Paper Assignment Option (A)
You are assigned a short paper, three to five pages in length, on four pieces of artwork you have seen in person by visiting Detroit Institute of Arts, Toledo Museum of Art or University of Michigan Museum of Art (You have to attach the ticket or museum sticker with your paper to demonstrate your museum trip). The paper is due no later than Thursday, April 12, 2012. In order to articulate your point of view more effectively, you might want to attach pictures of the artworks you are talking about. The bulk of this assignment is about writing paragraphs that visually describes the piece, using terms and concepts learning in class. Consider the subject, medium, technique, and composition. Also consider the design elements and principles that we have learned in class. Try to be complete. You must use the vocabulary that we have learned. Choose four works of art each created in a different media. Types of media could be oil painting, ink wash painting, wood carving, metal casting, photography, video, cloth tapestry, or other media. Typical questions to consider about each work of art include: -Describe what you have seen. -Explain your reaction to the work. -What do you think the artist’s intent was for creating this work? -How would interpret the work? -For contemporary art works, how would the theme be rendered if it was created several centuries earlier?

For example, included in your visual description of the piece shall be commentary on: Form Composition Style Focal Points Line How is focal emphasis achieved? Color Balance Perspective/Recession Theme Principles of Design Special definitions Content Intent Iconography And, any other definitions/principles that apply.

1

Based on your visual description, discuss your personal reactions to the piece and your interpretation on the piece. Why were you drawn to the piece? Why did you choose it? What does it or does it not mean to you?

What distinguishes Art History papers from the papers you might be asked to write in other courses? Perhaps the biggest difference creates the biggest challenge: in Art History papers, you must be able to create an argument about what you see. In short, you have to translate the visual into the verbal. To do this you must first understand the "language" of the discipline - that is, you need to familiarize yourself with the terms and concepts necessary to describe a work of art. (Check out the Art History department's On-Line Glossary.) Second - and perhaps most important - you need to learn not only to describe what you see, but to craft your description so that it delivers some argument or point of view. A good Art History paper will not simply offer a haphazard description of the elements of a painting, sculpture, or building. You must consider what it is you want to say about a work of art and use your description to make that point. In short, you must master the art of simultaneously analyzing and describing the work of art you have chosen to discuss.

Writing Sample:
This paragraph uses details to support writer’s point that Ghisi is requiring his viewer to venerate the great philosophers who are the subject of the work: In Ghisi's engraving of Raphael's School of Athens, the world's ancient philosophers are gathered in a great hall, almost as if they were actors on a stage. While they engage in animated interactions with one another, the viewer is left standing outside the picture space, slightly below the eye-level of the engraving's figures. A sense of veneration is almost demanded by the composition, with the lines from the vaulted ceiling, the tiled floor, and the upper window all converging to one vanishing point equidistant between the heads of Aristotle and Plato. While this vanishing point creates a sense of balance between their two philosophies, a symbolic merging of two great minds, it also emphasizes the distance between the historical figures and the viewer, particularly in Raphael's enormous original, which looms several feet over the viewer's head. Analysis: Note how all of the details in this paragraph support the argument that Ghisi has arranged his work to evoke a sense of veneration for the philosophers of the past. The writer offers no details that are irrelevant to this argument. Note, too, that in this paragraph the writer focuses on the formal elements of composition. She does not interrupt this discussion by turning to other

2

matters, such as color and light. In short, the writer has created a coherent argument in her paragraph

Paper Assignment Option (B)
There are list of essays in our text book. Essays are categorized as “Artists”, “Thinking of Art”, “Crossing Cultures”. Read the short essay in which you are interested, and develop the topic into a paper, including a bibliography about the topic. Papers can be about an artist, an art style, an art movement in art history, or a particular type of visual art.

DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. If you plagiarize, you will fail the semester. EMU PLAGIARISM POLICY Plagiarism (submitting some or all of someone else’s work as your own) is unacceptable at Eastern Michigan University. That’s a simple fact, and is expressed in the Eastern Michigan University Conduct Code and Judicial Structure for Students and Student Organizations: I.A.11. Academic dishonesty 1.Students are not to engage in any form of academic dishonesty including, but not limited to, plagiarism, alteration of records, substitution of another's work representing it as the student's own, and knowingly assisting another student in engaging in any such activity. For purposes of this section, plagiarism is defined as the knowing use, without appropriate approval, of published materials, expressions, or works of another with intent to represent the material(s) as one's own. See Student Conduct and Community Standards for more information about the EMU Student Code of Conduct and the University Judicial Board.

Please check: http://www.emich.edu/library/help/integratingsources.php

3