ARTH 11100
Prof. Stephen Clancy

Your tasks:

(1) By Friday, March 9: Pick your work
Select a work belonging to the tradition of "western art history" (i.e., European or American, from ancient to modern), and which is on display at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on the Cornell University campus.  The museum is located at the corner of University Ave. and Central Ave, and is open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 10AM through 5PM.  Click here for an online map.  If you don't have access to a car, you can get there via TCAT.  It must be a work you can view in person at the museum; looking at a digital image online is not sufficient!  If you have any doubts about whether your work is appropriate for this project, please see me.

When you choose your work, you should examine it closely, and take extensive notes about what you see.  You will, for example, be required to deal with the work's "physicality" (e.g., the way the paint is applied, the roughness or smoothness of the surfaces, etc.), and these are features that you can only experience in the presence of the work itself.  Make sure you take a pencil with you in order to take notes – pens are not allowed!

(2)  By Friday, March 30:  Construct a visual context
Based on your close visual examination of your work; your knowledge of the work's date(s), geographic origin, and artist (if known); and a review of Stokstad and Cothren of works produced around the same time and place as your work, put 3 or 4 images of other works you can find on ARTstor into your student work folder (the folder that was created for you when you registered for the course folder on ARTstor).  These works should represent the following categories:

• if possible: a different work by the same artist, if known;
• a work by a different artist that features a strikingly similar subject matterto your work;
• a work by a different artist that features a strikingly similar style to your work; and
• a work by a different artist that features a strikingly different style to your work

The nature of the comparative works you choose will depend entirely on your work.  You should choose works that you believe will, by their similarities or differences to the work you are studying, help the viewer to understand how it might be related visually to other works from around the same time and place.

Once you have placed the comparative works in your folder, I will take a look at them, make suggestions, and perhaps even add a work or two for your consideration.

(3) By Wednesday, May 2: Analysis
Based on a careful study of your work and the related works you have chosen, write a 5-page essay that accomplishes the following:

• analyzes the work's visual message:  Come to some conclusions about the nature of the "visual message" your work conveys to the viewer, and the primary means by which it conveys this message.  Focus on some of the basic issues that we have been discussing in the course:
• "physicality": what roles are played by the physical nature of the work as an object - e.g., its size, the materials from which it is made, its format?
• subject matter: what are the nature and impact of the work's "content" or "subject matter"?
• style: how is this content treated visually? What kinds of colors, shapes, lines, spatial relationships, and lighting effects are used, and why?
• composition: how has the work's imagery been organized, and why?

• speculates about the work's connection to a larger development - or "episode" - in western art history: Relate the work you have chosen to one of the "episodes" of western art discussed in our textbook
• what similarities between your work and the other specific works you have chosen from this "episode" help you to place your work historically, and why?
• based on differences between these other works and your work, how does your work represent the episode in a distinctive fashion?
• note: I do not expect you to do any research outside of your textbook, but if you do refer to someone else's ideas, you must cite your source in a footnote!

• contrasts your work with one from one of the non-western traditions discussed in Stokstad and Cothren or available on ARTstor:
• find a work from a nonwestern tradition either on ARTstor or from the Stokstad and Cothren text that seems to deal with a similar subject matter or theme.
• what about the subject or theme makes these works comparable?
• based on your comparison, how do the two traditions (western and non-western) approach the task of conveying their visual message about this subject or theme differently?

You will need to develop your own argument - or thesis - about the nature of your work's visual message, and state this argument simply and directly at the beginning of your essay.  Each paragraph in the body of your essay should take a particular facet of this argument and attempt to persuade me that I should believe what you have to say about that point.