This subject introduces students to the history of modern and contemporary art from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, through a special focus on the art, architecture, and material culture which interfaces with Transatlantic Slavery. Just how art and slavery relate will be open for question; we will, however, reject treatments of race as an externality, cultural overflow, or aberration from the so-called real workings of modernity. Though discussion, lectures, and weekly presentations, we will examine the interaction between capitalism, colonialism, slavery and its afterlives, gendered and racialized forms of domination, but also forms of co-optation and resistance by way of art's modern histories. We will note the unpredictable and vital ways art and slavery have overlapped over the last 300 years, and continuously unfurl on the embattled political grounds of our contemporary art world. Moving roughly from the fifteenth century forward, we will primarily look at the United States, Caribbean, South America (especially Brazil), European Empires (especially France and England), and parts of Africa. Art under consideration includes "colonial" fine arts mediums such as portraits of slave owners; prints, photographs, and sculptures depicting enslaved peoples; craft and decorative arts (ceramics, wood carving, architecture) created by enslaved peoples; installation, collage, assemblage, and mixed-media works reflecting on slavery's afterlives by contemporary artists.
- Teacher: Hampton Smith