Art History Survey Class Syllabus
ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Woodbury University Professor Kathleen Onofrio
FN 205 Spring 2004 Office Hours: by appointment
Required Text: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1996.
General Information
Attendance and participation is mandatory. Our lectures and discussions ARE the course. Assigned readings are not optional either, as they are the substance behind the form of the classroom interaction: if you don’t have one, the other doesn’t materialize. The course consists of two one hour and fifteen minute sessions per week, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons from 4:30 until 5:45.
Oral component: Class participation is part of the course; you will choose and research an artist and make a 15-minute presentation to the class, including slides, a brief biography, and overview of the artist’s work. Discussions will center on the readings and the presentations. Presentation topics are subject to my approval.
Written component: You will keep and periodically hand in a journal of your reactions to each reading(s). From those writings you will construct three 5-page essays: two essays on topics within course parameters, but of your own choosing; the third and final essay will be a personal artist’s statement.
Course Premise: Art as Story
Making art is one method we use to tell stories—about ourselves, about where, when, and how we lived. Art is the process of bringing something within ourselves to bear upon a particular impulse: a thought, situation, or feeling, and using that impulse to express something, sometimes materially, sometimes not.
While art emanates from that impulse to discover, play, entertain a process, open a dialogue, build, or exteriorize an internal occurrence, it also always tells a story. Art IS our “story”. Whether it’s Non-, Neo-, Post- or Pre-, it’s still us. We look back over our art to read the narrative
Woodbury University Professor Kathleen Onofrio
FN 205 Spring 2004 Office Hours: by appointment
Required Text: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1996.
General Information
Attendance and participation is mandatory. Our lectures and discussions ARE the course. Assigned readings are not optional either, as they are the substance behind the form of the classroom interaction: if you don’t have one, the other doesn’t materialize. The course consists of two one hour and fifteen minute sessions per week, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons from 4:30 until 5:45.
Oral component: Class participation is part of the course; you will choose and research an artist and make a 15-minute presentation to the class, including slides, a brief biography, and overview of the artist’s work. Discussions will center on the readings and the presentations. Presentation topics are subject to my approval.
Written component: You will keep and periodically hand in a journal of your reactions to each reading(s). From those writings you will construct three 5-page essays: two essays on topics within course parameters, but of your own choosing; the third and final essay will be a personal artist’s statement.
Course Premise: Art as Story
Making art is one method we use to tell stories—about ourselves, about where, when, and how we lived. Art is the process of bringing something within ourselves to bear upon a particular impulse: a thought, situation, or feeling, and using that impulse to express something, sometimes materially, sometimes not.
While art emanates from that impulse to discover, play, entertain a process, open a dialogue, build, or exteriorize an internal occurrence, it also always tells a story. Art IS our “story”. Whether it’s Non-, Neo-, Post- or Pre-, it’s still us. We look back over our art to read the narrative