Space

ART 908

Architectural Space. Art Space. Contested Space. Cyber Space. Domestic space. Dream Space. Film Space. Gallery Space. Gendered Space. Imaginary Space. Inner Space. Kid Space. Landscape Space. Liminal Space. Open Space. Outer Space. Perspectival Space. Pictorial Space. Private Space. Public Space. Queer Space. Performance Space. Representational Space. Sacred Space. Safe Space. Social Space. Theatrical Space. Urban Space. Utopian Space. Virtual Space.

Space is imbricated in numerous historical, philosophical, political, social, creative, and even spiritual discourses. Space is known to us as geometric abstraction and as physical dimensionality. We are concerned with its geographic and geometric parameters but also with lived experience and the human cultural activities of placemaking. We may claim, depict, invoke, create, develop, conjure, construct or imagine space.

For practicing artists, from painters to architects, filmmakers to musicians, a consideration of space is imperative as space is not only subject but also medium and context. Historical investments in spatial illusionism have been enriched by contemporary installation and public art practices. While we each bring to the study of space an immediate concern for familiar and quotidian spaces, developments such as globalization and the information revolution have made the paradigm of space one of the must compelling conceptual frameworks for understanding contemporary culture.

This course will look at space from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Our readings, will be drawn from a broad range of visual culture studies including works by Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, E. H. Gombrich, Miwon Kwon, Lucy Lippard, Brian O'Doherty, Erwin Panofsky, Irit Rogoff, Yi-Fu Tuan, Victor Turner, Heinrich Wofflin, and others. In addition to weekly reading assignments, over the course of the semester each seminar participant will explore one facet of "space" in depth through research, writing and creative production.