ARTS 371 - Sonic Art History: Listening to Modern & Postwar Art

Semester Offered: Second Semester
Full Course
Credits: 4 Credits
Attribute: 4HU, WINT

This interdisciplinary lecture course explores ‘sonic art’ across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing sonic art history via connections to sound studies and music history. We begin by examining depictions of music and sound in visual art at the rise of modernism, tracing representations of musical performance and instruments through sonic abstraction in silence and noise. We follow this development through twentieth century avant-gardes, overviewing how sonic methods and sound technologies suffused movements like Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, laying groundwork for shifts from sound-as-allegory to sound-as-material that defined ‘sound art’ as a distinct artistic practice in the postwar/contemporary periods. Field trips required.

Enrollment Limit: 30
Instructor: C. Eppley

Consent of the Instructor Required: No
Prerequisites & Notes: A 100-level course in art history