Beginning well before World War II, art and criticism in the United States aspired to and attained a remarkable level of intensity and quality. This seminar course will use the criticism of this period-beginning with Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg and continuing through the present moment-as a way of organizing a view of the art and the issues at stake. Rather than a survey of contemporary art, this course aims to supply the skills needed for a critical engagement with the discourse that surrounds the arts today. We will read such critics as Leo Steinberg, Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss, Thierry de Duve, Hal Foster, Benjamin Buchloh and Thomas Crow and consider artists including Pollock, de Kooning, Stella, Morris, Warhol, Smithson and Sherman. Course requirements will include advanced readings, a 20- to 25-page writing assignment and a field trip to New York. Enrollment limit: 15.

PALERMO