Daniel Kojo Schrade

Associate Professor of Art

Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies

dschrade@hampshire.edu

www.danielkojoschrade.com

Mail Code MB

Daniel Schrade

Arts Barn 2nd floor

413.559.5794

On Sabbatical Fall 2016

Daniel Kojo Schrade, associate professor of art, studied in Germany and Spain. He received an M.F.A. from the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Germany.

His paintings and installations have been presented internationally including the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo/Oaxaca-Mexico; Alliance Francais/Kumasi-Ghana; Haus der Kunst/Munchen-Germany; Muzej Grada/Rijeka-Croatia; and the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, MA. He has taught painting at the Kwame Nkrumah University/Kumasi-Ghana; the Academy of Fine Arts Munich; and the State Academy Rotenfels-Germany.

His work includes repeated motifs such as the "Afronaut" figure, and textual elements in the cycle entitled, "Brother Beethoven," a series he started in 1999.

Daniel Kojo Schrade was a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College and has received grants and awards from the Cusanuswerk Foundation/Bonn-Germany, the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and the District Government of Bavaria. His work is represented in various permanent collections such as those of the Museo de Cuenca/Spain; MACO/Mexico; the Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlung/Munich; Collection Diehl/Silvaplana-Swiss; and Collection Morat/Freiburg-Germany.

Recent and Upcoming Courses

Field Study
Introduction to Representational Painting and Collective,
This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of painting, such as composition, value, and color. Students will learn about material and the technical issues of painting. Drawings will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to illuminate visual ideas. We will work with water based and oil based paint on various surfaces. Besides creating individual paintings, students will collectively prepare and work on large-scale canvases. This course will develop from individual representational set-ups towards collective, abstract work. Regular class critiques will assist in examining formal composition principles. The course will focus on the work of non-western contemporary artists and we will discuss historic work examples from a post-colonial perspective. Readings and one paper on an artist to be assigned will be part of this class. Assignments require students to work independently outside of class.
Intersections in Painting, Performance and Installation
El Anatsui, Hannah Hoch, Gabriel Orozco, William Pope L., Yinka Shonibare, Ghada Amer, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, David Hammons. Since the 1960s, the variety of an increasing choice of media has created more diverse working fields for artists. While this may make it easier for more artists to find areas of expression, it may also be more difficult for students to map their own artistic language. This course is designed for students who are starting to develop their own personality as artists. Experimenting with materials, techniques, and styles, on the basis of collective readings and written personal statements, will be central to this class. Readings, assigned slide-presentations and class discussions will be informed by the work of non-western contemporary artists.
Abstraction and Non-Representational Painting
The significance of artistic practice is not that it empowers the artist to create the illusion of reality. Art is teaching us to reinterpret the world. This course offers to explore abstraction and non-representational painting and will also investigate the indistinct border between painting and installation art. Students are encouraged, through readings, digital image lectures, and assignments, to develop an individual approach to the subject matter. This course will address issues such as alternative methods of image making, composition and color theory, while exploring transcultural abstract art in its various manifestations. We will also investigate abstract art in relation to political activism. This course is open to students who completed a painting class on an introductory level in addition to an art theory course.
Advanced Painting, Reconsidering the Trivial: From Bruegel to Basquiat and Bruguera
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569), Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Tania Bruguera (1968- ). We will contextualize the work and the working approach of aforementioned artists and their contemporary's. The goal of this course is to explore more advanced problems in studio arts, with emphasis on the 'everyday life' and its entire complexity. Thematic assignments are designed to have students create and review works on an advanced level. Students will have to work in response to texts, films and work of other artists. Two response papers and one collaborative presentation on an assigned artist will be required. This course is open for students concentrating in the visual arts.
German Language
Shortly after their arrival in February and before the start of the German semester in the beginning of April, students enroll in an intensive German language course (5 days/week and 4 hours/day) in accordance with their German language proficiency at a leading foreign language academy in Berlin. With the start of the German semester students may choose to continue their language study by enrolling in a language course offered at the Freie University in Berlin (4 to 6 hours/week).