American Landscapes of Extraction

What should art history look like in the anthropocene? What is necessary to bring questions about how to define and analyze the ecological that have been developed in other disciplinary contexts—literature, anthropology, science studies—to art history?  How might we attend to the non-human forces contributing to the conceptualization, commissioning, creation, display, evolution and reception of works of art?  Do all kinds of objects invite this kind of critical investigation or only a select few?  What are the potential pitfalls of undertaking this approach?

In this seminar, we will investigate these questions through the exploration of works that engage the history of extraction in the Americas in their subject matter, use and/or materiality.  Combining theoretical readings with recent examples of ecocritical art history, we will discuss different models and motivations for this work and put these methods into use by producing object labels for works to be included in the Fall 2024 Wallach Art Gallery exhibition “The Hudson:  Art, Industry and Ecology.”  Students will also undertake independent research projects of their own devising.

Key questions will include, among others, the definition and limits of the term “human”; the agency of artists’ materials and the physical environments in which works are created and viewed; artists’ attempts to collaborate with the non-human through explorations of chance, time-based practice and other strategies; art works designed to document, inform about or forestall environmental damage; the relationship between colonial or neoliberal social formations and the environment as evidenced in works of art or their creation and reception; the place of the aesthetic in eco-criticism.