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SCHOOL OF FINE ART AND MUSIC
Fall Semester 2012
ARTH*2580-01
LATE MODERN ART: 1900-1950
INSTRUCTOR:
TIME:
LOCATION:
OFFICE:
PHONE:
EMAIL:
OFFICE HOURS:
Dr. Alla Myzelev
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:30am – 12:50pm
MacKinnon Building, Rm 114
Johnston 118
53173
amyzelev@uoguelph.ca
Tuesday 10:30-11:30
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
A study of the historical avant-gardes in the social and political contexts of the period 19001950.
Prerequisite(s): 1 of ARTH*1220, ARTH*1510, ARTH*1520
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This survey will examine the major artists, movements, and trends of modern art both in Europe
and North America from the end of the 19th century to World War II. Students will be able to
identify stylistic trends, define artistic movements, and critically examine the economic, sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts in which the art of the period was produced. Issues
such as race, class, war, urban life, sexuality, and gender will be incorporated into our
discussions. As a result, students will acquire diverse tools to ‘read’ a work of art through
various techniques and methods. Like modern art itself, this course will challenge traditional
ways of looking.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Upon copletion of this course the students will be able to:
 Discuss major movements in European Modern Art
 Explain meanings of major modernist painting and thier artists in realtion to the social
condition of the art production
 explain how use of various methodologies chages the meaning that audiences and
researchers construct around works of art
 question why some works of art had been included in the canon of Modernist Art History
and some had not and analyze potential dangers of canon construction for Modern Art.
 discuss the meaning and significane of Avant-Garde for conteporary art practices.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
1. Wood, Paul. the Challenge of the Avant Garde, New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press,
1999
2. Fer, Briony. Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993.
Exhibition Proposal – November 22
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Choose one image that was created from 1900 to 1970 from either the textbook or lectures.
Using material discussed during lectures and your own research, prepare a proposal for an
exhibition, which contextualizes this particular image. The exhibition will have unlimited budget
and will be located in one open gallery space (the size of a medium size seminar room)
Length: 7 double spaced pages (not including bibliography and images)
The assignment will be discussed in class and additional guidelines will be posted on
www.twentiethcenturyarthistory.coom.
Midterm (30%): October 16
The examination will cover all the material up to and including June 7. Both lecture notes and
class readings should be reviewed before the exam. The exam will consist of two parts: images
and short answer questions.
Images (10%): You will have to identify the name of the artists, title of the work of art, country
where it was made and the date. Spelling mistakes in the artists’ and buildings’ names will be
penalized. The list of images will be posted on the course website. After identifying the image
you will have to explain in 1-2 sentences why this image is significant for our understanding of
history of Modern Art.
Short questions (20%): There will be four questions out of which you will have to answer two.
Your answer has to demonstrate that you understood and thought through both the reading
material and lectures and discussions in class. Each question will allow you to draw on both
categories. Length: 10-12 sentences.
Sample Question: Explain the argument of Paul Wood with regards to artistic representation of
Paris Commune. Be sure to give at least two examples of artwork from the textbook.
Final Exam (35%): Final exam will cover all the material studied AFTER the midterm. The
exam will consist of three parts: Images, Essay Questions, and Definitions
Images (5%): You will have to identify the name of the artists, title of the work of art, country
where it was made and the date. Spelling mistakes in the artists’ and buildings’ names will be
penalized. The list of images will be posted on the course website. Also, you will have to
explain in 1-2 sentences why this image is significant for our understanding of history of Modern
Art.
Definitions (10%): You will be asked to define two out of four terms such as art movements or
specific techniques. Definitions should be short and precise to demonstrate that the student
understood the most important characteristics of the term.
Long Essay (20%): There will be two questions out of which you will have to answer one. Your
answer has to demonstrate that you understood and thought through both the reading material
and lectures and discussions in class. Each question will allow you to draw on both categories.
An answer above C+ will clearly demonstrate that the student had read and reflected upon
course reading materials. Length: 20-25 sentences.
METHOD OF EVALUATION:
Midterm Exam: Held in class on October 16 .............................................................. 30%
Writing Assignment: Due November 22 (later papers 5% per day) ............................ 35%
Final Exam: (TBA Location TBA)............................................................................... 35%
EMAIL AND OFFICE HOURS:
Office hours are established to allow students to ask questions, initiate private discussions
regarding the content of the course, or art history in general. It is also an invaluable opportunity
to start engaging with faculty as you begin to create your future professional community.
Emails are for emergency only.
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CLASS PARTICIPATION:
Students are to engage thoughtfully and intelligently with the themes and issues presented each
week in terms of class discussions. As a result, they will contribute greatly to the trajectory the
classes will take. All students, without exception, are expected to have read and prepared notes
on the assigned readings and/or chapters for effective participation.
POLICY ON LATE ASSIGNMENTS
Deduction of 5% per day including holidays and weekends will be applied for all late
assignments without appropriate medical documentation.
CLASS CONDUCT AND EXPECTATIONS
1) You must ensure that you are properly registered for the course. If you have any concerns
about your registration status, you may confirm online, confirm with the Faculty of Liberal
Arts & Sciences Office, or contact the Registrar. Please first check your registration and
read the codes carefully (the codes are clearly explained in the Course Calendar which is
available on-line at www.ocad.ca).
2) You are expected to conduct yourself in a manner respectful of your instructor and your
fellow students. This includes, at a minimum:
 Arriving on time
 Turning off your cell phone upon arrival
 If late, entering the classroom with the least disruption
 Not interrupting or speaking when someone else has the floor
 Using your laptop appropriately (i.e. not for email, Facebook, etc.)
WEEKLY READINGS & CLASS SCHEDULE
Week
#
Week
1
Week
2
Week
3
Week
4
Date
Reading
Content
Sept 6
Introduction
Lecture
Sept 11, 13
Material differences : the early avantgarde in France /Gen Doy
Lecture
Sept 18, 20
Sept 25, 27
Avant-garde from the July Monarchy to
the Second Empire /Paul Wood
Caillebotte, masculinity, and the
bourgeois gaze /Fionna Barber
Avant-garde and the Paris Commune
/Paul Wood
Exhibiting modernity : the 1889 Universal
Exhibition and the Eiffel Tower /Tim
Benton
Exhibiting "les Indépendants" : Gauguin
and the Café Volpini show /Gill Perry
Lecture
Lecture
Assignments
due
4
Week
5
October 2, 4
Futurists : transcontinental avant-gardism Lecture
/Gail Day
Avant-garde in the early twentieth
century /Paul Wood
Week
6
October 9, 11
Week
7
Oct. 16, 18
Week
8
Oct. 23,25
Week
9
Oct. 30-Nov 1
Week
10
Nov. 6, 8
Week
11
Week
12
Nov. 13, 15
Nov. 20, 22
Nov. 27
Revolutionary avant-gardes: Dada,
constructivism and surrealism /Paul
Wood.
Part 1 'This liberty and this order'- Art in
France after the First World War, David
Batchelor: Naturalism, Classicism, the
School of Paris Groups, magazines,
programmes Purism and L'Esprit
Nouveau Dada From Literature to La
Revolution Surrealiste Common grounds
Contested space References..
Continuation of the discussion of the
chapters from previous week.
Lecture
Midterm
Review
Oct. 16Midterm
Part 2 The language of construction by
Briony Fer: Russian Constructivism The
language of construction and the
construction of language Disembodied
form - construction and the gendered self
Standards of efficiency Luxury, utility and
the decorative Rationalization and ritual
Conclusion References.
Part 3 Surrealism, Myth and
Psychoanalysis by Briony Fer:
Surrealism and difference Breton's Nadja
the 'uncanny' Breton and Bataille The
role of psychic disorder in the Surrealist
aesthetic Objects of desire Muse/artist
Beginnings, again References.
Lecture
November 1Library
Research
workshop
Discussion of
the Final
Assignment
Oct. 23
Lecture
Lecture
Film: Little
Ashes
Lecture
Exhibition
Proposal
Part 4 Realisms and Realities by Paul
Wood: Realism in the 1930S Soviet
Russia Weimar Germany Towards
Socialist Realism Counter-conclusion
Final Exam
Review
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SUGGESTED BOOKS:
There are hundreds of books on modern art. Those listed below deal with many artists and/or
concentrate on a specific theme.
Adamson, Walter L.. Embattled avant-gardes: modernism's resistance to commodity culture in
Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print.
Antliff, Mark, and Patricia Dee Leighten. A cubism reader: documents and criticism, 1906-1914.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.
Arnason, H. Harvard, and Peter Kalb. History of modern art: painting, sculpture, architecture,
photography. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2004. Print.
Benton, Charlotte. Art Deco: 1910 - 1939. 1. publ. ed. London: V&A Publications, 2003. Print.
Best, Susan. Visualizing feeling: affect and the feminine avant-garde. New York: I. B. Tauris,
2011. Print.
Blumin, Stuart M.. The encompassing city: streetscapes in early modern art and culture.
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2008. Print.
Blythe, Sarah Ganz, and Edward D. Powers. Looking at Dada. New York, NY: Museum of
Modern Art, 2006. Print.
Bohn, Willard. The rise of Surrealism Cubism, Dada, and the pursuit of the marvelous. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Print.
Brettell, Richard R. Modern Art, 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1999. Print.
Buttner, Philippe. Surrealism in Paris. Riehen/Basel: Fondation Beyeler, 2011. Print.
Carlin, John, and Jonathan David Fineberg. Imagining America: icons of 20th-century American
art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Print.
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
Chilvers, Ian, and John Smith. A dictionary of modern and contemporary art. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Chipp, Herschel Browning., Peter Howard Selz, and Joshua Charles Taylor. Theories of Modern
Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley: University of California, 1968. Print.
Dachy, Marc. Dada: the revolt of art. English-language ed. New York: Abrams, 2006. Print.
Droste, Magdalena, and Peter Gossel. The Bauhaus 1919 - 1933 ; reform and avant-garde.
Hongkong: Taschen, 2006. Print.
Duncan, Carol. The Aesthetics of Power: Essays in Critical Art History. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1993. Print.
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Edwards, Steve, and Paul Wood. Art of the avant-gardes. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press in association with the Open University, 2004. Print.
Eimert, Dorothea. Cubism. London: Parkstone, 2010. Print.
Eisenman, Stephen, and Thomas E. Crow. Nineteenth century art: a critical history. 2nd ed.
New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson, 2002. Print.
Fanes, Felix. Salvador Dali: the construction of the image, 1925-1930. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2007. Print.
Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism. New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2004. Print.
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Print.
Fraquelli, Simonetta. Radical light: Italy's divisionist painters, 1891-1910. London: National
Gallery, 2008. Print.
Fry, Edward F. Cubism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. Print.
Gaiger, Jason. Frameworks for modern art. New Haven: Yale University Press in association
with the Open University, London, 2003. Print.
Galenson, David W.. Conceptual revolutions in twentieth-century art. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009. Print.
Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance: Live Art, 1909 to the Present. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1979.
Print.
Goldwater, Robert John. Symbolism. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print.
Golomshtok, Igor. Totalitarian Art: In the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the
People's Republic of China. London: Collins Harvill, 1990. Print.
Gordon, Donald E. Expressionism: Art and Idea. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. Print.
Green, Christopher. Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art,
1916-1928. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. Print.
_____. Picasso: architecture and vertigo. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Print.
Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture; Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon, 1961. Print.
Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism,
Freedom, and the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983. Print.
Hamilton, George Heard. Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940. Baltimore: Penguin,
1967. Print.
Herbert, Robert L. Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society. New Haven: Yale UP,
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1988. Print.
Hertz, Richard. Theories of Contemporary Art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985. Print.
Hitchcock, Henry Russell. Architecture, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Harmondsworth,
Eng.: Penguin, 1977. Print.
Janssen, Hans, and Michael White. The story of De Stijl: Mondrian to Van Doesburg. New York:
Abrams, 2011. Print.
Jencks, Charles. What Is Post-modernism? London: Academy Editions, 1986. Print.
Jirat-Wasiutynski, V. "Paul Gauguin's Paintings, 1886-91: Cloisinisme, Synthetism and
Symbolism." RACAR 9 (1982): 35-46. Print.
Krauss, Rosalind E. Passages in Modern Sculpture. New York: Viking, 1977. Print.
Krauss, Rosalind E. The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 1985. Print.
Landgraf, Edgar. Improvisation as art: conceptual challenges, historical perspectives. New York:
Continuum, 2011. Print.
Lebensztejn, Jean Claude, Richard Shiff, Annegret Hoberg, and Terence Maloon. Abstraction:
paths to abstraction, 1867-1917. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales ;, 2010. Print.
Levine, Neil. Modern architecture: representation & reality. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2009. Print.
Lewer, Debbie. Post-Impressionism to World War II. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006. Print.
Lippard, Lucy R. Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York: Pantheon,
1983. Print.
Lusty, Natalya. Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print.
McCully, Marilyn, Nienke Bakker, Isabel Cendoya, Peter Read, and Michael Raeburn. Picasso
in Paris 1900-1907. New York: Vendome Press, 2011. Print.
Morley, Simon. Writing on the wall: word and image in modern art. London: Thames & Hudson,
2003. Print.
Nochlin, Linda. Impressionism and Post-impressionism, 1874-1904; Sources and Documents.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Print.
Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Print.
Novotny, Fritz. Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780-1880. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin,
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1971. Print.
Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement,
1970-85. London: Pandora, 1987. Print.
Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. New York:
Pantheon, 1981. Print.
Pevsner, Nicholas. Pioneers of Modern Design. London, England: Penguin, 1991. Print.
Poggi, Christine. Inventing futurism: the art and politics of artificial optimism. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009. Print.
Pollock, Griselda. Psychoanalysis and the image: transdisciplinary perspectives. Malden, MA:
Blackwell Pub., 2006. Print.
Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Feminity, Feminism and Histories of Art. London:
Routledge, 1990. Print.
Read, Herbert. A Concise History of Modern Sculpture. New York: Praeger, 1964. Print.
Rewald, John. Post-impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1978. Print.
Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973. Print.
Rosenblum, Robert, and H. W. Janson. 19th Century Art. New York: Abrams, 1984. Print.
Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth-century Art. New York: Abrams, 1961. Print.
Rubin, William Stanley. Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage,. New York: Museum of Modern
Art;
Distributed by New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, Conn., 1968. Print.
Sell, Mike. Avant-garde performance and material exchange: vectors of the radical. Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Smith, Edward. Lives of the great modern artists. Rev. and expanded ed. London: Thames &
Hudson, 2009. Print.
Sondergaard, Sidsel Maria, and Susan Elizabeth Strauber. Women in Impressionism: from
mythical feminine to modern woman. Milano: Skira, 2006. Print.
Selz, Peter Howard. Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History, 1890-1980. New York: Harcourt,
Brace Jovanovich, 1981. Print.
Slatkin, Wendy. The Voices of Women Artists. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. Print.
Stangos, Nikos. Concepts of Modern Art: From Fauvism to Postmodernism. New York, NY:
Thames and Hudson, 1994. Print.
Stevens, Mary Anne. The Orientalists, Delacroix to Matisse: European Painters in North Africa
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and the Near East. London: Royal Academy of Arts in Association with Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1984. Print.
Taylor, Joshua Charles. Nineteenth-century Theories of Art. Berkeley: University of California,
1987. Print.
Terraroli, Valerio. 1920-1945: the artistic culture between the wars. Milan: Skira, 2006. Print.
Webber, Andrew. The European avant-garde 1900-1940. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004.
Print.
Weber, Nicholas Fox. The Bauhaus group: six masters of modernism. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2009. Print.
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