1. September 4

-Terry Eagleton : The Significance of Theory
-Discuss: Note taking strategies
-Introduce some Key Concepts of Critical Theory (handout/on reserve)

2. September 11

Note: As per our previous discussion about the “uses” of theory for an artist, both Andrea Fraser and Mark Lewis are artists writing about issues which relate to their own practice quite directly. Yet, by taking parallel or related artworks/ideas as the object of their inquiry they avoid the pitfalls of having to make (limiting, overblown, or definitive) claims for their own work. Both essays provide models for writing “about” your work by writing about related artists and topics.

-Charles Harrison, "Innocence and Effectiveness: On the Idea of the avant-garde" from catalog for 2008 Sydney Biennial
-Andrea Fraser "Procedural Matters" on Michael Asher from Artforum, Summer, 2008

-Mark Lewis, "Is Modernity our Antiquity" from Afterall, Summer 2007, available at http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=257

It will be helpful to know that Mark Lewis' text is a response to one of the thematic questions set by the curators of Documenta 12. See here for fuller elaboration. http://www.documenta12.de/leitmotive.html?&L=1

Here is the film Lewis references "At the foot of the Flatiorn"

http://www.archive.org/details/CEPriceAtTheFootOfTheFlatiron1903

3. September 18
-Sven Lütticken, Living with Abstraction, from Texte zur Kunst

The Essay First 3-5 pages hand in

4. September 25
T.J. Clark., Chapter 5: God Is Not Cast Down, Farewell to an Idea : episodes from a history of modernism. (Chapter on Russian Constructivism)

Monuments of the Future/Lissitzky http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/lissitzky/index.html

Kasimir Malevich, "Suprematism"

http://www.1001art.net/school.html artist in Vitebsk

5. October 2
Clement Greenberg, 1940: "Towards a Newer Laocoon"
Jeff Wall, "Depiction, Object, Event" from Afterall

Try to use the "What it Says/What it Does" method of note taking on one of the articles.

Recommended: Avant Garde and Kitsch, Clement Greenberg,

Available through JSTOR: Echoes of the Readymade: Critique of Pure Modernism Author(s): Thierry de Duve and Rosalind Krauss Source: October, Vol. 70, The Duchamp Effect, (Autumn, 1994), pp. 60-97 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779054

6. October 9
REVIEW WEEK. Please review ALL the previous essays! Pay particular attention to connecting themes between the essays such as ideas around modernism and the avant garde, the dichotomies of "autonomy" and "engagement". Work on your ongoing essay, start reading next week's reading, it is quite long.

Assignment pick one important quote from each of our five weeks of readings, that is 5 quotes (write them out to be handed in). Memorize three of these quotes. (Yes we will go through them in class!) Find one image (either your own initiative or of an artist mentioned in the essay...hopefully an image which is new to you and which you are interested in) for each essay (that means 8 images) and bring them to class in electronic form (note the artist, date). Put the images in folders which designate the reading they are for (or otherwise name them appropriately so that we can tell quickly and build a set of images for each reading.)

7. October 16

Brian O'Connor, Introduction, from The Adorno Reader;

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944)The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception

http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/frankfurt/hork/hork.pdf

The Essay-in-progress, hand in. A clear topic, expressed in an introductory paragraph, should by now have emerged. All paragraphs should be structured around a topic sentence or similar clarifying device. Artworks in addition to those mentioned in the essays should be used. Additional historical information, fuller articulation of key ideas, quotes from the assigned essays and other sources, should be included.

8. October 23
Theodor Adorno, Ch. 14: The Autonomy of Art

Roland Barthes, "The Photographic Message"

Optional: Roland Barthes "Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers", Chapter 3: Negative Dialectics and the Possibility of Philosophy,

9. October 30
Stuart Hall, The Work of Representation, from: Representation : cultural representations and signifying practices. TO PAGE 100 with relevant source readings at the back of essay.

Essay in Progress Handed In

10. November 6
Stuart Hall, The Work of Representation, from: Representation : cultural representations and signifying practices . Continued: p. 100 to end of article

Link: Roland Barthes, Myth Today: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~marton/myth.html

11. November 13

Hal Foster: Who's Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?
Recommended: Bürger, Peter, Chapter Four: The Avant-Gardiste/ Work of Art

Note taking: look under "thematic organization" for more info : this week I recommend that you use the topic(s) of your essay as a 'lens' through which to analyze the essay. Make subject headings in relation to your inquries and then make notes when a point the author makes is relevant to your research. You should also make a very short summary of a few lines which describes the key argument in the essay.

2. November 20
Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics, The Subject

Optional: From the WACK! : art and the feminist revolution Catalog: Abigail Solomon-Godeau , The woman who never was : self-representation, photography, and first-wave feminist art;

Hard targets : male bodies, feminist art, and the force of censorship in the 1970s

13. November 27
Selected Readings from: Conceptual art : a critical anthology, edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson

FINAL ESSAYS and ALL READING NOTES DUE: SUBMIT THROUGH EMAIL to: jaradul@sfu.ca

LATE ESSAYS NOT ACCEPTED

Course Assignments
 
Reading the Readings!Immerse yourself in the readings! Become the readings! Quote readily from the readings! Students are expected to come to class having thoroughly read the readings. Skim reading and rereading are expected. Students should prepare questions and discussion points in advance. Participation in discussion is the vital element of learning in this seminar.
 
Notes and Summaries
Each week you will be asked to summarize one or more of the assigned articles. Different types of summarizing will be introduced in class. You are expected to include some of your own comments on and synthesis of the material (in relation to other readings and your own references). The summaries will be handed in weekly and also collected into a electronic portfolio and handed in at the end of the semester.
 
Cumulative "creative reading" Summary AKA THE ESSAY
The readings are quite cohesive, they can form the bibliography for a number of essay topics related to ideas of modernism, autonomy, engagement and the avant-garde. The weekly notes form the basis for the class essay. Every week at least one quote, one art work, and your writing about these ideas and works could be added to your "essay". You have to continually rewrite and reshape this text. A clear topic must emerge and much of the original note material will be cut out as the essay develops. You will devise your own essay topic in relation to the course texts and in consulation with the instructor. The general focus of our readings is the ongoing conversation/relationship between contemporary art and the works, strategies, ethics, ideals of modernism, particularly avant-garde and political strains of modernism. Developing the essay beyond the class readings can be done through additional historical research and additional research into artists relevant to an aspect of your interests and practice is encouraged. Every two weeks this document will also be handed in.

The paper should be approx 3500 words. Late papers will not be accepted. No exceptions without a doctor's note.

There is no positive grade 'for' attendance. Missing classes will have a negative effect on your grade.

 

Writing and Study Links (helpful advice)
 
 
Six Reading Myths
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/tools/olr/study_skills/reading_notes/six_reading_myths.htm
 
Concept mapping

http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~shale/humanities/composition/handouts/concept.html
 
Critical Reading toward Critical Writing
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/critrdg.html#3

 
Wordiness: Danger Signals and how to react
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/wordines.html
 
Hit Parade of Errors in Style, Grammar and Punctuation
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/hitparade.html
 
Advice on Academic Writing and Reading (one of the best sites)
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/advise.html