GEN 230 - Creative Expression: Subversive Art
Many claim and believe that works of art, whether paintings or poems or
stories or songs or films, exist primarily to express those positive,
joyous, and wondrous aspects of human experience; or to delight,
satisfy, soothe and please the viewer. Witness centuries of paintings of
calm countryside scenes, poems containing undying expressions of
passion, and narratives wherein the hero vanquishes all evil and all is
right with the world. However, many would counter that another major
function of art is to express entirely the opposite – frustration, rage
and disgust over the state of the world and the human condition. Some
artists purposefully seek, and set out, to alienate, anger, confuse and
confront the viewer and his/her attitudes about the way the world is and
should be. Such “subversive” art challenges and blasts commonly-held
(“normative”) notions about what art is, what it should do, how it
should be made, and what ideas the maker should seek to communicate. In
this course, you will be confronted by some of the 20th and 21st
centuries’ controversial (aesthetically and sociopolitically) artists
and their works that aim – often using groundbreaking methods – to
express viewpoints not commonly held by most.
Required Textbooks (click book covers for information)
