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Art History
800 |
| Praising the contributions of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and signaling the shaping mark of his friend's work, Michel Foucault famously declared, "Perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian." We are now in another century and the import of the work of Gilles Deleuze and that of his collaborator Félix Guattari for the fields in which they strived to intervene--art, science, philosophy--is still a provocatively open and resonant question. The graduate seminar will be focused particularly on the potential in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for the study of art and visual culture. In thinking with and through their work and considering its possibilities for the study and theorization of visual culture and for art and cultural practice, we will be reading selections from their collaborative projects (Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus, On the Line, and What is Philosophy?), key parts of Deleuze's works directly pertaining to visuality (Cinema 1: Movement-Image and Cinema 2: Time-Image, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Coldness and Cruelty), and selections of Félix Guattari's writings on art, politics, and creative praxis (Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, Soft Subversions, and Chaosophy). We will also read a choice selection of the excellent studies of their writings, explore visual works that engage their concepts, and consider examples of studies that have applied or built on their models. There are no prerequisites and there is no expectation that students will have background in art history or visual culture studies. Two presentations and two short writing assignments will lead up to a culminating seminar paper or creative project that relates to the student's developing portfolio of work and area of specialization. |