art essay

OVERVIEW

This assignment asks you to address the three ART 141 learning outcomes, that is to identify, comprehend and analyze the diverse content of Art history and apply them to a creative project.

For this job I am asking you to build a content page around an historically significant artist or school of artists representing a defensible ART 100 topic. You are now the professor and need to inform and engage the class with clarity and approachability. You need to be factual, but you can toss in some of your own ideas, as I do fairly often, so long as those ideas are rational and defensible.

You might start a project by thinking about your interest in a particular artist, or period or subject and go from there.

it might be advisable to base your project on an artist or a theme that I did not address in my content pages to keep the material fresh. There’s a million artists out there who qualify as significant that there just wasn’t time for or who I only mentioned in passing.

You have a lot of options, but also some limitations.

Your assignment will be to build a content page, or make a video, a bit like the ones you’ve been seeing for the last 12 weeks, as though you were teaching an ART 100 class. The page or video should address one themed topic. Artists or topics are pretty open ended, but the subject you select must be defensibly, culturally important, and would apply cogently to art 100 class.

Cabbage patch dolls, Korean chicken recipes, Birthday cards, etc would not cut it. If in doubt about a topic ask me! That’s what I’m here for.

A content page or video usually takes one of the following formats –

1. The topical theme – War, poverty, Dutch still life, revolution, street taggers, women in the 19th century, Captain America, the list is endless and the topical theme is usually the most dynamic in terms of interest. The originality of your topic, and it’s inherent content will define a third of your grade. In general, don’t select a topic that’s to big and general like “Western Civilization”, your taking in to much real estate. Focus your page.
2. The Monograph Theme– A very standard sort of page whereby an important aspect of a seminal master, such as Van Gogh, is addressed. a few examples from people who built upon and expanded his work, such as Kirchner, might be a good way to expand the page. You could then explain how each successive artist used and innovated the master’s work and took it to another level, or challenged it and made it into something else entirely. There are hundreds of possibilities and approaches, however, in an assignment like this, you need to show me, and the class, that you understand how western art evolves from a seminal example.
3. The “School of artists” theme. Another simple approach whereby you select a “school” of artists, such as the Impressionists, or the Quattrocento Italian fresco painters, define the school and illustrate its aims and concerns with cogent examples. Again, the content pages in this class are often built on that premise, but don’t imitate what I’ve done. The best tack here is to find a school of Western artists who are lesser known, such as the Italian Impressionists called “e Macchiaioli”, or some other lost heros of art history, and go from there. After all you are the professor of tomorrow.
4. You can come up with your own take on a theme, but run it past me first.

Choose a theme from any of these options, but always choose artists who are known well enough to be documented.

Unlike other discussions, this one is built so that you may post a link to another page in the discussion window, to almost anyplace, a web page, a google doc, Youtube, it’s up to you.

If you want to make a short video for your page rather than write and post a paper, that would be very acceptable. 5 to 10 minutes maximum. However, all videos must be closed captioned. This is standard educational policy, but more the point, your professor is seriously hearing impaired, which is why I no longer teach ground classes.

So get creative! It’s part of the grade. 100 points possible.

This assignment is sort of like your final exam, OK?

RESOURCES

Your main resources will be Art Cyclopedia, Google images, Olga’s gallery or a dozen other image banks, all easily available, and jammed with copyright free material. If it’s more than 100 years old, no issue, if it’s part of a public collection, no issue. If it’s a visual quote from a larger work, such as a graphic novel, no issue.