Assignments

Readings

You may purchase copies of the following textbook at the Reed bookstore (optional):

Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003).

All assigned readings are available on Moodle (logon to moodle.reed.edu & enter email username and password). Please print out all Moodle readings and bring hard copies to class, or annotate your digital copy with marginal notes.

Discussion Leading

You and another student will work together to lead the discussion one week during the semester. In preparation, you will circulate to the entire class a list of questions [at least five (5) per conference] that you create collaboratively with your partner. For Tuesday’s conference, you will need to email us by Sunday at 5pm. For the Thursday conference, please circulate questions no later than Tuesday at 5pm. These questions serve to stimulate conference discussion; therefore, all students are required to read them and explore possible responses.

When preparing questions, please consider the principal issues raised by the selected readings. What is the proposed thesis? How is it substantiated? Conceptually, how do the themes brought out in the text correspond to other readings we have studied? How do they correspond to the imagery we have analyzed?

In addition to your prepared questions, please bring in an image that will initiate our discussion. You will start conference with the image you and your partner(s) have selected and pair it with one of your questions. The image must relate to the week's readings; however, ideally this image will not be taken directly from the reproductions included in the readings. I would like you to extrapolate from the readings and apply the issues raised in them to any image/object of your choice. Be creative and have fun!

Papers

I have assigned two (2) papers this term. Please remember to center your writing around a well-defined thesis statement.

For the first assignment, please write a formal analysis of any work of art from the Portland Art Museum. You must also include a photograph (no flash, please) of the image you select. In writing this paper, consider the artist's treatment of the subject matter. How does the artist handle the various formal elements (e.g., light, color, texture, scale, perspective, contours, proportion...)? How does the artist organize the composition? What choices does the artist make in terms of material and media? Please submit a 3-page (double-spaced) paper, uploaded as a PDF on Moodle, by October 1.

You will all be given free passes to the Portland Art Museum for a full year. The hours for the Portland Art Museum can be found here. The Portland Art Museum is currently under construction; therefore, the permanent collection galleries are closed. For this assignment, you can visit the special exhibitions, including Monet to Matisse and Pissarro to Picasso (open until September 15) and Paul McCartney Photographs, 1963-64 (open September 14 -- January 19). You are also welcome to use the exhibition in the Cooley Gallery entitled Tender: Sarah Gilbert and Pato Hebert (open September 13 -- December 8) for this assignment.

For your second paper, I ask students to write a research paper [five (5) double-spaced pages--please upload to Moodle as a PDF] on any work of art of your choice. The paper must incorporate one of the methodologies we have studied in class. You must also cite at least ten (10) scholarly sources. Following your 5 pages of text, please include an appendix with the images you studied in your paper and their corresponding captions (artist, title of work, date). Due December 10.

In preparation for the paper, I ask students to submit a proposal describing your research project. The proposal should include a one (1)-page, double-spaced abstract, a working bibliography of at least four (4) sources, and copies of the images under consideration. Due October 10.

Virtual Art Exhibition

I would like you and your partners to design an art exhibition using Kunstmatrix, a web-based tool that allows you to present and manage art in a virtual 3D space. Your virtual art exhibition should feature a maximum of ten (10) high-quality images of artwork.



On September 17, the Visual Resources Curator, Chloe Van Stralendorff, will visit our class to register your group in Kunstmatrix, and give an in-depth tutorial on Kunstmatrix and image research (please do not register before then). You will learn how to search for high-quality images, and prepare the images for your virtual exhibition. After the tutorial, if you have any remaining questions, you can book an appointment with Chloe at the Visual Resources Center. The VRC provides students with resources such as scanners, Photoshop, and more. 

For a comprehensive overview of this assignment, please reference the Art 201: Virtual Exhibition Research Guide. The guide includes video tutorials, FAQs, and other image resources related to this project. 

The virtual art exhibition is due October 14. Each group will present their exhibition to the class on October 15. You have a maximum of twenty (20) minutes to describe your curatorial choices. Be creative and have fun!

Portland Japanese Garden

Your assignment is to visit the entirety of the Portland Japanese Garden and pay attention to what you are feeling and experiencing, both physically and emotionally/intellectually/cognitively. How does this garden make you feel? Do those feelings change as you move through its various spaces? Do your emotions change as your embodied (physical) experience changes? What is the most exciting or exhilarating location to you? What is the most unsettling? What is the most peaceful? Tune into how these emotional experiences are informed by changes in light, sound, size/scale, textures--even scents/smells.

While experiencing the Portland Japanese Garden, please use your smartphone (or an iPad you can check out from the Performing Arts Resource Center for 3 days) to record:
  • One sound/audio experience that you found especially interesting (enjoyable, beautiful, troubling, unappealing, distracting, riveting); sound recording (no visuals!) should be no longer than 60 seconds.
  • One visual/spatial experience captured in just one photograph.
  • One visual/spatial experience (sound optional) documented in a video recording; video recording should be no longer than 60 seconds. Video may capture movement, or it may attempt to document stillness.
These sound/video recordings and photographs may enhance or contribute to your understanding of the assigned readings...or vice versa! Be prepared to share one video or audio recording or photograph in class and discuss this documentation with the class. Important to consider: how do these documents help or hinder your creation of memories of your embodied experiences of the sequence or a given location? And how can design influence our physical and psychological well-being?

All recordings and photographs should be uploaded to Moodle by November 20.

Due Dates

October 1: formal analysis [three (3) double-spaced pages, upload to Moodle by 7pm as a PDF]

October 10: research proposal [upload materials to Moodle by 7pm as a PDF]

October 14: virtual art exhibition assignment [upload Kunstmatrix url to Moodle by 7pm]

October 15 & 17: presentation of virtual art exhibition [in class, 20 minutes max]

November 20: Portland Japanese Garden assignment [upload materials to Moodle by 7pm]

December 10: research paper due [five (5) double-spaced pages, upload to Moodle by 7pm as a PDF]

Sensitive Topics

A course of this nature will cover, on a regular basis, challenging and sensitive topics in both its reading and discussion material, including but not limited to: scenes of sexual violence, sexism, racism, orientalism, explicit depictions of sex, etc. If you are highly sensitive to (or strongly object to) representations of these kinds of topics, you should not take this course.

Any student who elects to take this course does so with the full knowledge that we will not censor images, reading materials, class discussions, or passages read out loud in class.