This course aims to develop students’ critical thinking, looking, reading, writing, and research skills through close analysis of visual art, with a particular emphasis on twentieth-century kinetic art. Using Frank Popper’s Origins and Development of Kinetic Art to guide the course, we will reflect on how a concern with motion in earlier art movements — Impressionism, surrealism, geometric abstraction — formed the foundation of kineticism. Taking a global perspective, we will then expand beyond Popper’s Eurocentric parochialism to demonstrate the truly international character of this artistic movement.

Moving between modernist art and seminal texts, this course will teach students how to interpret both visual and scholarly sources; we will consider what close looking means when applied to a variety of aesthetic forms. As the second half of a year-long writing curriculum, thecourse will focus not only on the development of exegetical writing, but also on research skills and crafting an argument in conversation with secondary sources. During the second half of the semester, each student will work on an independent research project culminating in a 10-12 page paper.