FA 58a Modern Sculpture as Public Art Prof Nancy Scott
Tu-Friday. 11-12:20 PM.Office: 210 Mandel Center
The primary focus of this course will be to study works of three-dimensional art, sculpture and structure in public venues or architectural settings. We will learn aboutmethods and materials; cities and sites;and the sculptural arts in museums. We will consider and analyze public art in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Boston and Washington DC as signifiers of the larger cultural statement of the values of communities.We will study the potential for propaganda and protest that centers in monuments, and can at times result in iconoclasm. Sculpture can be the most powerful art form – whether made in victory, in political statement or in mourning.
Learning goals: You will gain an ability to write about, describe and analyze works of art created for a variety of environments. You should be able to identify sculptural styles of a diverse range of periods and aesthetic directions, from Rodin to Maya Lin. Based on the Rose Art Museum’s holdings, you have the opportunity to study a rich area of the arts, in which art works, and the collaborative practice of making art is seriously studied and debated. Your understanding of the complex interrelations of society, politics and art making will be deepened.
The class will have two field trips, and will also study our own campus sculpture. We have a unique opportunity this semester: weekly trips to the Rose Art Museum during the Spring exhibition, “Collection at Work,” will feature the sculpture in the Rose, with focus on the works of women sculptors and artists of color.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
1)Research paper of c. 10pages covering a topic of compelling interest to the student and chosen in consultation with the instructor; final oral report on the scope of your research (35 %)
Due Date: May 4 (Study Day)
2)Shorter papers and visual analysis assignment (response papers* due each week)as listed in the syllabus. (Average—25%)
3)Midterm essaysand Rose Art Museum project report (30%)
4)Good attendance and general preparedness—(the invaluable 10%)
Please note: Nine hours of weekly preparation for class time is the Brandeis standard. You should come to class prepared to discuss each week’s readings*, and short response requests will be due on Latte each week.
Week 1
January 17- 20: Introduction and scope of the course.
What constitutes the material of sculpture?: Marble or bronze, plaster or wood?
New materials.
Material and the message: Examples from antiquity – to Renaissance sculpture- to 20/21st century three-dimensional work, site sculpture, public art.
Defining terms: Statue-Sculpture-Structure-Site
WHAT is a monument? What makes public art “public”? Why important?
The interplay of sculpture and architecture, particularly in the urban environment.
Week 2
January 24-27. Materials and processes— from Antiquity to Modern sculpture
Wittkower, Sculpture: Processes and Principles,
ch. 1 ‘Antiquity,’ pp. 1-32;
Case studies: Giorgio de Chirico, and the Piazza d’Italia series “metaphysical painting.”
Week 3
January 31- Feb. 3Rome: “All roads lead to Rome”—Statue and sculpture at the origins; Stratification: Rome and its layered monumental center
From the Capitoline Hill—antiquity to Michelangelo—to the 19th century
Michelangelo sculpture; Bernini at St. Peters—The Michelangelo plan for the dome.
Wittkower, ch. 5, ‘Michelangelo’ pp. 99-126.
The Vittoriano (National Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II) – Designed 1885
Excavations of ‘terza Roma’ (third Rome) and building of the Vittoriano.
Atkinson and Cosgrove, “Urban Rhetoric and Embodied Identities: City, Nation and Empire…: 1870-1945” pp. 29-31; pp. 37-45 on the Mussolini period.
Modern Rome – sculptors and sculptural practice MAAXI Museum; Botta at Rovereto
Week 4
Feb. 6-9Paris—Ville des monuments historiques (City of historic monuments):
Readings in H. W Janson, 19th Century Sculpture, Part III, on Rude, Carpeaux, early RODIN, pp. 198-219. [Study images particularly of Carrier-Belleuse, Carpeaux and Vela (pp. 129-73).
Compare: Frémiet gilded sculpture of Jeanne d’Arc (pp. 182-85); and Mercié, Gloria Victis. (See Janson, pp. 190-91).]
H. Loyrette, ‘The Eiffel Tower,’ in P. Nora Realms of Memory, pp. 349-71. [includes illustrations and endnotes.]
Week 5
February 14-17 RODIN – from The Age of Bronze to The Gates of Hell
Screening on Friday: Maya Lin : A Clear Fine Vision (Director Frieda Lee Mock), Academy Award winner for best documentary.
Week 6
February 28- March 3Rodin- Metamorphoses – The studio
Rodin and his milieu: Jules Dalou, Camille Claudel, commissioned work for public spaces; Enlarged sculpture from The Gates, The Burghers of Calais,
& the Balzac monument, the protests - the sculptures of literary figures;
Monumentality and Rodin; his fame by 1900 and late style.
Photography of sculpture
The emergence of Brancusi – carving and ‘truth to materials’
Week 7
March 7 -10 Berlin– The sculpture of Germany, the counter-memorials of the postwar period
Memory in the landscape: From the Roman invasion of Germany to the work of Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys; the sculpture of remembrance; the Holocaust
Readings: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, ch 2:
“Path through the Woods,” pp. 120-134. (Shortened reading posted on Latte).
James Young At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture(2000),
Ch 1 Introduction, pp 1 -11; ch. 6, pp. 125-183.
Midterm essays – Assignment due: Friday, March 10
Week 8
March 14-16 Berlin –the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989 – The East Side Gallery, sites and projects for unification
Readings (LATTE): Brian Ladd, Ghosts of Berlin, ch. 3. “Metropolis: The Reichstag” Ghosts of Berlin pp 83-96.
Young, Ch 4, pp 90-119. Berlin project: Renata Stih and F. Schnock, Places of Remembrance.
The ‘Wende’ - Berlin remains, the no man’s land, and current re-unification monuments: East Side Gallery, the Potsdamer Platz, Norman Foster’s Reichstag renovation.
Counter-memorials; Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum.
Please note:
Biography essays on a sculptor or (significant) sculptural project are due on March 14th. (five pages) Full contextualized essay of your topic with photos due on March 28th.
Week 9
March 21-23Washington D. C.
- Shanken, “Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States…”
Art BulletinVol 84/1(2002) pp 130-47. Latte.
Week 10
March 28-31Russia : Communist icons and iconoclasm
Mike O’Mahoney, “Bringing down the Tsar,” Sculpture Journal, vol. 15.2 (2006), pp 274-78. Read and view the youtube video (clip) from the Eisenstein film October.
Grigor, Talinn. “Of Metamorphosis: Meaning on Iranian Terms,” Third TextVol 17/3 (2003), pp. 207-25.
April topics – Major artists in 3D
Review of major trends in early 20th century sculpture:
1) Painter sculptors- the reaction after Rodin: from Picasso, Matisse to Brancusi and the beginnings of abstraction.
Curtis, P. Modern Sculpture after Rodin: 1900-45, ch. 3, pp 73-104.
Curtis, Sculpture 1900-45, ch 4. Pp. 107-40.
2) Dada and Surrealism in sculpture: Duchamp, Giacometti, Calder.
Futurism to Picasso—Boccioni, the wider influence of Duchamp.
3) Welding, the later sculpture of Gonzalez and Picasso, assemblage: the machine and the modern.
Curtis, Sculpture 1900-45, ch 5, 141-78.
The sculpture of Abstract Expressionism: From David Smith to Louise Nevelson
Causey, ch. 3, “Sculpture and the Everyday,” pp. 85-107.
Installation art at the origins, neo-Dada of the 1950s: Johns, Rauschenberg; Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal.
Week 11
April 4-7Boston sculpture walk: Freedom Trail, Black Heritage Trail,
New England Holocaust Memorial.
The Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial. Civil War monuments and the Public Garden.
Andrew Causey, Sculpture since 1945, ch. 2: “The New Sculpture,” pp. 61-83; 4) “Modernism and Minimalism,” pp. 109-129.
Causey, ch. 3, “Sculpture and the Everyday,” pp. 85-107.
Installation art at the origins, neo-Dada of the 1950s: Johns, Rauschenberg; Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal.
Spring/ Passover Break April 10-18
Week 12
April 20-24The 1970s and 1980s:
Oppositional tendencies of Pop and Minimal; Art of the women minimalists (Mary Miss, Alice Aycock, Jackie Winsor).
Causey, “Natural Materials-- Minimalism to landscape, ‘’ pp. 169-93.
Stoops, Susan, More than Minimalism (Rose Art Museum catalogue, 1991).
Lucy Lippard, essay).
Week 13What and where is public art?
Causey, “Public Spaces,” pp. 195-227.
Cher K. Knight Public Art, chs 1 and 3.
Walter de Maria Lightning Field “Art as Pilgrimage,” On Public v Private (Ant Farm collective-Disney- Smithson).
Dec 5th: Student (10 minutes each) reports on progress of campus sculpture survey project: semester –long investigation into cataloguing our campus sculpture.
Week 14 Christo, Richard Serra, Turrell and Roden Crater.
Reading from Beyeler Foundation catalogue on Brancusi / Serra.
Readings from Clara Serra on the Tilted Arc controversy (tba).
Harriet Senie: Critical Issues in Public Art: Controversies, Conflicts.
The presence of absence: What is a memorial in the 21st century?
Readings: Young At Memory’s Edge, ch 3 “Sites Unseen” pp 62-89.
[Shimon Attie].
Memorials to be considered: Christo wrapping the Reichstag;
Young British Sensations: Rachel Whiteread, and her quest to build the Vienna Holocaust Memorial. J. Young reading (TBA).
Public art in the United States: Recent Venice biennales; recent career of Allora and Calzadilla (Chalk) and Venice 2011; Sarah Sze and 2013; Mark Bradford and the Rose Art Museum (2017).
War memorials; proposed monumental sculpture—from Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans’ Wall to the Ground Zero projects (Video excerpt, Screening from A Fine Clear Vision: Maya Lin).
May 2 Student oral reports on research projects.
Final Project: Research Paper due May 4th. Paper topic to be chosen in discussion with Prof. Scott, and related to an area of interest that you wish to pursue in depth.
Sculpture at Brandeis University
Investigating the campus environment – sculpture you like; what do you notice, what do you dislike?
Some interesting facts about campus sculpture (resources for your research will be the University Archives, the Office of Capital Projects, and the Rose Art Museum, and discussion with Professor Scott):
- The Lila Katzen ‘Wand of Inquiry’ was in the movie An Unmarried Woman (c. 1979). Who is the artist, and what was her reason for involvement with Brandeis? Why was it placed near the Science Center recently, and where was it placed originally?
- Who did the iconic Brandeis ‘in the breeze’ sculpture of Louis at the center of the campus? Did the sculptor choose the siting on a knoll—did it factor into his modeling of the sculpture? What did he consider his sculptural style?
- Who was Peter Grippe? and what sculptures did he propose for the new campus? What work of Grippe’s bronze sculpture was eventually placed as symbolic adornment to a campus building? Did he make political work?
- What are the new sculptures in the Mandel Humanities quad, and who donated it/ them?
- Where is the Lincoln bronze in the Humanities complex, and where should it be best placed?
- Who sculpted the marble portrait head of Louis Brandeis in the Admin Building ? Locate where it is now. Were the sculptor and carver the same?
- Many donors and trustees gave works to the campus, and not all are ‘owned’ by the Rose. Do you know which works of sculpture does the Rose own?
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