The course aims at acquiring autonomous historical analysis and critical interpretation of the artistic phenomena of the contemporary age, with particular regard to the interactions between artistic production and theoretical and aesthetic reflection.
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Course Outline
The course examines several decisive transformations in the status of the object in twentieth-century art through a sequence of operations that alter its nature, function, and value: selection, disruption, incorporation, reproduction, fetishization, preservation, and spectacle. This framework will make it possible to trace the metamorphoses of the object from the invention of the readymade to its assimilation to the commodity and to the biological body.
1. Selection and Nomination: Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade. From the first readymades to Fountain (1917): exhibition history, loss of the original, replicas, and the retrospective construction of the work. The recontextualization of the industrial object calls into question autograph authorship, technique, uniqueness, and aesthetic judgment.
2. Disruption and Desire: the Surrealist Object. From the objet trouvé to the “symbolically functioning object,” through Alberto Giacometti’s Suspended Ball (1930–31) and Meret Oppenheim’s Object (1936). Desire, fetishism, the uncanny, tactility, and dysfunction transform the everyday object into a psychic device, destabilizing its function and identity.
3. Incorporation and Hybridization: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.** Rauschenberg’s *Combines*, with particular attention to *Bed*, *Monogram*, and *Canyon*, and Johns’s flags, targets, and objects. The object enters the work materially or is reconstructed, producing a continuous oscillation between thing, image, and sign.
4. Reproduction and Mediatization: Andy Warhol. From press photography to silkscreen: Marilyn Diptych, Death and Disaster, Electric Chairs, and Brillo Boxes. Seriality and repetition redefine the relations between image, original, copy, consumption, and commodity.
5. Fetishization and Hyperproduction: Jeff Koons. The New, Equilibrium, Rabbit, and Banality. The readymade is rethought through commercial display, industrial production, surface perfection, kitsch, and exchange value.
6. Preservation and Spectacle: Damien Hirst. A Thousand Years, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, and Mother and Child (Divided). The preserved and exhibited biological body brings together death, taxonomy, display, museum culture, and spectacle.
Lectures will combine historical and critical reconstruction, close analysis of individual works, and discussion of theoretical and historiographical texts.
1. Marcel Duchamp: Selection and Nomination
• William A. Camfield, Marcel Duchamp: Fountain, Houston Fine Art Press, Houston 1989.
• William A. Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917”, Dada/Surrealism, 16, 1987, pp. 64–94.
• Thierry de Duve, “Given the Richard Mutt Case”, in Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, Cambridge 1996.
• Marcel Duchamp. Critica, biografia, mito, Electa, Milan 2009.
2. The Surrealist Object: Disruption and Desire
- Johanna Malt, Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford–New York 2004, especially chapters 3, “The Surrealist Object in Theory”, and 4, “The Surrealist Object as Fetish”.
- Didier Ottinger (ed.), Dictionnaire de l’objet surréaliste, Gallimard/Centre Pompidou, Paris 2013.
- Ghislaine Wood (ed.), Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, V&A Publications, London 2007.
- Ulrich Lehmann, “The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World”, in Ghislaine Wood (ed.), Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, V&A Publications, London 2007.
- Mary Ann Caws, The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA–London 1997.
3. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns: Incorporation and Hybridization
• Branden W. Joseph, Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2003.
• Paul Schimmel (ed.), Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, Museum of Contemporary Art/Steidl, Los Angeles–Göttingen 2005.
• Leo Steinberg, “Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art”, in Other Criteria, Oxford University Press, New York 1972, pp. 17–54.
• Fred Orton, Figuring Jasper Johns, Reaktion Books, London 1994.
4. Andy Warhol: Reproduction and Mediatization
• Thomas Crow, “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol”, Art in America, 75, 5, May 1987, pp. 128–136.
• Hal Foster, “Death in America”, October, 75, Winter 1996, pp. 37–59.
• Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art: 1956–1966”, in Kynaston McShine (ed.), Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1989.
• Annette Michelson (ed.), Andy Warhol, October Files 2, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2001.
5. Jeff Koons: Fetishization and Hyperproduction
- Scott Rothkopf (ed.), Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art/Yale University Press, New York–New Haven 2014.
- Hal Foster, “The Art of Cynical Reason”, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1996, pp. 99–127.
- AnnMarie Perl, “‘A More Public Arena’: Jeff Koons’ Reinvention in the Midst of Reaganism”, Art History, 43, 3, 2020, pp. 474–508.
- Hal Foster, “Jeff Koons”, London Review of Books, 36, 15, 31 July 2014.
6. Damien Hirst: Preservation and Spectacle
• Ann Gallagher (ed.), Damien Hirst, Tate Publishing, London 2012.
• Kieran Cashell, Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art, I.B. Tauris, London–New York 2009, especially the chapter devoted to Damien Hirst.
• Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art, rev. ed., Verso, London–New York 2006.
• Luke White, “Damien Hirst’s Shark: Nature, Capitalism and the Sublime”, Tate Papers, no. 14, Autumn 2010.
Additional readings will be announced during the course and recommended to individual students for their research projects.
Programme
Metamorphoses of the Object in Twentieth-Century ArtCourse Outline
The course examines several decisive transformations in the status of the object in twentieth-century art through a sequence of operations that alter its nature, function, and value: selection, disruption, incorporation, reproduction, fetishization, preservation, and spectacle. This framework will make it possible to trace the metamorphoses of the object from the invention of the readymade to its assimilation to the commodity and to the biological body.
1. Selection and Nomination: Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade. From the first readymades to Fountain (1917): exhibition history, loss of the original, replicas, and the retrospective construction of the work. The recontextualization of the industrial object calls into question autograph authorship, technique, uniqueness, and aesthetic judgment.
2. Disruption and Desire: the Surrealist Object. From the objet trouvé to the “symbolically functioning object,” through Alberto Giacometti’s Suspended Ball (1930–31) and Meret Oppenheim’s Object (1936). Desire, fetishism, the uncanny, tactility, and dysfunction transform the everyday object into a psychic device, destabilizing its function and identity.
3. Incorporation and Hybridization: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.** Rauschenberg’s *Combines*, with particular attention to *Bed*, *Monogram*, and *Canyon*, and Johns’s flags, targets, and objects. The object enters the work materially or is reconstructed, producing a continuous oscillation between thing, image, and sign.
4. Reproduction and Mediatization: Andy Warhol. From press photography to silkscreen: Marilyn Diptych, Death and Disaster, Electric Chairs, and Brillo Boxes. Seriality and repetition redefine the relations between image, original, copy, consumption, and commodity.
5. Fetishization and Hyperproduction: Jeff Koons. The New, Equilibrium, Rabbit, and Banality. The readymade is rethought through commercial display, industrial production, surface perfection, kitsch, and exchange value.
6. Preservation and Spectacle: Damien Hirst. A Thousand Years, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, and Mother and Child (Divided). The preserved and exhibited biological body brings together death, taxonomy, display, museum culture, and spectacle.
Lectures will combine historical and critical reconstruction, close analysis of individual works, and discussion of theoretical and historiographical texts.
Prerequisiti
No prerequisitesCore Documentation
Bibliography1. Marcel Duchamp: Selection and Nomination
• William A. Camfield, Marcel Duchamp: Fountain, Houston Fine Art Press, Houston 1989.
• William A. Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917”, Dada/Surrealism, 16, 1987, pp. 64–94.
• Thierry de Duve, “Given the Richard Mutt Case”, in Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, Cambridge 1996.
• Marcel Duchamp. Critica, biografia, mito, Electa, Milan 2009.
2. The Surrealist Object: Disruption and Desire
- Johanna Malt, Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford–New York 2004, especially chapters 3, “The Surrealist Object in Theory”, and 4, “The Surrealist Object as Fetish”.
- Didier Ottinger (ed.), Dictionnaire de l’objet surréaliste, Gallimard/Centre Pompidou, Paris 2013.
- Ghislaine Wood (ed.), Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, V&A Publications, London 2007.
- Ulrich Lehmann, “The Uncommon Object: Surrealist Concepts and Categories for the Material World”, in Ghislaine Wood (ed.), Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, V&A Publications, London 2007.
- Mary Ann Caws, The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA–London 1997.
3. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns: Incorporation and Hybridization
• Branden W. Joseph, Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2003.
• Paul Schimmel (ed.), Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, Museum of Contemporary Art/Steidl, Los Angeles–Göttingen 2005.
• Leo Steinberg, “Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art”, in Other Criteria, Oxford University Press, New York 1972, pp. 17–54.
• Fred Orton, Figuring Jasper Johns, Reaktion Books, London 1994.
4. Andy Warhol: Reproduction and Mediatization
• Thomas Crow, “Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol”, Art in America, 75, 5, May 1987, pp. 128–136.
• Hal Foster, “Death in America”, October, 75, Winter 1996, pp. 37–59.
• Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One-Dimensional Art: 1956–1966”, in Kynaston McShine (ed.), Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1989.
• Annette Michelson (ed.), Andy Warhol, October Files 2, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2001.
5. Jeff Koons: Fetishization and Hyperproduction
- Scott Rothkopf (ed.), Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art/Yale University Press, New York–New Haven 2014.
- Hal Foster, “The Art of Cynical Reason”, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1996, pp. 99–127.
- AnnMarie Perl, “‘A More Public Arena’: Jeff Koons’ Reinvention in the Midst of Reaganism”, Art History, 43, 3, 2020, pp. 474–508.
- Hal Foster, “Jeff Koons”, London Review of Books, 36, 15, 31 July 2014.
6. Damien Hirst: Preservation and Spectacle
• Ann Gallagher (ed.), Damien Hirst, Tate Publishing, London 2012.
• Kieran Cashell, Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art, I.B. Tauris, London–New York 2009, especially the chapter devoted to Damien Hirst.
• Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art, rev. ed., Verso, London–New York 2006.
• Luke White, “Damien Hirst’s Shark: Nature, Capitalism and the Sublime”, Tate Papers, no. 14, Autumn 2010.
Additional readings will be announced during the course and recommended to individual students for their research projects.
Reference Bibliography
Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, Art since 1900, Thames & Hudson. The Cambridge History of Modernism, Cambridge University Press 2016Attendance
Free choice for students. Attendance is compulsory for anyone who wishes to sit the exam under the “attending-student” option.Type of evaluation
12 ECTS Exams — Attending Students The examination is held in written form, in class, on the official examination date. The written test is designed to assess students’ thorough knowledge of the topics, artworks, artists, and historical-critical issues addressed during the course and in the required readings, as well as their ability to analyse and relate artworks, images, and theoretical positions. Questions will require structured answers combining historical knowledge and critical analysis and may include the identification and discussion of artworks and visual materials examined during the course. Access to the assessment format reserved for attending students requires regular and active participation in lectures, collective discussions, external visits, and other teaching activities, together with a thorough knowledge of the course materials, including texts, images, films, documents, and exhibitions visited as part of the course. 12 ECTS Exams — Non-Attending Students The examination consists of a written test and an oral examination, both held on the same date. The written test takes place in class and is designed to assess students’ knowledge of the topics, artworks, artists, and historical-critical issues included in the course programme and in the bibliography assigned to non-attending students. Questions will require structured answers combining historical knowledge and critical analysis and may include the identification and discussion of artworks and visual materials. Following the written test, non-attending students will also take an oral examination on the same day. The oral examination is intended to further assess and, where necessary, clarify the results of the written test, and to verify students’ overall knowledge of the required bibliography, their ability to present and critically discuss the main themes of the course, and their capacity to analyse and relate artworks, historical contexts, and theoretical positions.