As new technologies and new social configurations erode long-established hierarchies, artists increasingly navigate a space between traditional categories of high and low culture, public broadcast and private vision, fine and popular art. But how do we define these distinctions and their residual effects, and more importantly, what opportunities does this new cross-stitched terrain offer the contemporary artist engaging painting? A class for committed and experienced painters and those interested in the discourse, materials, and techniques of the discipline, this course challenges students to chart a path through the many debates surrounding painting and contemporary art. What effect have photography, the Internet, social media, and alternative forms of distribution exerted on painting? How have artists in the past grappled with the seismic technological and social shifts that define Spectacle and mass society? What kinds of models for painting-centered practice can emerge from the new visual and conceptual spaces created today, and how can painting operate within new image economies as well as traditional exhibition structures? Through a series of discrete projects, theoretical and art historical readings, field trips, critiques, and discussions, this class will offer students rigorous material instruction while situating their projects within a context as riven with high-low polarities as opportunities to dismantle them.

In this Advanced Practice class we will probe the traditional boundaries of drawing, engaging with it as an interdisciplinary, conceptual and experimental practice. We will examine the ways drawing intersects and cross-pollinates with installation, sculpture, and performance. We will explore unconventional approaches to drawing materials and surfaces, unusual scale, as well as new approaches to where and how “drawings” are seen. We'll query the monumental paper pulp paintings of Hong Hong, the embroidered landscapes of Jordan Nasser, Jennie C. Jones' drawings using sound equipment, Tacita Dean's blackboards, the collaged mail art of Ray Johnson, the sanded paper sculptures of Pierre Huyge, Bethany Collins' paper relief sculptures made from pulverized confederate monuments, Jay Defeo's installations of sculpted paint, the maps of Joseph Yoakum. We will treat this course as a 2D test lab, where students may engage a range of techniques from cross-stitching to graphite drawing, experimental printmaking to image transfers, cut-ups to carvings. In doing so, we will collaboratively chart an expanded field for the practice of drawing.