Media and Modernity: Art and Mass Culture, 1880-2000 (Dr Alastair Wright)

Please note: course not available 2013-14.

The course explores an issue that assumed increasing importance for artists at the turn of the last century and that continues to resonate in contemporary practice: namely, the relationship between modernism and various aspects of mass culture. The first half of the course considers the development of modernist painting, photography and cinema between around 1880 and the First World War.  </span>Works by artists ranging from Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec to Picasso and Duchamp and by filmmakers ranging from Eisenstein and Vertov to Charlie Chaplin are examined<span style="color: black; ">.  The second half of the course turns to the echoes of these issues in European and American modernism from the 1960s to today, charting the </span>emergence of Pop in the work of Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol; the mediation of art and life in Fluxus and Happenings; the rise of new media such as video and installation in the work of Paik, Naumann and others; and the ongoing negotiation between contemporary artistic production and the disciplines and technologies of the mass media<span style="color: black; ">.  The writings of artists and their contemporaries are examined alongside recent art-historical work.  The course also considers a number of theoretical texts relevant to the materials of the course.</span>