Week 1: Modernism and the City


The lecture includes a reference to Marshall Berman's, "All that is Solid Melts into Air: The
experience of Modernity"

You might wish to continue this theme with Goethe's "Faust" published in translation in 2 volumes
by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, or a book of essays, edited by E.Timms, "Unreal City", Cambridge
University Press. For Walter Benjamin, see his "Illuminations" and "Charles Baudelaire, Epic Poet
in the era of High Capitalism", and Susan Buck-Morss, "The Dialectics of Seeing".


Lecture 2: The Metropolises of Modernism I: Berlin


Frank Whitford's chapter on "The City in Painting" in Edward Timms (ed) "Unreal City" (University
of Cambridge Press), ties in with some of the themes discussed in Lecture 1.


Additional reading


C.W.E. Bigsby, "Dada and Surrealism", Methuen, London, 1972

Berthold Brecht, "Poems (Parts 1-3)", Eyre Methuen, London, 1976.

John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, Thames and Hudson, 1985.

George Grosz, "A Small Yes and a Big No, The Autobiography of George Grosz", Transl, Arnold J.
Pomerans, Feltham Middlesex, 1982, first published in Hamburg, 1955.

Christos M.Joachimedes, Norman Rosenthal and Wieland Schmied, (eds.), "German Art of the 20th
Century, 1905-1985, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Prestel Verlag, Cologne,

1985 Eva Karcher, "Otto Dix", Taschen Verlag, 1988, Cologne.

Hans J. Kleinschmidt, (ed): Richard Huelsenbeck, "Memoirs of a Dada Drummer", University of
California Press, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1969.

Rainer Maria Rilke, "Selected Poems", Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964.

Tristan Tzara, "Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries", Calder Publications, London,1992


Lecture 3: Italian Futurism


For this week's topic take a look at Carloline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla's book on "Futurism",
which serves to introduce some of the key ideas of this early Modernist art movement.


Lecture 4: Cubism:


Douglas Cooper, "The Cubist Epoch", Faber and Faber, London

John Golding, "Cubism", Faber and Faber, London

John Berger, "The Success and Failure of Picasso"

Alfred H. Barr, "Cubism and Abstract Art",

A.H.Barr, "Picasso: 50 years of his Art"

"Picasso the Late Work", Royal Academy of Arts, London, Catalogue.


Lecture 5: Russian Constructivism, De Stijl, The Bauhaus


Jaffe, Hans L.C., "De Stijl", Thames & Hudson, London, 1970, 1973.

Kemp, Martin (ed), The Oxford History of Western Art, Oxford University Press, 2000. (Section on
Modernism and Russian art).

Pevsner, Nicolaus, "Pioneers of Modern Design", Pelican, Harmondsworth.

Wilk, Christopher (ed), "Modernism: designing a new World 1914-1939", London, V & A Museum, 2006.


Lecture 6: Surrealism


Breton, André, "Le Surrelaisme et la Peinture", Paris, 1965.

Gershman, H.S. "The Surrealist Revolution in France", Ann Arbor, 1969

Jean, M, "The History of Surrealist Painting", New York, 1960

Levy, J., "Surrealism", New York, 1936

Nadeau, Maurice, "The History of Surrealism", New York, 1965

Read, Herbert, "Surrealism", London, 1936.

Rubin, W.S. "Dada and Surrealist Art", London, 1965


Lecture 7 ‘Canonical Modernism’


Barr, Alfred H, “Cubism and Abstract Art” MOMA 1936

Barr, Alfred H. “Picasso 50 Years of his Art”

Burger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Clark, T.J., Jackson Pollock s Abstraction, in Serge Guilbaut (ed), Reconstructing Modernism: Art
in New York, Paris, and Montreal, 1945-1964.

Fineberg, Jonathan, “ Art since 1940: Strategies of Being,” Laurence King Publishers,1995.

Huyssen, Andreas, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, London, 1986.


Lecture 8 Minimalism


Alloway, Lawrence, “Systemic Painting”, NY, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1966.

Batcock, Gregory, (ed) “The New Art: A critical Anthology”, Dutton, NY, 1973.

Batcock, Gregory (ed), “Minimal Art”, Introduction by Anne Wagner, University of

 California Press, 1995.

Fried, Michael, “Art & Objecthood”, Artforum, Vl 5 no 10 (June 1967).

Judd, Donald, “Specific Objects”, Arts Yearbook 8 (NY: Art Digest, 1965):74-82

Morris, Robert, “Notes on Sculpture” [Part 1], Artforum, Vol. 4 no 6 (Feb 1966);

            [Part 2]: Vol. 5., no 2 (October 1966), 42-44.

Rose, Barbara, “ABC Art”, Art in America (Oct/Nov, 1965): 58. pp.57-69.

Rosenberg, Harold, “The tradition of the New”, New York, Grove Press, 1961.

Sandler, Irving, “American Sculpture of the Sixties. Los Angeles” LA County Museum

of Art, 1967.

Smithson, Robert, “The writings of Robert Smithson” (Edited by Nancy Holt), NY, NY

University Press, 1979.

Sontag, Susan, “Against Interpretation and Other Essays”, NY: Noonday Press, 1966

Wollheim, Richard, “Minimal Art”, Arts Magazine, Vol. 39, no 4 (Jan 1965): 26-32. Reprinted in “On
Art and Mind”, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.