This course examines the major structures and ways of thinking which have both constituted and transformed the practices of art and criticism and evaluation of art in an era characterised by the pervasiveness of mass media and the aestheticisation of everyday life. The course explores the forms and significance of popular culture in the 20th century, focussing on such phenomena as consumerism, mass media, TV and advertising, subcultures, the city and the suburb. The interdisciplinary development of cultural studies provides tools for reading artistic strategies in the light of television, film, computer imaging, the popular press and advertising. The work of theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Michel de Certeau and Meaghan Morris is applied to these areas and critically examined.