HAA 171g

Modern Art in Revolution: Paris Commune to October 1917
Maria Gough
Wednesday, 1-3pm
This seminar examines the relationship between art and activism during two major popular uprisings against the state: the Paris Commune of 1871 and the October Revolution of 1917. What was the role of modern and avant-garde artists in these revolutionary events? What new forms of production and distribution did they invent, and how did their work engender, rather than simply reflect, processes of emancipation and social transformation? How, in other words, was the utopian imagination made into spatial and pictorial form? The first half of the course addresses Courbet’s activism, the use and abuse of photography for partisan purposes, Manet’s depiction of state violence, and the flowering of Impressionism in the wake of the Commune’s suppression. We then analyze the participation of Russian and Soviet avant-garde artists in the building of the first socialist society in the 1920s, considering the politics of abstraction, the turn to experimental and factographic models of photography, the fine artist’s transformation into media-worker, and the radicalization of exhibition practices. Weekly meetings will be organized around first-hand study of original works of art in the Harvard Art Museums, and photographic albums and artists’ books in Houghton and the Fine Arts Library. Note seminar location: Study Center of the Harvard Art Museums (show your ID at the desk on the 4th-floor). Requirements: seminar attendance and participation, weekly readings, and the preparation of a research paper based on original works and/or historical materials in Harvard collections. Open to undergraduates. Limit: 12.