Graduate Studies: Art
Courses: Spring 2010

Masters Project 1, 2, 3, 4 (GSA-501, -502, -551, -552)
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, faculty
N/A, SD-1, 6 credits
These courses represent the required studio meetings with the Core and adjunct faculty for all Grad Art candidates from M1 to M4.

Masters Thesis 5-6 (AGA-601, 651)
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, faculty
N/A, SD-1
6 credits
This course represents meetings and all other work done by Grad Art candidates from M5 to M6 in development of their final shows and theses in conjunction with their thesis committees.

Meetings With Visiting Artist (AGA-502)
Folke Köbberling
N/A, SD-1, 1 credit
All students are required to meet at least once with visiting artist Folke Köbberling.

Painting Workshop (AGA-553)
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Kim Fisher
TH 10-4, SD1, 3 credits

Sculpture Workshop (AGA-503)
Lita Albuquerque, Taft Green, Tim Martin
T 10-4, SD1, 3 credits

Film/Video Workshop (AGA-504)
Stan Douglas, Walead Beshty
M 12-3, LAT, 3 credits
In the late 1980s inexpensive CRT projectors made video projection a viable medium for visual artists who integrated them into their installation works -- very often reinventing practices explored by avant-garde film makers in the 1960s and 1970s. Art of Projection is a collection of ten essays, edited by Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon, that examines the practice of projecting moving images from its prehistory in phantasmagoria and magic lantern shows, through multi-screen film projection in World’s Fairs, to Expanded Cinema of the 1970s and the video installation of today. Each essay will be discussed in traditional seminar format along with screenings of related works.

Film/Video Tech Lab (AGA-505)
Gabrielle Jennings
Thu 10-1, SC-254, 3 credits
This course is offered three times per year with a different emphasis each term:
-Fall: A beginning film and video course geared towards Graduate Students in Art.  The aim is for students to come away from this class with basic skills needed to produce film and video art including pre-production planning, production and post-production strategies; both the conceptual/theoretical and the technical are covered as well as an introduction to film and video art history and contemporary practices.
-Spring: Demonstration Central - a series of workshops given by visiting professionals working in the field.  Sample Workshops: Writing for Film & Video, Pre-production Planning, Camera, Lighting, Sound, Editing, and Installation Techniques.
-Summer: Independent Study for incoming students with technical demonstrations as needed.

Theories of Construction (AGA-506)
Lita Albuquerque (01, T 4-7)
Bruce Hainley (02, T 4-7)
Tim Martin (Th 4-7)
SD-1, 3 credits
Concerned with the critiquing of student work. The object of the class is to develop, through class analysis, a sense of the theoretical implications and foundations of the work of each of the participants. Section placement assigned by the faculty.

Graduate Seminar (AGA-554)
Lita Albuquerque, Annette Weisser, Bruce Hainley
T 7:30PM-10PM, LAT, 0 credits
This course is a visiting lecture series held in conjunction with the Graduate Fine Art program. Guests include internationally recognized artists, critics, art historians, architects, filmmakers, and writers from Los Angeles and around the globe. The course is mandatory every term.

Art History to the Revolution (AGA-584)
Diana Thater, Jason Smith, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Fri 12-5, SC-254, 3 credits
This class will be co-taught by Diana Thater and Jason Smith. It is comprised of eight classes with Diana Thater, four lectures with Jason Smith and two with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.
This is an art “history” class (emphasis on the quotation marks) where both objects and texts will be examined. Diana Thater will teach the objects and Jason Smith and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe will teach the texts. We will work through a chronology of Western art objects from the Greeks to 1789. 1789 to the present is Part 2 of this class and will be offered in Fall 2010.
The objects section of the class will be held in Los Angeles museums. At the Getty, the Norton-Simon or LACMA, we will look at and discuss individual artworks; what they are, how they are made, what they were meant for when they were made and what we use them for now.  Are they cultural curiosities or are they still allowed to, and are they capable of, bringing ideas into the world?
We will also engage with a series of texts--theoretical, philosophical, historical--dating from the 17th century up to the 20th century. We will consider, for example the way in which a German philosophical tradition stretching from Lessing to Worringer via Hegel considers the historico-philosophical importance of the Greek conception of art. In turn, we'll read a series of important French texts dating from the foundation of the Academy in the mid-17th century (with discussions ranging from the relation between design and color, structure and surface, as well as the hierarchy of genres and the political implications governing this hierarchy) and continuing right up to the threshold of the French revolution.
NOTE: This class will be a 5-hour class when we go to museums and a 3-hour class when we have lectures at school. A syllabus will be provided the first day of class.

Sold Out: Performing the System/Performing the Self (AGA-585)
Jack Bankowsky
Wed 5-8, SC-254, 3 credits
Opening with a discussion of the art of Andy Warhol that argues for an appreciation of the full range of the artist’s extra-gallery and “Business Art” initiatives as central to his oeuvre, this seminar derives a “performative” model of art-making from his expanded field of endeavor, in order to explore the centrality of Warhol’s example for artists working in his aftermath. A curriculum of focused readings provides the armature for the in-class viewing and discussion of work by a broad range of relevant contemporary artists.
Two primary avenues will be pursued.
I. Andy in an Expanded Field: Andy Warhol is arguably the most influential artist of the later half of 20th century, and yet his legacy remains controversial; indeed, Warhol’s example (and particularly his late work) is as often criticized as detrimental for subsequent art as it is celebrated as an enabling force. This course explores the proposition that it is precisely in the “compromised” facets of his practice—the maligned society portraits, the publishing endeavors (Interview, the diaristic writings), the sustained collecting efforts (Time Capsules), the television and advertising appearances, and the all-purpose gadabouting—that we discover the significance of Warhol’s example for art today. Indeed, Sold Out considers this network of extra-gallery activity not as the falling off from Warhol’s Pop Art triumph that many perceived it to be in the 70s and 80s, but rather as its logical—and uniquely generative—conclusion.  A program of reading aimed at highlighting the key tensions in Warhol’s reception have been selected with an eye towards opening this expanded view of Warhol’s art to in-class debate.

II. Outperforming Andy: By “performative,” I mean to conjure an ethos that insists on “doing” over “telling,” that sees the work of art as a way of moving in the world as opposed to commenting upon or representing it. If Warhol’s “canvas” —or better stage—came to encompass the world outside the gallery; indeed, if the market place and the publicity machine demand to be understood as his “mediums” every bit as much as silkscreen and celluloid, then it is this legacy Sold Out proposes to consider vis a vis the relevant concepts of “performativity,”  “celebration,” and the “carnivalesque.” Does Warhol’s example offer a model of art making that counters the baseline Modernist notion of critique? And what might be at stake in putting forth such a proposition?  A broad range of mostly shorter texts will serve as background for the in-class presentation and discussion of contemporary work by artists including Maurizio Cattelan/The Wrong Gallery, Andrea Fraser, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami (Kaikai Kiki Co.), Richard Prince, Jason Rhoades, and Reena Spaulings.

back