ARTH 462
Art of California: "Sunshine or Noir"
Last Offered Spring 2007
Division I
Cross-listed LATS 462 / AMST 462
This course is not offered in the current catalog

California has long been considered a land of “sunshine and noir,” unique in the national and international imagination as a land of physical recreation and destruction, a land of opportunity and social unrest. In this course, we will study the visual arts and culture of California from the 1960s to the present. Although we will focus on southern California, particularly Los Angeles, we will also consider movements in San Diego and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. The course will approach California pop, conceptual, funk, performance, installation, public, and media arts to pursue questions of influence and interpretation concerning the relations between space, place, identity, and style in the visual arts and popular culture. Alongside analyzing California’s visual culture, we will examine the region’s cultural geography through historical and theoretical readings. Particular attention will be given to the region’s special relations to Hollywood, the automobile, beach-surf culture, and the great diversity that characterizes the state.