MIT OpenCourseWare

Browse materialsMIT 4.651 · Fall 2010

Art Since 1940

Art: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta di Piazza di Spagna Fontana detta la Barcaccia, architettura…, 18th century · Public domain

Instructor: Prof. Caroline Jones
Term: Fall 2010
Level: Undergraduate
What's inside: 1 lecture note · 1 reading · 27 other files · 3 web pages
Materials open: MIT OCW

Start here

Start course: Lecture 1: Introduction: the aesthetic and ideological context…Find a topic

Progress is saved in this browser.

Export or import progress

About this course

Source: MIT OpenCourseWare 4.651 Art Since 1940, Fall 2010, Prof. Caroline Jones — original course page on ocw.mit.edu ↗. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Study order: MIT's own listing order, section by section. Taken from MIT's published course files, downloaded from ocw.mit.edu on September 23, 2026. How RedLectern is built.

Materials are grouped the way MIT organized them. A verified, course-wide order has not been established here.

Before you start

Prerequisites are not listed here. Check MIT's own syllabus for this course.

How this course was organized

What's here, and what isn't

A lecture sequence of 25 items is confirmed. Assignment and exam materials exist too, but MIT's own order for them could not be verified, so they're shown as materials below rather than a sequence.

Not included here

9 items from the source could not be safely included:

MIT's page format for this item wasn't recognized clearly enough to place it safely. (8 items)
Referenced in a table, but without MIT's own verified order, so it isn't used to claim a sequence.

Materials by section

Grouped by section, as MIT organized them. Not sequenced or ordered.

Lecture Notes

23 files

Assignments

MIT OpenCourseWare, Prof. Caroline Jones, 4.651 Art Since 1940, Fall 2010.

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Edition: Fall 2010 · Open the original course on OCW ↗

Organized by RedLectern, independent of MIT and not endorsed by MIT.

Per-resource rights are recorded on each resource; All-Rights-Reserved items are link-only, never mirrored.

Art Since 1940

Before you start

What's here, and what isn't

Not included here

Materials by section

Lecture Notes

Assignments

Lecture 1: Introduction: the aesthetic and ideological context for figuration vs. abstraction going into WWII

Lecture 2: Formalizing the unconscious: Surrealism. Matta (Echaurren), Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Sandy Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and Hans Hofmann

Lecture 3: “I am Nature:” Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Screening of Jackson Pollock , 1951 film by Hans Namuth

Lecture 4: Gesture vs. Field: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell vs. Rothko, Newman, Reinhardt

Lecture 5: Abstract expressionist sculpture: David Smith’s “Drawing in Space” vs. Bourgeois’s and Nevelson’s intimate worlds; Roszak, Lipton, Ferber

Lecture 6: Rothko, Still, and the San Francisco school; Tobey, Matthieu, Yoshihara and the “Gutai” group, promotion of an “ecole du Pacifique”

Lecture 7: Body vs. Gesture in Europe: Giacometti, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Tachisme, l’art informel, CoBrA, the d’affichistes, Yves Klein, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely

Lecture 8: John Cage, Robert Rauschenber, Jasper Johns, and the question of a homosexual aesthetic

Lecture 9: Bay Area figurative art: the view from the West Coast; California funk and Chicago’s “Hairy Who”

Lecture 10: The Beats; environments and happenings in the US (Fluxus begins)

Lecture 11: Post-painterly abstraction and formalist sculpture; Greenberg’s reign

Lecture 12: Screening of Painters Painting , 1970 film by Emile De Antonio

Lecture 13: Meet at List Visual Art Center for tour of exhibitions

Lecture 14: Frank Stella and Minmal art: The corporate icon (Andre, Judd, Flavin, Morris)

Lecture 15: Warhol’s Factory; pop art and another kind of industrial aesthetic (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Dine, Marisol)

Lecture 16: The Independent Group (London); Capitalist Realism (Germany); Arte Povera (Italy)

Lecture 17: Early conceptual art: Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, Richard Artschwager; international conceptualism and Fluxus

Lecture 18: Sculptors of land, poets of light: Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Richard Long (UK), Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, James Turrell; screening of Spiral Jetty , 1970 film by Robert Smithson.

Lecture 19: Performance vs. Intervention in an international context: Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Bruce Nauman, Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles, Zhang Huan

Lecture 20: From Smithson to Gordon Matta-Clark, “Post-Minimalism” and process artists: Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, Lynda Benglis; screening of Office Baroque , 1977 film by Gordon Matta-Clark

Lecture 21: Women buck the Canon: Louise Bourgeois to “Womanhouse” and “The Dinner Party,” status of the decorative; performance art redux: Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Laurie Anderson, Adrian Piper

Lecture 22: Identity politics: Bettye Saar, David Hammons, Fred Wilson, Lorna Simpson, Jimmy Durham, James Luna; Public interventions: Hans Haacke, Maya Lin, AIDS Demo-graphics, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Lecture 23: PoMo 1, appropriation art: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach; “Neo Geo:” Peter Halley, Philip Taaffe

Lecture 24: Installation art, “new media art,” political interventions, and globalism

Lecture 25: In-class debate, class summary and review