MARCH621 GE: The Ghost of Content

In her seminal essay on Conceptual Art, Lucy Lippard defines the de-materialization of the art object in the late 1960's and early 1970's through the lens of absence: abstraction in art making, she notes, "often resembles ruins? amalgams of past and future, remains of something 'more'?" This seminar seeks to extend Lippard's mode of analysis as a way of evaluating the role of architecture as a "ghost of content" in contemporary art practice. Using case studies from painting, photography, sculpture, installation art and film, architecture as a figural and historical trope in fine art media is evaluated to ask the question: what can artists tell us about architecture that architects cannot? Examples will be drawn

Course explores issues and ideas of architecture and its context in larger systems of culture and knowledge.