What is the political capacity of art? What is the aesthetic capacity of politics? This course examines key episodes, strategies, and formulations pertaining to the complex relationship between art and politics across the 20^th century. Topics include experiments in radical abstraction and mass performance undertaken by the Russian avant-garde, the institutional politics of Mexican Muralism, painting and propaganda during the Cold War, guerilla interventions and military dictatorships, the AIDS crisis and artist activism, and recent social movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter.