Art History 101: History of Art Since the Renaissance Syllabus: Spring 2015

Sweeping in its historical and cultural scope, ArtH 101 engages students in the analytical study of art and architecture from the Renaissance through the present day. Understanding the currents of historical change and developing the skills to analyze and interpret what you see are fundamental to a Liberal Arts education and to being an informed participant in an increasingly visual global culture.

Arth 101 is a required class for all art history, architecture, and studio art majors. Majors should plan to elect both 100 and 101 in their first or second year at Wellesley.

This year, the following members of the Art Department will be instructors in the course:

Patricia Berman (101 Coordinator; modern and contemporary art)Margaret Carroll (the art of Northern Europe and Spain) Paul Galvez (European art and architecture of the 18th and 19th-centuries; and modern architecture)Nikki A. Greene (African art, art of the African Diaspora & modern and contemporary art)Barbara Lynn-Davis (Writing 108/Arth 101).Jacqueline Musacchio (Italian Renaissance and Baroque art).James Oles (Art of the Americas & modern and contemporary art)

COURSE STRUCTURE ARTH 101 meets for large-group lectures in Collins Theater on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 9:50-11:00 a.m. In addition to these lectures, each student participates in one conference section per week. You need to register for a specific conference section to be enrolled in ARTH 101. The conferences are small discussion sessions organized around the close examination of original works of art as well as methods of art historical analysis.

The conference topics and any readings are noted in text boxes on the syllabus. Please check each week to confirm the meeting place for the conference sections. Most conferences meet in Davis Museum, room 212: Upon Entering the main door of Jewett, turn right heading towards the auditorium, then turn left in the direction of Music Department Office. To the right of that, at the top of a stairway, is a door to the bridge to the Davis Museum. You will need to stow coats and backpacks in the lockers on the bridge, and you should bring pencils to take notes in the galleries. Conference Schedule:101 C-1 (CRN 20118) Tues. 1:30-2:40 Professor Greene101 C-2 (CRN20126) Wed. 2:15-3:25 Professor Carroll101 C-3 (CRN22286) Wed. 11:10-12:20 Professor Galvez101 C-4 (CRN20133) Tues. 2:50-4:00 Professor Berman

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101 C-6 (CRN23410) Wed. 9:50-11:00 Professor Galvez101 C-7 (CRN23040) Thurs. 2:50-4:00 Professor GreeneWRIT 108 (CRN22110) Tues.&Fri. 11:10-12:20 Professor Lynn-Davis

One conference will be take place in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: during week 5 (Conference 5; you may choose to go in the evening of February 25 or 26) and week 12 (Conference 11; you may choose a time on April 25 or 26). Logistics and transportation will be announced well in advance of these trips and posted on Sakai. If for any reason you are unable to attend your assigned conference during a given week, you should consult with your conference instructor and make arrangements to attend another session.

Each lecture focuses on a select group of objects to introduce important issues in the art and culture of the period and region covered that day. The identifying information for the individual objects and monuments that are examined in lecture will be provided on an "Object list," handed out in class and posted in the "Object Lists" folder in "Resources" on the Sakai site for ARTH 101.

After each lecture we will post a PowerPoint file of the lecture in the "101 powerpoints" folder in "Resources." Each PowerPoint will identify several works (usually 3-4) as “key works.” You will be expected to identify (by creator, title, date, and style) and discuss those works in the midterm and final exams, using other works shown in lectures, conferences, or museum tours to support your arguments. Thus, mere memorization of the "key works" is not enough. It goes without saying that you will perform best in the exams if you pay close attention to all the lectures and take notes on all of the works shown.

While covering a broad range of periods and regions; the lectures will address a set of recurrent concerns:*Style: What are the distinctive visual features of the works and monuments produced in different eras and regions covered in the course?*Materials and techniques: How are objects and buildings made? What use do creators and designers make of different techniques and technologies? *The body: What are the distinctive ways in which artists of different cultures and eras represent the human form? *Gender and ethnicity: What are the different ways in which art has served to affirm or challenge notions of sexual and ethnic difference? *Art and nature: How do works of art and architecture affect our experience of nature and of the built environment? *Art and religion: What are the different ways in which works of art and architecture have facilitated spiritual experience?*Art and politics: What role has art played in legitimating the power of governments and in promoting social change? *Cross-cultural encounters: How has contact between diverse cultures stimulated stylistic and expressive innovation?

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The midterm and final will ask you to analyze and compare “key works” with the above themes in mind.

TEXTBOOK AND SUPPLEMENTARY READINGSThe textbook for ARTH 101 is Marilyn Stokstad et al., Art History (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2014), volume 2 (fifth editi on , ISBN-10: 0205877575). There are many editions of this textbook; we have keyed our syllabus to the fifth edition, which is available at the Wellesley College Bookstore and through various Internet sellers. You can find additional copies on desk reserve in the Art Library. Note that the page assignments in Stokstad are selections from longer chapters; read from the first subheading to the last, or to the end of the page, as seems most appropriate given the topic of the lecture. You are, of course, advised to read more of the textbook if you want a more thorough overview. If you use an older version of the textbook, you must figure out the relevant sections on your own. It is not too hard to do!

There are other assigned readings posted on Sakai in the "101 readings" folder in "Resources." Videos are posted in the "Media Gallery." The readings and videos will form the basis for discussion in conferences, so you are asked to read or watch them ahead of time.

SAKAI AND GOOGLE After you register for this course the Sakai site will appear on your desktop as an active site under the tab ARTH-101-01 SP-15. You can find the syllabus, paper assignments, object lists, and PowerPoints with study images on this site. We will regularly post announcements relevant to the class, and you should feel free to communicate with each other and with your conference instructor via the Google Group created for your conference.

EXAMS AND PAPER ASSIGNMENTSThis course has a midterm exam (March 17) and a final exam (in exam period, May 14 - 16) and two short papers (due March 10 and May 1). Both exams are 70 minutes in length; the final, which is scheduled by the College Registrar and cannot be changed, covers material from the second half of the course. Note: Do not make travel plans that conflict with the midterm and final exam dates; make-up exams are only offered to students with medical excuses.

GRADINGEach exam and paper counts for 20-25% of your grade. Late work will be docked at least one grade, at your conference instructor’s discretion, but all work must be completed in order to receive a final grade for the semester. Conference attendance and participation is expected and will be taken into consideration when your final grade is determined.

HONOR CODEAs a Wellesley student you have signed the honor code and have pledged to act with honesty, integrity, and respect in all you do; we will expect you to conduct yourself in accordance with this pledge in all aspects of this class.

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STUDENTS REQUIRING ACCOMODATIONS: Students who require accommodations should contact their individual conference leaders and the course coordinator at the start of the semester to make the necessary arrangements; staff from the Office of Disability Services must forward the necessary information to your conference leader. Because art history exams require special equipment, we need to know of your needs as far in advance as possible; please contact your conference leader early and respond to messages about exam scheduling promptly.

CLASS SCHEDULE

WEEK 1

1. T 1/27 Introduction: What Art History Tells Us about History and Ourselves; 15th Century: The Renaissance in the Netherlands (Berman and Carroll) Reading: Stokstad, 563-582, 591-593, and 698-700. 2. F 1/30 15th Century: The Renaissance in Italy (Musacchio)Reading: Stokstad, 531-542, 595-597, 602-613.

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3. T 2/3 15th and 16th Century: The Art of the High Renaissance (Musacchio)Reading: Stokstad, 626-629, 632-650, and Leonardo da Vinci, "Letter to Il Moro," in A Documentary History of Art, ed. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 273-275.Paper #1 Assigned (due 3/10)

4. F 2/6 15th and 16th Century: Mannerist and Venetian Painting (Musacchio)Reading: Stokstad, 629-632, 656-668, and Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 339-344.

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Conference 1: Introduction to Art-Historical Analysis (Meet in Davis Museum room 212; bring paper and pencil)

Conference 2. Formal Analysis and Iconography. In-class writing exercise; meet in Davis 212.

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WEEK 3

5. T 2/10. 16th and 17th Century: Italian Baroque Art (Musacchio)Reading: Stokstad, 712-714, 717-719, 722-730.

6. F 2/13 15th and 16th Centuries: Pre-Contact Art in the New World: Aztecs and Incas (Oles)Reading: Stokstad, 384-390 and 837-846, and excerpts from Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) (trans. Elizabeth Andros Foster), History of the Indians of New Spain (1536) (Berkeley: The Cortes Society, 1950), 51-57 (book one, chapter IV) and 241-243 (book three, chapter XIII).

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7. T 2/17 16th Century: German and Netherlandish Art (Carroll)Reading: Stokstad, 678-681. 685-691, 704-708; and Jeffrey Chipps Smith, "Chapter 10. Theater of the World: Exploring Nature and Human Nature," in The Northern Renaissance (London: 2004), 309-327.

Thurs. 2/19 Symposium: Spanish Still Life, RevisitedDavis Museum at Wellesley College, from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PMInformation and sign-up: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/symposium-spanish-still-life-revisited-tickets-15224295277?ref=enivtefor001&invite=NzQ2MzcwNy9tY2Fycm9sbEB3ZWxsZXNsZXkuZWR1LzA%3D&utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=inviteformal001&utm_term=eventpage

8. F 2/20 17th Century: Spanish and Flemish Painting (Carroll)Reading: Stokstad, 730-741.

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Conference 3. No conferences this week

Conference 4. Prints and Printmaking (Meet in the Davis Museum Print Corridor, NOT in Room 212)

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9. T 2/24 16th and 17th Century: Architecture in Europe and the Americas (Galvez and Oles)Reading: Stokstad, 597-602, 650-653, 714-717, 719-720, and 943-945; andGiorgio Vasari “Life of Michelangelo” from Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors in Harry Francis Mallgrave, ed., Architectural Theory, Vol. 1, An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870, 53-5.

10. F 2/27 16th to 19th Century: Royal Sculpture of Africa (Greene)Reading: Stokstad, 408-410, 416-427; and Kate Ezra, “Introduction,” Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 1-26.

WEEK 6

11. T 3/3 17th Century: Dutch Art in the “Golden Age” (Carroll)Reading: Stokstad, 742-757. Mariët Westerman, "Chapter 7: The Business Dissolved: Financial Failure, Artistic Independence," in Rembrandt (London: 2000), 232-254.

12. F 3/6 17th and 18th Century: Art, Architecture, and Landscape (Galvez) Reading: Stokstad, 757-761, 906-912, 918-921, 932-936, 954-958; and Denis Diderot, excerpts from “The Salon of 1765,” in Diderot on Art, trans. John Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 1:22-24.

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Conference 6. Writing for Art History: The Case of Portraiture.Read: Shearer West, “Introduction,” Portraiture, Oxford U. Press, 2004, 9-20.

Conference 5: Our regular conferences will not meet this week. Instead, we will meet at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, February 25 and 26; the Art Department will provide a bus to get you back and forth. There will be sign-up sheets for conference times posted on Sakai.  Please note that each conference will be 75 minutes in length.

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WEEK 7

13. T 3/10 18th-19th Century: Revolution, Romanticism, Realism (Galvez) Reading: Stokstad 936-943, 972-976, 980-984; and Gustave Courbet, “Letter to Alfred Bruyas,” in Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992), 114-118.Paper #1 due in the Art Department Office (printed out) by 4 P.M.

14. F 3/13 19th Century: Architecture, History, and Technology (Friedman)Reading: Stokstad, 928, 932-934, 958-966, 1007-1012.

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15. T 3/17 Midterm Exam

Spring Break 3/19-27

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WEEK 9

16. T 3/31 19th Century: Photography and Impressionism (Galvez) READ: Stokstad 968-971 and 987-994; William Henry Fox Talbot, Plates II, VI, XI, and XIV, Pencil of Nature (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans: London, 1844), 17-8, 25-6, 35-6, and 41-2.Paper #2 Assigned (due 5/1)

17. F 4/3 19th-20th Century: Post-Impressionism , Expressionism, Fauvism (Berman)

READ: Stokstad 994-1004, 1012-1015, 1118-1024, 1026-1031; and E. L. Kirchner, “Programme of Die Brücke” (1906), in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 65; if you have the time, also read Henri Matisse, “Notes of a Painter” (1908), in the same volume, 69-75.

Conference 7. Midterm Exam Review

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************************************************************************************WEEK 10

18. T 4/7 20th Century: Modern Art in Africa and the African Diaspora (Greene)Reading: Stokstad, 880-900; and Pamela McClusky, “The Ultimate Spectacle for Powerful Mothers: Gelede Masks,” in Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back,  Seattle, Wash. Princeton, N.J.: Seattle Art Museum; Princeton University Press, 2002, 227-243.

19. F 4/10 20th Century: Cubism and Abstraction (Berman)Reading: Stokstad, 1023-1026, 1031-1036, 1050-1057.

Saturday, April 11: The Dark Room: Race and Visual Culture, 3rd Annual Symposium, 8:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m., Collins Cinema. Information: https://www.facebook.com/TheDarkRoomRaceandVisualCulture/info?tab=page_info

WEEK 11

20. T 4/14 20th Century: Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the US (Berman)

Conference 8. Lithography and photography: Art and ReproductionReading: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”(1936), Parts I-VII, in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 520-522.

Assignment: Come to conference with brief written definitions of the terms “cult value” and “aura” as used by Benjamin

Conference 9. Art in the Davis Museum: Meet in the Davis Museum Galleries (NOT in Davis 212) in front of the unknown Baga artist, Shoulder Mask (D’Mba); wood, ca. 49”, (accession number 1959.36)

VIEW (between now and the end of the semester): “The Rape of Europa”(2006), dir. Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, and Nicole Newnham, 117 minutes, dist. Menemsha Films, 2006.

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Reading: Stokstad, 1037-1043 and 1057-1063; Marcel Duchamp, “Apropos of Readymades" (lecture at the Museum of Modern Art on October 19, 1961),” in Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, eds., Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 141-142; and Marcel Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case,” and André Breton, “First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924),” in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, ed., Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden: Blackwell, 2003), 252 and 447-453. 21. F 4/17 20th Century: Art and Revolution (Greene and Oles)READ: Stokstad, 1060-1071 and Diego Rivera, "The Revolution in Painting," Creative Art 4 (January 1929), xxvii-xxx.

WEEK 12

T 4/21 is a “Wellesley Monday”: No Class!

22. F 4/24 20th Century: Art , Politics, and Popular Culture (Berman and Greene)Read: Stokstad, 1073-1096, 1107-1109; and Kellie Jones, “In the Thick of It: David Hammons and Hair Culture in the 1970s,”Eyeminded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2011).

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23. T 4/28 20th-21st Century: Modern and Post-Modern Architecture (Friedman)

Conference 10. Film: History and Analysis (Davis Museum, Room 212),View before class: Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929 (68 minutes; posted on Sakai)

Conference 11. The Harvard Art Museum, Harvard University: NOTE: Each conference will be 1 ½ hours in length. Please plan accordingly. Conference sections will be offered on Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26, meeting each day in the museum’s central atrium space starting at 10:00. Information and sign-ups will be posted on Sakai.

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Read: Stokstad 1044-1049, 1104-1107, 1126-1128; and Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, “Five Points Towards a New Architecture (1926)” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970), 99-101.

24. F 5/1 20th-21st Century: Conceptual and Institutional Practices (Berman and Greene)Read: Stokstad, 1096-1103, 1116, 1109-1123; and Frazer Ward “Watching Shoot” October 95 (Winter 2001): 115-130. Paper #2 due in the Art Department Office (printed out) by 4 P.M.

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25. T 5/5 20th-21st Century: Video, Installation and New Media (Berman)Read: Stokstad, 1128-1132; and Laura Cumming, “Nam June Paik – Review,” The Guardian, December 18, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/dec/19/nam-june-paik-tate-liverpool-review.

26. F 5/8 21st Century: Round-Table Discussion on Art Today (Berman, Galvez, Greene, and Oles)READ: Stokstad, 112401125, 1132-1137 and Bran Holmes, “Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics: Cartographies of Art in the World,” in Collectivism after Modernism: Art of the Social Imagination after 1945, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, eds., Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

The Final Exam will be scheduled by the Registrar during Exam Period: May 15-19. The exact date and time will be posted on Sakai as soon as it is made available. The exam will only cover material encountered since the midterm exam.

Conference 12. Final Reading and Discussion: What Makes Art “Art”? Assigned Reading: 1) Terry Barrett, “About Art Criticism,” in Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images, U. N. Texas, 2012, 1-15; 2) W. T. J. Mitchell, “Introduction: Utopia and Critique,” in Art and the Public Sphere, U. Chicago Press, 1993, 1-5.

Conference 13. Review for the final exam (Davis Museum, Room 212): Bring questions

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ARTH 101Spring 2015

Guide to Writing Formal Analysis Papers

A formal analysis of any work of art is fundamentally “an attempt to help someone see the work as you see it.”1 It is more than a dry description; it is an essay of persuasion.

You might begin by taking notes on your initial impressions—the thoughts and feelings the work of art brings up for you on first seeing it. These notes can be personal and subjective in judgment. So on a Virgin and Child by Raphael, you might note: “The painting has a peaceful feel. Everything feels calm and settled. The baby Jesus looks soft and sweet.”

From there, you can begin to look more deeply, taking notes guided by some suggested categories of visual analysis (cited below.) Not all of these will prove as useful as others, but they are all worth pursuing to further the analytical process. You are trying to discover, how does this work of art have the expressive effects that it does? How do its parts interrelate to create the effects of its whole? What has the artist done— what decisions has he or she made—that made me “feel” what I experience in front of that work of art? Just why, for example, is that Raphael painting so “calm’?

These categories of visual analysis are not listed in strict order, though type, materials, and composition are useful “big picture” areas with which to start, and line, color, and light/shadow often yield rich details with which to develop your argument:

Type: For a painting, is it an easel painting (ie: singular and portable) or maybe part of a church altarpiece? For sculpture, is it free-standing, or a relief? You want to consider if the work is a fragment or a whole, and its original physical context, if this is known.

Methods and Materials: How do different materials and techniques condition the way the work of art appears?

Composition: How are the parts of the work arranged into the whole, or, to put it the other way, how is the whole subdivided into parts? Is the arrangement symmetrical or asymmetrical? Simple or complex?

1 Sylvan Barnet. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989, p. 1. This book is on reserve in the Art Library in Jewett Arts Center. For further introductory reading see especially pp. 1-9 and 12-14; for formal analysis of architecture, which is not included in this guide as it introduces a quite different group of analytical concerns, see pp. 37-43.

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Are rhythms or patterns created by the repetition of shapes, lines, or colors?

Shapes: What types of shapes are referenced? Do they tend to be geometric, or free and irregular? Are certain shapes used more than others? Do patterns emerge in the use of particular shapes?

Line: How do lines—both actual and implied—organize the composition? Are lines important as contours, or as modeling lines (cross-hatching, for example.) Do particular types of lines dominate (long, quiet horizontals; soft, flowing curves; short, chopping strokes?) Do lines create rhythms or a sense of motion (i.e., strong diagonals)?

Colors: Describe the organization and intensity of colors. How do colors interrelate: in bold contrast or gradual transition? Is color used to focus your attention on particular parts of the composition? How does color affect the illusion of light or depth?

Light and shadow: In painting, how are light and shadow represented? In sculpture, how are actual light and shadow modulated by the projection and recession of masses in space and also by the materials and textures used? Do light and shadow contrast strongly or blend gradually? Keep in mind that museum lighting can be quite different than the lighting effects that existed in a work’s original setting—for example, candlelight in a church.

Textures: Consider the textures that make up the physical material of the work itself (thick dabs, smoothly polished stone, etc.) as well as the textures of the things represented. How do these textures contribute to the work’s expressive character?

Mass and Space: These can be actual spatial effects, in sculpture, or represented effects, in painting. Do parts of the sculpture extend significantly into the space around it, or is it mostly self-contained? Is the representation of space in painting illusionistic, or not? What devices and techniques—such as shading and overlapping of forms and atmospheric and/or linear perspective—are used to create illusion? Is there a single, consistent viewpoint from which the whole scene is shown, or are there multiple viewpoints? How deep is the represented space?

Movement and stasis: Does the work represent movement or not? Do the forms, composition, textures and colors in themselves create dynamic, static, lively, or calm visual effects? How?Developing Your Thesis Statement:

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Your thesis should evolve from your initial thoughts and feelings to become something more analytical that you can argue in the body of your paper. For example, returning to the Virgin and Child by Raphael, you might now state: “Through the use of formal devices such as balanced composition, muted color palette, and soft and gradual shadows, Raphael creates a serene vision of the Virgin and Child. Mother and son are untroubled by the future that awaits Him.”

Note that typically, a formal analysis is written in the third person, and in the present tense (because its expressive effects are still operating.)

Try to use constructions that don’t have you repeating “The viewer,” over and over … the viewer can be mostly implied.

Tips on Writing and Organization:The first sentence of a paper can be challenging. Avoid beginning with big generalizations and assertions about art, history, human nature, or other broad concepts. Instead, try and stick to the basic facts of the work of art and be clear: provide a simple description that includes the artist’s name, the title or subject, the material, approximate size, date, and location. If you are writing a comparison, present this information in parallel form and consider the works chronologically. You should also indicate if there are any notable problems with condition, including issues like the loss of original paint or cracked or missing pieces. This basic information provides the reader with a framework for the discussion to follow. Your thesis should be stated as the concluding sentence or sentences of this introductory paragraph.

A comparison paper can be organized either by formal categories (i.e., you might address composition, shape, line, and color as represented in each of work of art), or it can address one work and then the other, as long as the second half of the paper makes continual comparative reference to the first (this can be implied or stated), so that the paper does not split into two unrelated halves.

Try not to end your paper with a concluding paragraph that is merely a dull repetition of your thesis or a summary of your argument, which can actually detract from a well-written, compelling paper. Aim instead to end your paper on a crescendo, some final point that is a memorable summary or perhaps even some new insight to leave the reader on a satisfied note.

Additional Research:

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You will hopefully recognize and understand, from your general preparation in our course, much of the iconography in the works you’re discussing. The museum labels are likely to provide you with further information. If you decide to seek still more iconographical information, you will need to find a reliable reference work (in other words, not Wikipedia and similar non-scholarly sources). The best place to start looking is the Art and Architecture Research Guide devised by our Art Librarian:

http://libguides.wellesley.edu/content.php?pid=225709&hs=a;

This will guide you to good online sources as well as materials easily located in the reference section of the Art Library. But keep in mind that iconographical research can be challenging: symbols in art almost always have multiple meanings that vary over time and in different combinations and contexts. Avoid pursuing a thesis that depends heavily on a complex, highly detailed interpretation of iconography.

Presentation:

*Italicize the title of your paper and titles of works of art.

*Please check for the most common errors in grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Reading your paper aloud is a good way to catch mistakes like subjects and verbs that don’t agree, run-on sentences, etc.

*Do not use “piece of art” or “piece”; instead use “work of art,” “work,” “object,” “painting,” “sculpture,” etc.

*Check your spelling of specialized vocabulary! For example, do not use “simplistic” to mean “simple” (the former is a judgmental term meaning “too simple”), or “humanistic” to mean “human” (the former refers to the philosophical movement called “humanism”). Do not confuse “tempura” (a cooking method) with “tempera” (a paint medium). For technical terminology, consult the excellent glossary in your Stokstad textbook.

The "Starter Kit" in Stokstad (pp. XXII - XLI) offers some useful terms and examples of formal analysis.

Good luck & enjoy … you will be amazed what opens up for you with close and careful looking at original works of art.

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