107-420 Art and Mass Culture in the 1960s

Formerly available as 107-059. Students who have completed 107-059 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually 37.5 points of art history at second/third year, see Prerequisites or admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in art history or cultural studies.

This subject uses interdisciplinary methodologies to study the interaction of art and mass culture. The visual arts of the 1960s are studied in conjunction with other cultural practices (television, advertising, fashion, popular music) and historical phenomena (the Vietnam war, counter-cultural movements, the rise of consumer culture). Through a series of case studies the ideological, cultural, artistic and philosophical shifts that we now call postmodernism will be explored. The primary focus will be on the United States but studies will also incorporate Australia and Europe. Students should develop an understanding of issues such as the relationship of art and life (modernist autonomy or postmodernist interaction); the possibilities for agency and activism (protest movements, art as critique of society); shifting notions of subjectivity (counter-cultural spiritualism, communalist subcultures, bureaucratised and mechanised art); modes of consumption (interactive art, fashion, live music); gestures of refusal (neo-primitivism, post-object art, feminism, drug culture).