FACS 1900B Interdisciplinary research paper/critical work

Suggested topics

Everyone: Read the suggestions for generating a thesis statement!

1 a. Construct an alternative narrative of art history from the perspective of a group marginalized by the traditional Western canon (colonial subjects, working class or queer subjects, for example -- but there are many possibilities). You might also want to consider an alternative to a traditional narrative -- a different format. (What would an alternative narrative look like? What might be at stake in proposing a different format? Will you organize this history in terms of chronology? why/why not?). Don't tackle 'all' of art history, of course -- do some reading and define a manageable area of inquiry....this will depend on the story you wish to tell. If you're unsure whether your topic is still too big, come to see me and we can discuss the breadth of your project together.

2. Consider the relationship between a high art form (opera, classical painting) and a 'low' or popular art form (for example, advertising, comics or graphic novels) in light of the following quotation:
" Art is no longer automatically identified as painting, sculpture, and architecture; clear distinctions between "high art" and "popular culture" have either evaporated or remain as sites of contention among artists, critics, and theorists. The authority of traditional media--oil paint, marble, bronze--has been similarly eroded. Art can now take the form of an ephemeral performance or interaction, as well as a physical object; it can be made out of long-lasting precious materials, or out of ordinary, unvalued, and impermanent ones."

3. As nineteenth and early twentieth century arguments about whether photography was really "art" have lost their bite and urgency, contemporary constructions of the idea of art have come to readily include advanced technologies: in fact, acceptance of methods of photomechanical reproduction and electronic media have even resulted in theoretical and practical re-evaluations of concepts such as originality and individual expression. Discuss this re-evaluation in light of new information technologies. Ground your discussion in concrete examples of art that relies on new media technologies for its realization.

4. "In a sense, the arrival of pop art in the early sixties was just one element in a much more general cultural shift: Warhol and Lichtenstein should be seen alongside cultural critics such as McLuhan (or Eco or Barthes), writers like Burroughs, obsessed by advertising, the image bank, the word virus and the 'Reality Studios' and, of course, film-makers like Godard. Artists had to come to terms with new images, whether through irony, celebration, aesthetic enhancement or detournement. "
Wollin, Raiding the Icebox
Select an artist working in the 1960s in Pop art or advertising, literature, music, film or dance and situate the artist and their work in relationship to this 'coming to terms' with new images -- how does the artist you selected 'fit' with the above quotation in terms of irony, celebration, aesthetic enhancement or detournement?

6. Choose a decade from this past century -- 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s-- and write a paper that makes an argument about the relationship between 'the artist' and 'the city'. It's up to you to define 'the artist' for the purposes of this assignment (a painter? jazz musician? breakdancer? performance artist? Interdisicplinary artist? a real person or group or the *ideal* or stereotype?) , and to define 'the city' in a way that makes sense. Perhaps it's a real city -- New York City in the 1950s?, Toronto in the 1990s?-- perhaps it's the *idea* of the city (in opposition to the country, as a symbol of modernity or chaos or enterprise or consumerism etc.) that is important. This topic gives you wide scope -- be sure to FOCUS.