REACTION TO ATOMICS: ART AFTER WORLD WAR II in Spring 2023 (AH2091B)

“We now know the terror to expect” wrote the American painter Barnett Newman in 1948, “Hiroshima showed it to us.” From the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the immediate post-war period to Kinetic art and from Land Art to startling experimental filmmaking, the rapid transformations and the diversity of artistic productions in the second half of the 20th century responds to a need to adjust our perception to the conditions of a new technological, political and cultural landscape. “Reaction to Atomics: Art after World War II” is a survey course designed to introduce students to the visual language of modernity from a novel angle; less preoccupied by art historical categories and labels but more attuned to social and ideological conditions of art making.