Critical Theory and the Arts - School of Visual Arts

Critical Theory and the Arts from School of Visual Arts is a Campus Master Art History degree that prepares you for a Art and Design career. Program Overview "Art knows us better than we know ourselves." T. W. Adorno Critical Theory and the Arts is a closely organized, yearlong study in critical social theory that focuses on the arts in the broadest sense?inclusive of the visual arts , literature, music, dance, performance and new media. The program responds to a need: For thinking about art has never before been so protean, so broadly inventive and urgently central to the whole of social, philosophical and political reflection. Every major area of thought now turns considerable attention to art in expectation that art will somehow provide the key to solving its central questions. At the same time, in art itself, every aspect of its reality presents dynamic conflicts and puzzles that demand theoretical reflection. Those directly involved in the arts can no longer imagine that artists proceed na?vely, mixing passion with thin air. While artists of earlier generations once struggled to disguise the thinking labor that went into their work, today art theory has become part?often an explicit part?of all art-making. To an unprecedented degree , developments in art theory even directly transform art . What the arts once were, they soon enough will no longer be; in large measure, they have already been irreversibly transformed. For artists and graduate students from several fields of inquiry, the need collaboratively to understand what has happened, what is happening and what is at stake is salient. The MA in Critical Theory and the Arts program thus engages a vital century-long reflection on the arts through a curriculum modeled on the interdisciplinary framework of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. Here "interdisciplinary" is not an approach that ignores the boundaries between disparate fields of inquiry. Rather, real criticism of the boundaries of knowledge takes its lead from the demands of the problems in which the interdisciplinary work is integrated. Key works of critical theory are therefore studied in conjunction with the philosophical, sociological, political and art historical background that is needed to engage these works meaningfully. An expert and collaborating core faculty draws on the breadth of thought and research from the several fields needed for understanding the problems of art where they are tense with the complexity of our own concerns for contemporary reality and the arts . The focal points of the program are the Proseminar and the Serious Times Lecture Series. The Proseminar broaches critical issues in society, culture and the arts as an open forum. Students develop and experiment with the material presented and attend discussions with leading New York City intellectuals and internationally acclaimed visiting artists. The Serious Times Lecture Series engages students in presentations and discussions of the most urgent social problems facing us today. Graduates of Critical Theory and the Arts remain on-going members of the lecture series and of the program's intellectual community. View more details on School of Visual Arts . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Art History courses.