In this course, we will engage with artwork across mediums that refute or deny access, give partial visual information, are only legible to some or under certain conditions—both through research and through making in the studio. This class centers visibility, legibility, and refusal in visual art. It will be divided into three sections: Legibility/Illegibility, Refusal and Opacity, and Abstraction, Figuration, and Representation. We will also study artworks that use surveillance technologies and practices to consider how surveillance intersects with each of these modes. In this class, we will consider how the conditions of opacity allow for celebratory space, the ways that legibility is connected to vantage points of viewership—as well as the artworks orientation toward that viewership— and the visual politics that trouble the line between abstraction and representation. Students will respond to selected readings, lectures, related exhibitions, and discussions by producing artworks.