This course examines the issues, artists, and theories surrounding the rise of Postmodernism in the visual arts from 1970 into the twenty-first century. We will explore the emergence of pluralism in the visual arts against a backdrop of the rise of the global economy. And we will look at the “crisis” of postmodern culture, which critiques ideas of history, progress, and personal and cultural identities, as well as embracing irony and parody, pastiche, nostalgia, mass or “low” culture, and multiculturalism.

In a chronological fashion, and framed by a discussion of such midcentury artistic predecessors as Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimal Art, the class traces the wide-ranging visual art practices that emerged in 1970s: Conceptual Art, Performance, Feminist Art and identity politics, art activism, the culture wars, Appropriation Art, Neoexpressionism, Street Art, the Young British Artists, the Museum, and Festivalism.