U.C. Berkeley History of Art

Histart 286

GRADUATE SEMINAR: 20th CENTURY PAINTING AND SCULPTURE (4 units)

The Eye and the Machine: Vision and Technology in 20th Century Art and Culture

Not all 20th century art works declare a special awareness of their status as visual objects, but many certainly do. Their means vary: only consider Robert Smithson's hyperbolic refusal of vision against James Turrell's sometimes transcendtal exploration of its limits and idiosyncrasies. Or Olafur Eliasson's insistent manipulation of his viewers' eyesight (and thus, their whole sensory apparatus), in contrast to Vito Acconci's notorious video Pryings (1972), a collaborative piece undertaken with Kathy Dillon, in which the artist repeatedly tries, and fails, to open her eyes.

This seminar aims to provide a consideration of crucial 20th century texts and artworks in which vision emerges as an exemplary 20th century object: it is here, we might say, that the idea of a "modern" vision is born. Not only is sight understood as historical, its mutations are catalyzed by various innovations--military weaponry for example, and time-based cinematic technologies-in ways that works of art seek to imitate, and sometimes to subvert.

The artists and artistic contexts to be considered, in addition to those just mentioned, range from the Bauhaus in the 1920s to Los Angeles in the 1960s; special attention will be paid to various efforts to manipulate light-from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, say, to Anthony McCall. Among the texts we will read together will be writings by Paul Virilio, Marshall McLuhan, Bruno Latour, Sarah Danius, and Pamela Lee.