Picturing the City: New York on Canvas, Paper, and Film

John Sloan, Six O Clock​ (1912)

In the first decades of the 20th century, New York became a subject for artists: the city’s streets and inhabitants, its urban, social and natural landscape appeared in prints, paintings, photographs, and films. The course will examine the documentary and artistic production that centered on New York from the Ashcan School and Jacob Riis’s photographs to Andy Warhol’s films and Martin Wong’s 1980s paintings of the East Village. By exploring the art made in and of the city, and thus offering a visual compendium, the course offers a close look at New York’s social and cultural history and its artists throughout the 20th century, and engages with fields and topics such as cultural geography, architecture, popular culture, advertising, immigration, social activism, ethnicity, gentrification, and urban planning. Artists to be discussed include: John Sloan, Robert Henri, Reginald Marsh, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Ben Shahn, Lewis Hine, Joseph Stella, Georgia O’Keeffe, Berenice Abbott, Diego Rivera, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Lewitt, Romare Bearden, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Alex Katz, Danny Lyons, Lady Pink, and many others.

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6:00-7:30 PM (ET)
January 4 - January 27
$300 (8 sessions, 90 min. each)

Meet your instructor

Ágnes Berecz

Ágnes Berecz is an art historian and art world professional, specialized in modern and contemporary art. Educated at the Université Paris I/Panthéon-Sorbonne in France and Eötvös Lóránd University, in Budapest, Hungary, she is an Associate Professor with Christie’s Education, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, and worked for many years as a Lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1.