Please note that weekly readings are listed under the week they will be discussed. Students are expected to complete readings and summaries PRIOR to our actual class meeting by noon each Wednesday in preparation for weekly discussions. Unless otherwise specified, all readings are available in the course reader.

Week 1: INTRODUCTIONS/COURSE OVERVIEW – 1 Sept 10

  • Blog registration

Homework Assignment:

Week 2: PERCEPTIONS – 8 Sept 10

  • Hudson River School
  • The Sublime
  • Wilderness/Landscape

Readings:

  • J.B. Jackson, “The Word Itself,” Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, Yale University Press, 1984, pp. 1-8. (instructor will provide)
  • J.T. Boulton (editor), Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful [1757],” Columbia University Press, 1958. (instructor will provide)
  • William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or  Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (W. W. Norton, 1995, 69-90) http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html
  • Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, Simon & Schuster, 1968, pp. xi-7. (instructor will provide)

Graduate reading:

  • J.B. Jackson, “A Pair of Ideal Landscapes,” Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, Yale University Press, 1984, pp. 9-56.

Screening:

  • A Voice in the Wilderness: Edward Abbey

Week 3: PRECEDENTS – 15 Sept 10

  • Geoglyphs: Nazca Lines, Blythe Intaglios; Native American Mound builders
  • Robert Smithson
  • Nancy Holt
  • Michael Heizer
  • Dennis Oppenheim
  • Walter De Maria
  • Ana Mendieta
  • Christo and Jean-Claude
  • James Turrell

Readings:

Graduate readings:

  • Jack Flam (editor), “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan,” Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 119-133.

Screenings:

  • ART 21: James Turrell (Season 1)

Graduate Presentation:

  • Adam Manley

Week 4: IMAGING – 22 Sept 10

  • Ansel Adams
  • Elliot Porter
  • Richard Misrach: Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos
  • Robert Dawson: Water in the West and Farewell, Promised Land projects
  • Mark Klett: The Rephotographic Survey project
  • Chris Jordan: Midway and Intolerable Beauty projects

Readings:

  • Rebecca Solnit, “Every Corner is Alive: Eliot Porter as an Environmentalist and an Artist,” Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, University of California Press, 2003, pp. 225-253. (available on Blackboard)
  • Rebecca Solnit, “Unsettling the West: Contemporary American Landscape Photography/Look the Other Way: New Western Landscapes,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, University of Georgia Press, 2001, pp. 90-108.
  • Lucy R. Lippard, “Out of the Picture Window,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 178-192.

Graduate reading:

  • Rebecca Solnit, “Scapeland,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, University of Georgia Press, 2001, pp. 63-89.

Graduate Presentation:

  • Marisa Scheinfeld

Week 5: IMAGING (continued) – 29 Sept 10

  • New Topographics
  • Edward Burtynsky

Readings:

  • New Topographics Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topographics
  • Williams Jenkins, “Introduction,” New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape exhibition catalog, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, 1975. (available on Blackboard)
  • Leah Ollman, “Art Banality, in black and white: Exploring the rise of photography’s New Topographics movement, whatever it may mean,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2009. (available on Blackboard)
  • Kim Stringfellow discusses New Topographics exhibit at LACMA (video): http://lacma.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/tour-new-topographics-with-kim-stringfellow/
  • Slate.com’s photo essay feature on Disney’s Celebration—a planned residential community in Florida: http://www.slate.com/id/2113107/slideshow/2113258/fs/0//entry/2113259/
  • Lucy R. Lippard, “The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 225-241.
  • Rebecca Solnit, “Poison Pictures,” Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, University of California Press, 2003, pp. 135-139. (available on Blackboard)

Screening:

  • Art 21: Robert Adams (Season 4)
  • Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes DVD

Week 6: INVESTIGATING – 6 Oct 10

  • Center for Land Use Interpretation
  • Trevor Paglen
  • Mark Dion
  • Land Arts of the American West

Readings:

Screenings:

Graduate Presentation:

  • Jeannette Ibarra Shindell

Week 7: WALKING – 13 Oct 10

  • Richard Long
  • Hamish Fulton
  • Andy Goldsworthy
  • Chris Dury

Readings:

  • David Coggins, “Sticks and Stones,” Art in America, September 2009, pp. 122-127. (available on Blackboard)
  • Excerpt on Richard Long from Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Penguin Books, 2000, pp. 270-272. (available on Blackboard)
  • Andy Goldsworthy, “Stone [1994],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, p. 220. (available on Blackboard)
  • Richard Long, “Five, six, pick up sticks, Seven, eight, lay them straight [1980],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 241-242. (available on Blackboard)
  • Hamish Fulton, “Into a Walk into Nature [1995],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 242-243. (available on Blackboard)

Screening:

Assignment: Documented Walk (see Homework Assignments)

Week 8: MAPPING – 20 Oct 10

  • John Baldessari (California Map Project)
  • Fallen Fruit
  • Invisible-5
  • Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
  • LA Urban Rangers
  • Jackrabbit Homestead
  • An Atlas of Radical Cartography

Readings:

Week 9: DOCUMENTED WALK PRESENTATIONS – 27 Oct 10

Week 10: REMEDIATION– 3 Nov 10

  • Joseph Beuys
  • Hans Haacke
  • Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison
  • Agnes Denes
  • Alan Sonfist
  • Patricia Johanson
  • Lynne Hull
  • Viet Ngo
  • Mel Chin
  • Fritz Haeg
  • This is Not a Cornfield
  • Big Box reuse
  • Overview final project requirements

Readings:

  • Sue Spaid, “Section 2: Activism to Publicize Ecological Problems/Monitoring Ecological Problems,” Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies, Contemporary Arts Center, June 2002. http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect2.html
  • Alan Sonfist, “Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments [1968],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 257-258. (available on Blackboard)
  • Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield—A Confrontation [1982],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 261-262. (available on Blackboard)
  • Viet Ngo, “Lemna Systems [1995],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, p. 264. (available on Blackboard)
  • Mel Chin, “Revival Field [1995],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 264-265. (available on Blackboard)
  • Patricia Johanson, “Fecund Landscapes: Art and Process in Public Parks,” Land View: Online Journal of Landscape, Art, and Design.  http://www.landviews.org/la2003/fecund-pj.html
  • Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates: http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/about.html

Screening:

  • Mel Chin Art 21 (Season One)

Week 11: SALTON SEA PREP– 10 Nov 10

FINAL PROJECT ABSTRACTS (250 words) ARE DUE TODAY.

  • Greetings from the Salton Sea

Readings:

  • Kim Stringfellow, Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005, Center for American Places, 2005, pp. 4-29. (available on Blackboard)
  • William DeBuys/Joan Meyers, “Have we got a deal for you,” Salt Dreams: Land & Water in Low-Down California, University of New Mexico Press, 1999, pp. 205-219.
  • Michael DiGregorio, “The Ethical Outlaw,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, December 11, 2005. http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/11/magazine/tm-chocolates50
  • Stringfellow’s photos for the article above are available at the following link:
    http://kimstringfellow.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

Screening:

  • Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea DVD

Week 12: SALTON SEA FIELD TRIP– 19-21 Nov 10

  • NO CLASS MEETING on 11/17/10. Instead, please attend the Chris Taylor Visiting Artist Presentation on Thursday, 11/18/10 at 4 pm in ART 412.
  • We will meet on campus at 7 am to depart on Friday, 11/19/10. Please be on time.

Week 13: NO CLASS MEETING TODAY– 24 Nov 10

  • Email the instructor a final project outline of your research paper by today’s date.

Week 14: FINAL PROJECT PRESENTATIONS– 1 Dec 10

Week 15: FINAL PROJECT PRESENTATIONS continued– 8 Dec 10