Flower Study: Uses and Misuses of Beauty

This interdisciplinary studio class will explore the deployment of beauty across a range of disciplines, using the flower as our guiding symbol. The flower is an image often cited as universal, but slippery in its meanings and interpretations in practice. Tracing the image and material use of flowers in poetry, sculpture, performance, and political movements through a series of critiques, in-class experiments, lecturers from visiting artists, and field trips, we will consider how to wield beauty intentionally, incisively, and effectively--and what we can learn from failures to do so.