Contemporary Art

This course is currently at capacity. Students who currently are on the waitlist will be given priority if places become available.

*Taught Online*  Did you ever have a curiosity about why a banana on a wall came to be considered art—or why it in fact, might be considered a prank? This introductory course will focus on how to talk about contemporary art of the United States, both in written and spoken format. Beginning with the early twentieth century and ending up in the twenty-first, we’ll focus on how to explain the history of contemporary art through several thematic lenses that form the focus of each weekly module, leading us from the scandal of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain in 1917 to the rise of Beeple’s NFTs in the present. Formats of art we’ll learn about and discuss include “the readymade,” conceptual art, “performance art,” environmental art, public art, pop art, internet art, and AI-based images. This class satisfies the Arts Core requirement, has no pre-requisites, and requires no prior knowledge of art history.