Art Against Work

How has art articulated resistance to work – that is, to the imperative to labor for a living? Is there an alternative to working for a wage? Are artists workers? In this class we will explore the history of art’s resistance to the regime of work through fiction, poetry, film, and photography. The course focuses on four periods in four modules: “A Utopia of Leisure” looks at nineteenth-century opposition to capitalist industrialisation in art, design, and fiction. Next, “Strike!” takes us to the collective labor struggles of the 1930s in Depression-era documentary photography, strike writing, and satirical novels. The third module, “Layabouts and Losers” focuses on New York’s underemployed artists before the era of gentrification. The final module, “Precarity and the New Labor Movement” looks at artists and filmmakers working in today’s moment of insecure work and labor militancy. We will examine works by, among others, William Morris, Walt Whitman, Tillie Olsen, Langston Hughes, H.T. Tsiang, Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, Samuel Delany, Sarah Schulman, Anne Boyer, and Boots Riley. 
 
This course brings together methods and reading from literary study, art history, politics, and labor theory. Through short, informal writing, gallery and museum field trips, and an in-class presentation, students will develop an independent research project focused on an artist or artwork.