A Brief History of Shock

Level: Undergraduate

Division: Parsons The New School for Design

School: School of Art and Design History and Theory

Department: Art and Design History

Course Number: PLVS 3007

Course Format: Seminar

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Description:
With Courbet's 1852 remark, “When I cease to be controversial, I will cease to be important,” avant-garde art began an intimate relationship with the concept of shock. Courbet's Realism was marshaled toward social change, assaulting the traditions of the bourgeoisie and laying groundwork for artists to jolt their audience out of social norms, or into political action. This course surveys the history of shock in the visual and performative arts, focusing both on historical factors that cause shock to emerge as a desired tactic, and how shock is theorized and manifests itself. We will consider pre-WWI Futurism and Dada, where gestures of negation challenged traditional art and society; how shock was reworked later in Dada and Surrealism's critique of reason and in revolutionary new ways of seeing in the Soviet Union; and how decorum after WWII dictated a hiatus for shock, until social unrest in the 1960s caused artists to reevaluate its usefulness. Specific areas of interest include: shock and the use of specific artistic media (photography, film, collage, photomontage, etc.); shock and technology; uses of shock; theory of shock; shock and the individual v. shock and the masses; notions of 'revolutionary' shock v. shock and totalitarianism.

Course Pre/Co-requisites:
Open to: All university undergraduate degree students. Pre-requisites: first-year university writing course and at least one prior history or methods course in art, media, film, or visual culture.

Restrictions:

Level

Open to Undergraduate students.