ARTH 242

Fall 2026 All Classes

All Classes

Art Since 1940

Credit: 3 hours.

Considers questions that artists and critics faced in the decades between World War II and present: Should art focus on its own material processes or open to historical flux? Create cultural myths or deconstruct them? Who participates in the art world? How do differences in experience inform the work? We will consider, and reconsider, art-historical narratives of these decades, in order to construct a prehistory of our current moment.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

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ARTH 242 class schedule data for fall 2026
	Status		CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
			70039	Lecture	1	2:00PM -3:20PM	MW	331 Art and Design Building	Haynes, T Romberg, K	Availability: Open (Restricted) Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/26-12/09/26 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts course. Section Info: This course begins with the devastation of World War II and ends with the effects of globalization in the 1990s and 2000s. We will think about the questions that artists and critics faced in the years in between: Should art focus on its own material processes or open its borders to historical flux? Is it art's job to create the cultural myths that bind society together, or to deconstruct them? Who participates in modern and contemporary art, and who doesn't? What kinds of production should be considered art? How are specific formal strategies informed by the perspectives of different subject positions? What politics underwrite them? We will reconsider the existing narratives about art during this period with a dual aim: first, to better understand the historical positions of the artists in question, and, second, to piece together a prehistory of the moment in which we currently find ourselves.