can be found via the web.

Week 1(1/8): The Museum of Modern Art

Varnedoe, Kirk. “The Evolving Torpedo: Changing Ideas of the Collection of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of Modern Art.” (1995)

Week 2 (1/17): The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939) and “Modernist Painting” (1963)

Week 3 (1/28): The Met

Sontag, Susan. On Photography (1973)

Week 4 (2/5): Research Day

Sontag, Susan. On Photography (1973)
Write about a photograph that has changed your life or view of history and explain why?

Week 5 (2/11): International Center of Photography

“Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self”
Chelsea—303, Collier Schorr; Matthew Marks, David Armstrong; Susan Inglett, Bruce Connor

Benjamin, Walter. “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)

Week 6 (2/18): Self-Guided Art Day

***See and write a review of the “John Currin” at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Select no more than three works in your review.

Buren, Daniel. “The Function of the Museum” (1971)

Rosler, Martha. “Lookers, Buyers, Dealers and Makers: Thoughts on Audience” (1979)

Schjeldahl, Peter, “Onward and Upward with the Arts, Dealership,” The New Yorker, February 2, 2004

Week 7 (2/25): Wallspace, Jane Hait and Janine

“Diane Arbus Family Album,” Grey Art Gallery, NYU (Open until March 28th)

Interview with Peter Galassi. “Photography’s Great Divide,” Art News (February 1999): 86-89.

Lawrence Weiner, “Statements”(1970)

Duchamp, Marcel, “The Case of Mr. R. Mutt,” (1917)

Oldenburg, Claes, “I am for an Art” (1961)

Week 8 (3/3): MoMA Queens, “Kiki Smith”; Queens Museum of Art, “Joan Jonas: Five Works”

5 PAGE SUMMARY, RESEARCH STRATEGY, AND BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

Brian O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube” (1976)

Week 9: SPRING BREAK

Week 10 (3/17): PS 1, “Dieter Roth”; The Sculpture Center, “Emilia and Ilya Kabakov, “The Empty Museum”

Kaprow, Allan. “Education of the Un-artist, Part 1”(1971)

Sol Lewitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1968)

Week 12 (3/24): MoMA Queens, “ Fashioning Fiction;” The Guggenheim Museum, “Boccioni”

Marienetti, Fillipo. “The Futurist Manifesto” (1909)

Week 13: (3/31): 2004 Whitney Biennial Exhibition

“Introduction” to the exhibition catalog

***(4/1) “Empire: Contemporary Artists Picture a New World Order,” David Little, 12:30, 1 East 53rd St.

*** (4/5) Curators on Roth

Week 14 (4/7): Studio Museum in Harlem, “Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor”

Introduction to catalog

Week 15 (4/14): Soho

***(4/20) Scholars on Roth

Week 16 (4/21): Concluding Remarks and Studio Visit with Tom Otterness

Pierre Bourdier, “The Love of Art” (1969)

Week 17 (4/28):

YOUR FINAL PAPERS OF TEN OR MORE PAGES DUE