What are the environments, fictions, fantasies, and ideologies that condition the artist at work? This course takes as its investigative locus the artist’s studio, a space of experimentation and inspiration, but also of boredom, sociability, exhaustion, and critique. Structured around visits to the studios of multiple practicing artists in New York City, the course tracks the trope of “the studio” from the Renaissance to the present, with emphasis on the concept’s reconfiguration and reanimation in contemporary art. Special attention is devoted to the close analysis of primary documents (artists’ statements, films, works) and the development of an engaged, critical discourse for discussing contemporary practice at large.