Significance of Visual Arts Assignment
Overview
This assignment requires you to identify, describe, and analyze some work of visual art significant to your location or some place you have lived previously. The format of the assignment must be typed and double-spaced, must correspond with the list of questions below, and be submitted through the link below. The length is determined by thoroughly responding to each question. The final word count is not likely to be fewer than 500 words.
Topic
Pick any interesting work of art in the region where you currently live, or some place you have lived in the past. “Region” can mean something like a state, the South, a country, an area where they speak a common language or share a common culture, etc. In other words, it’s fairly broadly defined.
The work you choose should be available for the public to see. It can be a work in a museum or gallery, a significant work of architecture, or a public monument. This excludes movies and video, unless video is incorporated into a publicly viewed art installation.
The project must be in your own words. The first part is the only one that invites you to look up information. Everything else should reflect your own thought process.
“Art” is understood as coming from human imagination and craft. In other words, do not choose natural objects that have no application of human skill.
Questions
Your paper should clearly distinguish your answers. It is fine to simply number your responses, and add nothing that does not belong in that section.
- What work have you chosen and where is it? How old is it? Who is responsible for it? Provide relevant details about the medium/materials. Say exactly what sources were used for this information.
- Provide a detailed description of the work. Assume your reader has not seen it, and you are trying to recreate it in their minds as accurately as possible.
- Explain why you were drawn to this work.
- Provide an analysis of the work. This should include a thesis statement and illustration or evidence to support that statement.
An analysis can be many things. Sometimes it is looking for some meaning in the work (what is someone trying to say?), but it might also be a process of looking at how parts make up a whole. It might be a matter of looking at the larger context, how the work reflects the culture or historical period it belongs to (or contradicts those). It can also be viewed within the context of an artist’s other works.
If you find it easiest to compare the work to something appropriate, that is often a useful technique for building an analysis.
Criteria
These will be graded on the following:
- Organization – the paper should be logically arranged according to the questions provided, with each section well-structured.
- Development – each section should have sufficient and relevant detail and thought.
- Clarity – I look at all elements of writing, so the paper should show attention to details like sentence structure, editing, formatting, punctuation, word choice, and tone.
- Subject Matter – the subject of your paper is up to you within the boundaries described, but its significance and depth will help produce a fully developed paper.