Course Description

Instructor: Clark Poling, PhD

French art after World War II conveys expressions of irony, anxiety, humor, lyricism, and a new humanism, as responses to the war and its aftermath. Against this historical background, the course explores art of the 1940s and 1950s beginning with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and the divergent moods in their art. Topics include: the new abstract art (Fautrier); the discovery and emulation of children’s and outsider art (Dubuffet); the issue of art and insanity and the interest in Asian art (Artaud and Michaux); and existentialist, surrealist and psychological aspects of art of this period (Giacometti). Finally, we will consider early conceptual art and installations, developments which would have a lasting legacy in contemporary art (Christo and others).