This course aims to develop students’ critical thinking, looking, reading, writing, and research skills through close analysis of visual art and aesthetic theory, with a particular emphasis on twentieth-century geometric abstraction in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. We will explore the ideological underpinnings of these national movements, and then re-contextualize South American abstraction within the theoretical writings that influenced its aesthetic commitments. This course will encourage students to rethink any assumptions they may have regarding the content or form of Latin American modernist art, while developing a better understanding of the truly global nature of modernist aesthetics and scholarship.

Moving between modernist art and foundational texts, this course will teach students how to read visual and art historical works. 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, the course 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.