AS 2700 - The Engaged Eye

Credits: 4

In this course students will be introduced to efforts by artists and art movements who use pencil, ink and press, paintbrush, camera, even bodies, along with other creative tools to comment on injustices and promote social change. The approach to the course will be interdisciplinary, with historical, art historical, biographical, social movement and visual culture lenses emphasized. Artists as diverse as John Sloan, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lange, Charles White, Philip Guston, Louise Bourgeois, Ana Mendieta, Judy Chicago, Judy Baca, Kathy Vargas, Nancy Spero, and Juan Sanchez, will be studied. Students will explore how their art “worked” within their time period-how was it popularly understood, understood by critics, and how is it understood today? How were artists’ concerns and aesthetics connected to their time period? What are the continuities and ruptures in themes or aesthetics that unite artists and art movements? What kind of power does political art have, and for whom?

Prerequisites
EC I