Course B
Anxious Times: Art & Politics in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Michael Loriaux, Professor, Political Science
Tuesdays, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
From time immemorial the visual arts have been mobilized to legitimate political power through aesthetic glorification. The visual arts differed from literature by valuing conservatism over critique. But the visual arts in Europe took a critical, revolutionary turn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
They repudiated what was decried as decadent, nihilistic, exploitative “bourgeois” culture, and promoted controversial stylistic innovations and ambitions that gave rise to works of enduring influence. In this course we examine how political thought, the visual arts, and the world in which they evolve resonate with one another by following the visual arts through the twentieth century and up through the present. We examine art’s critical yet parasitical relationship with modern capital, and we focus specific attention on the power of art to encourage debate and engagement with the political challenges of our time.
