Feeder 1Search the internet for a reproduction of your favorite piece of visual art (if you don't have a favorite you can just find one that you like a lot). Write a post explaining: 1. why you like the piece, paying special attention to formal qualities in the work that attracted you to it and 2. what you think was going on in the artist’s conscious or unconscious mind while s/he was creating the piece. Support your argument about the artist's thought process with concrete details about the formal aspects of the piece such as color, texture, medium, etc, as well as any relevant scientific information you gleaned from unit 1 and 2. Please include an image of the piece in your blog post.
On April 7 each of you will present your piece to the class along with a 2-3 minute summary of your Feeder 1.1 post.
Length: equivalent to 2-3 double-spaced pages.
Draft due March 31
Feeder 2For your Feeder 2 post I would like each of you to visit the Ackland Museum on campus and write a post about one of the pieces of 20th or 21st-century art in their collection (note: the museum has strange hours and is closed on Monday and Tuesday so don't wait until the last minute! You can see their hours
here). If there is a digital image of the piece on
the Ackland's web page you'll want to include that image in the post as well.
As for the content of your post, I would like you to examine how the piece employs or critiques ideas about perception. While it is not required that you do any research for this post, if you do find biographical information or reference to the artist's other works, please confine this information to your post's introduction and/or conclusion. In other words, your post should consist almost entirely of a sustained analysis of the piece's formal qualities.
Length: equivalent to 2-3 double-spaced pages.
Draft Due April 10
Unit Project
For your final post of the course (hooray!), I would like you to make a sustained argument about the work of an abstract expressionist, surrealist or cubist painter. You will find that these movements should give you ample opportunity to write about the theories of the brain we have studied for the entire course, but while I encourage papers on these types of topics you can make whatever type of argument you like (though, preferably, it should be an argument consistent with the overall theme, tone and subject matter of your blog). You can analyze multiple works by the artist and/or include whatever biographical information you find relevant, but your post should consist almost entirely of original and interesting analysis of the artist's work. Your post should also include references to at least two articles in scholarly art history journals, though you may references other types of research as well.
While this assignment may seem easy, it is in fact the most difficult of the semester. Unlike many other assignments, this does not simply drop an argument in your lap, so it will be up to you to show that you know how to develop a sophisticated, interesting thesis and how to support it credibly with relevant evidence.
If you'd like to learn more about these movements before you start, you might start with these Wikipedia articles on
Surrealism,
Abstract Expressionism and
Cubism as well as the numerous links contained within these articles.
Length: equivalent to 4-6 double-spaced pages.
Draft Due April 19
Draft Due April 24
Editing Workshop April 26
Unit Two Portfolios Due April 28
