Course Schedule

• Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 |
• Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 |
• Week 11| Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14 | Week 15 |

Week One: Introduction

Week Two: Aesthetic Autonomy and Its Discontents I

• *Martin Jay, "'The Aesthetic Ideology' as Ideology; or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?"
• Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde. xlix-il and 15-54.

• Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde. 55-95.

Week Three: Aesthetic Autonomy and Its Discontents II

• *Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man In a Series of Letters. 1-47, 170-219.

• *Andreas Huyssen, "Monumental Seduction."
• *Russell Berman, "The Astheticization of Politics: Walter Benjamin on Fascism and the Avant-Garde."

Week Four: The Different Faces of the Avant-Garde

• *O. K. Werckmeister, The Political Confrontation of the Arts. 44-59.
• *Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism."
• *Umberto Boccioni, "Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto."
• *Kasimir Malevich, "From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting," "Non-Objective Art and Suprematism," and "The Question of Imitative Art."
• *Richard Hülsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann. "What is Dadaism and what does it mean in Germany."
• *Richard Hülsenbeck, From "En Avant Dada."
• *Osip Brik, "From Picture to Calico-Print" and "Photography versus Painting."
• *Clement Greenberg. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch."

• *Oswald Spengler, From "The Decline of the West."
• *Carlo Carrà, "Our Antiquity."
• *Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, "On Proletarian Culture."
• *AkhRR, "Declaration" and "The Immediate Tasks of AkhRR."
• *ARBKD (Asso), "Manifesto and Statutes."
• *Alfred Rosenberg, From "The Myth of the Twentieth Century."
• *George Lukács, "Tendency or Partisanship."
• *Andrei Zhdanov, "Speech of the Congress of Soviet Writers."
• *Adolf Hitler, "Speech Inaugurating the 'Great Exhibition of German Art'."
• *Bertolt Brecht, "Popularity and Realism."

Week Five: Theorizing Fascism

• *Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

• *Selections from Roger Griffin, ed., International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus.

Week Six: Case Study I: Fascist Italy

• *Eric Hobsbawm, "Foreword: Art and Power."
• *David Elliott, "The Battle for Art."
• *Tim Benton. "Speaking Without Adjectives."
• *Simonetta Fraquelli, "All Roads lead to Rome."
• Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy. 1-41.

• Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy. 42-147 / 183-194.

Week Seven: Case Study I: Fascist Italy

• *Jeffrey Schnapp, "Epic Demonstration: Fascist Modernity and the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution."
• *Andrew Hewitt, "Avant-Garde and Technology: Futurist Machines-Fascist Bodies."

• Sign-up Form and Schedule

Week Eight: Case Study II: Nazi Germany

• Film: Triumph of the Will (dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
• *Steve Neale, "Triumph of the Will: Notes on Documentary and Spectacle."
• *Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Nazi Myth."
• *Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism."

• *O. K. Werckmeister, The Political Confrontation of the Arts. 92-104.
• *Berthold Hinz, "Genre Painting," "National Socialist Painting," and "Photography and Mass Media."

Week Nine: Case Study II: Nazi Germany

• *O. K. Werckmeister. The Political Confrontation of the Arts. 106-123.
• *George L. Mosse. "Beauty without Sensuality: The Exhibition 'Entartete Kunst'."
• *Mario Andreas von Lüttichau. "Entartete Kunst, Munich 1937. A Reconstruction."
• *Richard Burt, "'Degenerate Art': Public Aesthetics and the Simulation of Censorship in Postliberal Los Angeles and Berlin."

Week Ten: Case Study II: Nazi Germany

• *Susan Buck-Morss, "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered."
• *Winfried van der Will, "The Body and the Body Politic as Symptom in the Transition of German Culture to National Socialism."
• Bernd Nicolai. "Tectonic Sculpture."

• Film: Good Morning, Mr. Hitler (1994).
• Berthold Hinz, "Art in the Third Reich."

Week Eleven: Case Study III: Stalinism

11/5 Recalling the Soviet Avant-garde

• Film: Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
• *Richard Taylor, The Battleship Potemkin. 65-127.

• *David Elliott, "Introduction" and "The End of the Avant-Garde."
• *Lutz Becker, "Optimistic Realism."
• *Brandon Taylor. "Photo-Power"
• *Boris Groys. The Total Art of Stalinism (Intro, Chapters 1 & 2)

Week Twelve: Comparing Totalitarian Art and Architecture

• *Boris Groys. The Total Art of Stalinism (Intro, Chapters 1 & 2)
• *O.K. Werckmeister, The Political Confrontation of the Arts. 75-89.
• *Igor A. Kazus. "The Great Illusion."
• *Jean-Louis Cohen. "When Stalin meets Haussmann."

• *Ian Boyd White. "National Socialism and Modernism."
• *Winfried Nerdinger. "A Hierarchy of Styles."
• *Wolfgang Schäche, "From Berlin to 'Germania'."
• *Barbara Miller Lane. "Nazi Architecture."

Week Thirteen: Case Study IV: The World Exposition 1937 in Paris

• Sign-up Form and Schedule
• *Dawn Ades, "Art as Monument" and "Paris 1937."
• *Karen A. Fiss, "The German Pavilion."

• Sign-up Form and Schedule

Week Fourteen: Theorizing the Post-Fascist Spectacle

• Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
• *Hal Foster, "Contemporary Art and Spectacle."

Week Fifteen: Post-War Appropriations of Fascist Aesthetics

• *Lisa Saltzman. "Introduction", "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Icarus, Kiefer, and the Burdens of History," and"The Sons of Lilith."
• *Dieter Bartetzko. Die Rede / The Speech.
• *Anton Kaes. "Germany as Myth."
  

• Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture
  

Go to Top