Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:10 – 2:30 PM

Robert Slifkin
Office: Library 320
Office Hours Tuesday 2:30 – 5:30 PM, and by appointment
Office phone: x7386
Email: rslifkin@reed.edu

Course Description

Since Plato made his notoriously damning pronouncements concerning the duplicity of art and artists in his Republic, art’s relationship with deception and illusion has been considered to various degrees both inherent and insidious. It is within this tradition that our survey of artistic production in U.S. culture following the Second World War is situated. The objects we will examine were created during a period marked by numerous “gaps”– manifested most famously in missiles, generations, technology and credibility itself. Moreover, during a moment of exponential growth in mass media and dematerialized, electronic forms of communication, an era filled with both hope and distrust for the regulating and economizing powers of technology and bureaucratization, the ‘gap’ widened between seeing and believing. This course will explore the various ways in which the visual arts engaged within the discourse of ‘gaps’ in culture between 1945 and 1975 paying special attention to how the gaps themselves become sites for signification within the historical network of objects, texts, and events in which they emerged.

Course Requirements

1) In class presentation about one of the daily assigned works of art and its relation to one or more of the readings.

2) 4 page visual analysis of one of the following works currently on view at the Portland Museum of Art:

Louise Bourgeoise, The Prisoner, 1949
Louis Bunce, Spacescape, 1956
Anthony Caro, Table Piece, 1967
John Chamberlin, Sugar Tit, 1964
Judy Chicago, Pasadena Life-Saver, Blue Series #4, 1965
Judy Cooke, Celebration After the Fact, 1972
Helen Frankthaler, Spaced Out Orbit, 1973
Franz Kline, Rue, 1959
Lee Krasner, Along the Way, 1961
Agnes Martin, The Desert, 1965
Louise Nevelson, End of Day Nightscape, 1973
Kenneth Noland, No One, 1958
Jules Olitski, Steamed, 1968
Larry Poons, Tamy, 1972
Robert Rauschenberg, Trapeze, 1965
David Smith, Portrait of Don Quixote, 1952
Leon Polk Smith, Constellation (Yellow, Black, Red), 1955
Theodoros Stamos, Door 5, 1962
Tony Smith, Gracehopper, 1961
Mark Tobey, Flow of the Night, 1943
Jack Tworkov, Script, 1962

3) Final paper: 10-12 page research paper, due no later than December 13. No extensions.

4) Attendance and participation

Required texts

David Joselit, American Art Since 1945 (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003).