Pros: Baker gives really engaging lectures, and you can tell how excited he is about the topic. Having met most of the TAs during review sessions, they all seemed extremely friendly, responsive, and knowledgeable about the class. Overall, I gained a really good understanding of Modernism as a whole and the philosophies of the art movements comprising it. I'd absolutely recommend this class to anyone with a strong interest in art history from 1860-1940.

Cons: I found this class to have a much heavier workload than anticipated. There were probably 20-80 pages of readings per week, which were often difficult to follow and only loosely related to the week's topic. I know a lot of students managed to get through the class without ever doing any reading—but if you're like me and like to stay on top of reading assignments, just know it will take a solid chunk of your time.
There are four writing assignments total: 2 long-term essays (5-7 page papers that you get a couple of weeks to complete), the midterm, and the final.
The two long-term essays were very doable. The midterm and final were INSANE, which was probably a result of the shift to online learning. For both tests, we had ~36 hours to complete about 8 pages of writing. Despite the professor and TAs insisting that these exams would take no more than 2 hours, I (and many other students) spent at least 12-15 hours on each. The prompts were pretty simple, but required extensive quotes from assigned texts and sometimes involved artworks that we barely touched on in class. Luckily, these were graded more leniently.

Some additional advice:
DO NOT buy the textbook—he lists it as "required," but eventually uploads pdfs of the required excerpts to CCLE.
Most of your essays will involve comparisons between artists or movements. Although this may have been specific to my TA, I NEVER received instructions on how to write a comparison essay. This made it really hard to know where to start with any of my writing assignments.

I had taken an art history course back in high school that was cumulative, but as the title of this class states, it is ONLY modern art with minimal references to the Renaissance and Egyptian art and so on. I thought this course would be easy with a 20% equal distribution to each of the two essays, final, midterm, and discussion, but I was greatly mistaken. The grade SOLELY DEPENDS on your TA. My TA was very knowledgable and offered insight and help into the artworks in the course, but this TA graded very harshly although this TA seemed like a really nice person. The average for all essays was a B+, even if you have given it your utmost effort and thoroughly knew the content. You do NOT need to buy any textbooks for this class as all readings are posted on CCLE. The course is interesting with all the artworks you get to learn about and the professor is very lively and passionate. But WARNING, you will never see some artworks that you may have seen before the same way again because the professor always finds something phallic or sexual about it. The readings range from ten to over thirty pages. I took notes on each one and it would take hours to comprehend the text because art is very objective, but in the class, we are more focused on the physical aspects of art and the context of each era of art. The first essay will have you compare and contrast two paintings and the second one will have you compare and contrast two sculptures. The midterm will include slide ID which makes you identify the artworks with its title, date, and artist and the other part is the compare and contrast essay. The final has slide ID and it also has more compare and contrast essays and one longer essay that wraps all the themes of the course. ALL ESSAYS THAT ARE WRITTEN IN THE CLASS (whether it be alone or in a test) MUST INCLUDE THE SUPPORT OF THE READINGS. So, take this class if you can write well and make art your beach. I tried my best, but it wasn't enough for an A (HA!).

Professor Baker is the best. He is so engaging when lecturing and he makes the material so much more interesting to learn. The midterm and final are relatively easy, as long as you memorize the pieces he gives you and have a general understanding of the readings. The TA section is mandatory and is also very helpful. Such a good class, I absolutely loved this GE.

Professor Baker's lectures were always extremely engaging and funny despite teaching a subject I had little interest in. He is animated, relatable and seems to genuinely enjoy teaching Modern Art.

Professor Baker could be lecturing about the most incredibly mundane topic and I would still be at the edge of my seat. He is so passionate about this material, making it easy to engage with and master it. He has amazing speaking skills, always delivering his points in a clear and precise way. He organized lecture well and made it really easy to follow the main themes.
I genuinely enjoyed going to lecture; his humor and passion made it like going to a performance.
I wish Baker was my professor for every class. Would definitely recommend it.

This class was exactly what I wanted it to be-- easy enough to get an A with minimal work, but gave plenty of material if you actually want to learn. I was pretty interested in late 1800s European art, so I really liked the material itself. I know a lot of people were frustrated/disappointed that the class didn't cover more types and styles of art (even I was a little disappointed that some of my favorite artists were skipped), but if you just accept that the class is on a super tight schedule and is trying to explain a very specific movement, you learn a lot! As others have said, the workload can get pretty heavy with readings and lectures, but personally I didn't fully read anything. I was balancing a decently heavy workload with other classes and had no trouble fitting this in. I found it very similar to most of the humanities/GE classes I've taken, and perhaps even a lighter workload than most. Helpful that there isn't any homework and we were given plenty of time for the essays. Baker is definitely a character and his lectures varied from interesting and engaging to an hour of him repeating the exact same sentiment over and over. There are probably easier GEs out there, but if you're at all interested in the art itself I highly recommend taking! You can definitely get an A and you can learn as much as you want to learn.

This class was more difficult than I was expecting, but Baker is a great professor!! He is super passionate about the topic and gives great lectures. Lots of content to memorize so definitely not the easiest ge you could take.

Baker is a brilliant, impassioned lecturer. He is engaging and funny, and quick with his patent quips if there is a disruption in lecture (the ghosts of many artists often shut his projector off). If you are engaged in lecture, you will do well grade-wise. I for one did not do a very large chunk of the readings, and I did well. Baker often ties back art works and concepts he introduces in class as an allegory to the decadence of UCLA life.

Take this class if you want to gain a very relevant perspective on art, and modern art (for the two essays, we analyzed art at museums local to campus and in the UCLA Murphy Sculpture Garden), and (I would argue) a mature perspective on interpreting the world around you.

I highly recommend this class to anyone who is generally engaged with the world around them. Don't take up enrollment space if you are going to skip lecture, let someone else take your spot!

I will start this off by saying I did not finish the course, in fact I didn't make it to the halfway point. I luckily had an extra class over what I needed, so I was able to drop it. I was taking this class as a GE, and it was a disaster. The lectures seem to contain no actual content, and are just sort of the rantings of the professor and whatever comes to his mind. He is very passionate, and it is somewhat interesting to hear him speak, but trying to write notes to prepare for an exam or paper is extremely stressful and frankly impossible. The readings are extremely long and many of them off of poorly scanned PDFs that must be read on the computer. These take hours every week and are extremely boring at best, inscrutable at worst. The discussion wasn't better, it was unclear what we were supposed to do, we definitely were graded on doing something there but it wasn't clear what and it seemed like a competition to have the most ideas out to hopefully get the credit. I dropped just before I would've had the do the first paper. The prompt was long (like half a page), rambling, unclear, and a massive undertaking. It involved going to a museum, creating sketches, doing pages and pages of analysis, and who knows what else. I noped out at that point, opting for a stats class instead--that bad. I don't know if this is just how things are done on the humanities side, which is what some people told me, but I hope not.

Selling books. Brand new. On campus. Cheap. I just want them gone pls take them.

Passages in Modern Sculpture by Krauss
Theories of Modern Art by Chipp

hmu **********