080055 EX Viennese Art: Contemporary Public Sculpture (2018S)

"The logic of sculpture, it would seem," writes Rosalind Krauss, "is inseparable from the logic of the monument. […] But the convention is not immutable and there came a time when the logic began to fail." At the turn of the 20th century and with increasing intensity after 1945, the once self-evident compatibility of sculpture and monument could no longer be taken for granted. Each began to trouble the other in productive and surprising ways. This excursion looks at the relationship between sculpture and monument on the basis of examples of contemporary public sculpture in Vienna. Together we will visit and engage works by Alfred Hrdlicka, Donald Judd, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread, and Lawrence Weiner, amongst others.

Throughout the course, weekly readings and on-site analyses will introduce students to the art historical stakes of the emergence of Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Land Art, as well as related questions of site-specificity, materiality, (anti)figural representation, and temporality. We will trace the intersections of these art historical concerns with memory culture, which offers a rich perspective on the transformation of the form and role of commemorative "monuments" and memorials in public space after 1945, and after 1989. Students will choose a sculpture from the syllabus to study in detail, preparing a scholarly analysis of the work to present to the group, and write a final paper accompanied by a well-curated PowerPoint of images.

The first three meetings will take place in the classroom in order to begin to read and discuss key texts dealing with positions in sculpture and theories of memory and the public after 1945. These discussion-based meetings will allow us to develop a shared vocabulary to continue to explore on our excursions. After the March break, our meetings will take place outdoors in situ.

The course will be held in English and provide the opportunity for students to expand and develop skills in written and spoken expression. Using a foreign language is always an extra challenge and students should not feel discouraged from taking the class for lack of confidence. Students may also choose to prepare written assignments in German.

N.B. Please bear in mind that the majority of our meetings take place outdoors, regardless of weather, and prepare accordingly. Please contact me by email with any questions about accessibility.

Course Aims:

Introduction to contemporary art historical debates on post-war sculpture, public sculpture, monuments and memorials, as well as memory culture.

Students will leave this course with the resources to articulate and write provocative art historical interpretations, rooted in attentive descriptions of artworks with reference to scholarly accounts of context.

Above all, the course is about enriching our appreciation of the role of art in our everyday lives.