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HAAVC-3000-8: Subversive Art of Dada

Fall 2021

Subject: History of Art and Visual Culture
Type: Seminar
Delivery Mode: Online
Level: Undergraduate

Course Dates: September 01, 2021 — December 14, 2021
Meetings: Thu 8:00-09:30PM
Instructor: Thomas Haakenson

Units: 3.0
Enrolled: 11/16

Description:

HAAVC 3000 seminars continue developing students' visual analysis and research skills while providing students the opportunity for in-depth study of the visual/structural artifacts associated with a particular topic, region, or movement. Students will also engage with the relevant primary/secondary literature for the specific topic/theme. Courses will pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and theoretical/ideological contexts in which the visual artifacts and structures under consideration were created. This course cannot fulfill the HAAVC 2000 requirement.Course DescriptionDada changed and continues to change the role of art in the world. Begun in 1916 in a cafe in neutral Switzerland by pacifist emigre artists trying to escape the draft into WWI in their own countries, Dada spread like a plague through Europe, the U.S., Japan, and other parts of the globe. This highly political "anti-movement" art movement challenged convention, disrupted the status quo, and questioned the border between art and "the rest of the world." This course focuses on the subversive strategies of Dada artists, performers, philosophers, and social activists. Students will examine not only the Dada origins of the strategies of subversion in a wide array of media, they will also explore the continued and varied use of Dada's strategies by later twentieth and twenty-first century artists, thinkers, and world-changers like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, to name a few. The class will be much enriched by the various events organized in November by San Francisco's famed City Lights Bookstore to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Dada. Featuring some of the leading scholars on the movement, the lectures, multi-media performances, and poetry readings will be an essential component of the class.Online course sections will be delivered with both asynchronous and synchronous components that will be outlined in the course syllabus. All synchronous activities will occur during the times listed on the course schedule.

Pre-Requisites and Co-Requisites:

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