Course Description

Art 8 considers contemporary art as fundamentally emerging from a larger system of visual culture that cuts across many material forms and platforms, from unique works in traditional media like oil painting viewed in museums, to time-based photographic media, to ecological, social, or networked practices. In lecture and studio sections we will encounter and learn terms and concepts common to contemporary visual culture. We examine issues arising from the history, economics, and institutionalization of art as well as issues in contemporary art making and critical thinking. We will discuss and practice material, critical, and presentation skills. In three larger and 6 smaller projects students will progressively define and articulate their subjective interests, conceptual urgencies, and material or procedural affinities. Art 8’s goal is to further students’ own sense of direction and voice as young artists by guiding you toward critical and imaginative skills, toward a practice radical openness and productive doubt, and toward ever-greater awareness knowledge of the cultural contexts you work and live within.