The history of the foregrounding of "idea" or "content" in the visual arts is the history of the past 50 years, after the domination of abstract expressionism. It is also the history of the School of Visual Arts, where the 1966 exhibition "Working Papers and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to be Viewed as Art" was one of the breakthrough exhibitions for conceptual art. This course follows the decline of "pure" painting and sculpture and the rise of works that engage Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"- works by artists who were the heirs of Duchamp rather than Picasso. This period may be thought of as a rope whose strands are new, or hybrid: media/pop culture and spectacle/political engagement. It marked the shift from dominant regional styles (e.g., the New York School) to globalism and the importance of festival art. Discussion topics: color field and the last gasp of Greenberg; the influence of Marcel Duchamp; Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and pop; conceptualism; process art; installation art; appropriation and commodity fetishism; sex and gender in art; the return to figuration and painting as medium; the body; exhibitions and globalism; new technologies and media. (class will be held Tuesday, July 3)