Anatomy

Here’s a pdf of the exercise for Steve Weiss’ Anatomy class.

Anatomy Exercise

Nineteenth Century Art

Assignment and Research Guide for AH 201

Term Paper

Write a 6 to 8 page paper on a specific work or works by an artist(s) whose career falls within the study of the nineteenth century.  In choosing your topic, consider the fact that this is a paper that should incorporate both research and critical thinking.  In other words, choose a topic that can be productively researched and have a focus that is narrow enough to be adequately covered in 6-8 pages.

Examples of paper topics 

• Comparative, two artists, different movements; Ingres vs. Delacroix
• Comparative, two artists, same movement: Gericault vs. Delacroix
• Same subject matter, same medium, different artists: Odalisques by Delacroix and Ingres
• Same theme, different artists: death in Gericault, Courbet, and Manet
• Same artistic strategy, different artists: visual quotation in Manet and Cezanne

 These are only some of the types of paper topics you can do.  In other words, don’t just think that it has to be a work of art that is the focus of the paper.  It can be a subject matter, theme, technique, etc.

Some dos and don’ts

Do choose a topic, artist, and/or work of art that is of interest to you and that you feel will help you come to a better understanding of your process of making art, your identity as an artist, your relation to art history, etc.

• Don’t choose a work of art by an artist we’ve focused on in class, just because I’ve talked about it.  You are welcome to choose an artist that we have covered, but only do so if you have a real interest in exploring her or his work further.
• Do seek help for this project.  We will meet individually at least once to see how this project is going.  If you have questions you can ask others or me.  You are not alone on this project.

Length of paper:

6-8 pages, double spaced, typed or word processed, using a normal font and size (e.g. Times, 12), and normal spaces for the margins (e.g. the margins used in this handout).

While this term paper is your project, it should demonstrate all of the following: 

• Ability to visually analyze a work of art and relate that image to other works of art on the basis of visual analysis
• Ability to relate works of art to other works of art by same artist and/or different artists in terms of ideas
• Ability to carry out secondary research (i.e. look up articles on relevant work(s) of art and artist(s)
• Ability to comprehend and communicate an understanding of secondary literature
• Ability to footnote and create a bibliography.
• Ability to place works of art within either/and/or a larger artistic, social, historical, political, theoretical, etc., context.
• Most of all, an ability to communicate your ideas, clearly, and in a well-organized way.

Printmaking Handbooks

A&C Black’s Printmaking Handbook Series was conceived as an introduction to various topics and techniques relating to making prints. The books are aimed at the student or the practised printmaker who is experimenting in a new area. All of these, plus 8 more, can be found in the NE section of the library.

Installations and Experimental Printmaking  

“this book explores new experimental forms of printmaking, including the usage of photo-emulsion, glass and paper, Perspex and paint stripper, printing with sand and digital prints mounted on relief surfaces. This volume also considers the role of the moving image, encaustic (wax) techniques for printing, transferring, collaging and combining traditional prints with wax.”

Intaglio Printmaking

“Although intaglio techniques are usually labeled traditional, they are also among the most popular and widely used techniques in contemporary printmaking. This book introduces the reader to both the direct and indirect techniques and shows examples of an international range of artists whose work will serve as inspiration.”

 

Creating Artists Books

“This is a practical guide for visual artists who are interested in producing their work in the artist’s book format. It examines the history, methods and practicalities involved in making an artist’s book, using many examples of the work of contemporary artists as illustration.”

 

Collagraphs and Mixed Media Printmaking 

“Collagraphs are prints made from collages; relief sculptures; carved, stripped, or layered plates; or mixed media. In this book, the authors describe a wide range of collagraph techniques, providing the user with practical help on the choice of materials and printing methods to achieve the best results.”

UbuWeb

UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Founded in 1996 as a repository for avant-garde visual, concrete, and sound poetry, UbuWeb has expanded to become a formidable online collection of visual, audio, and written material that is freely available for noncommercial, educational use.

ACRL’s description…”The diversity of UbuWeb’s content is represented by the categories under which it is organized. “Contemporary” chronicles the transformation of concrete poetry from linear text to text, image, and electronic media, and “focuses on the rich tradition bestowed by the 1950s pioneers in electronic form.” “Ethnopoetics” offers visuals, sound recordings, and discourse on poetry from oral traditions and cultures. “Films” provides a collection of downloadable films. “Historical” provides a historical analysis of visual and concrete poetry, from the 16th century to the 1970s. “MP3 Archive” furnishes an extensive collection of MP3 files featuring music, poetry, and spoken word recordings (including interviews). “Outsiders” is defined by UbuWeb as the work of artists “reflecting broader cultural trends toward the legitimization of Outsider work, be it in the visual, musical, or literary arts.” Collections include music and visual content. “Papers” pulls together written analysis on poetry, sound, ethnopoetics, and radio. “Sound” includes historical and contemporary sound art. “/Ubu Editions” is a collection of full-text publications available for download in PDF.

UbuWeb is a commercial-free, independent site with technical support from SUNY Buffalo, University of Pennsylvania, and West Virginia University. UbuWeb’s digitization policy with respect to copyright is stringent, as exemplified in their FAQ: “If it’s out of print, we feel it’s fair game. If it’s in print, we won’t touch it.”

Read more about UbuWeb here and here.

UbuWeb videos don’t seem to embed into WordPress, but here’s one of their holdings via YouTube

AAA

Charles Burchfield

The Archives of American Art celebrates the 50th anniversary of its oral history program with “Speaking of Art: Selections from the Archives of American Art’s Oral History Collection, 1958-2008.” This special exhibition will be on display Oct. 11 through Jan. 26, 2009, in the Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

“Speaking of Art” features audio excerpts from 28 of the Archives’ most fascinating interviews, paired with photographs from the Archives’ collection. Visitors are encouraged to spend time in the gallery, listening to and experiencing the particular inflections of artists, collectors and dealers as they speak candidly about their lives and work.

Among the accounts included in the exhibition, visitors will hear firsthand Lee Krasner reject the word “drip” as an accurate description of Jackson Pollock’s painting techniques, Charles Burchfield read poems that he penned on the verso of his paintings and Emmy Lou Packard recount working with Diego Rivera on the “Pan-American Unity” mural in 1940.

These samplings, which represent only a fraction of the 3,000 interviews in the Archives’ collection, chronicle the great diversity of the American scene, augmenting and refining our perception of individual artists, dealers, critics and curators and their social worlds. Through the ongoing production of oral history interviews, the Archives continues to collect and preserve the distinct voices and memories of the American art world.

The Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery is located on the first floor of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, at Eighth and F streets N.W., Washington, D.C. Hours are 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, except Dec. 25. Admission is free.

Poligrafa

Three volumes from Ediciones Poligrafa’s 20_21 collection

Vito Acconci: Writings, Works, Projects (M Accon .A4 2001)
Essays by Vito Acconci and Gloria Moure.

The work of Vito Acconci is among the most influential of the last 30 years. His adventures in performance, audio and video, sculpture, writing and architecture, from the late 1960s through the present have provided countless milestone works for younger artists.  This monograph  includes both extensive visual documentation from throughout his career and a wide selection of his writings.

An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings ( M HillG .Q37 2009 ) 
Foreword by Lynne Cooke. Text by George Quasha, Charles Stein.

Gary Hill is one of the most influential contemporary artists to investigate the myriad relationships between words and electronic images.  Hill’s work in video is about, and is, a new form of writing. In this substantial volume, George Quasha and Charles Stein analyze the artist’s entire career, paying particular attention to the single-channel video works. Covering Hill’s oeuvre, this monograph features a comprehensive chronology of his work, including important production details. A careful selection of key writings by the artist is also included. With 640 pages and more than 900 illustrations, it is the most comprehensive and in-depth treatment of Gary Hill’s work to date, written in close connection with the artist.

Jeff Wall: Works and Collected Writings ( M Wall .J44 2007 )
Essay by Michael Newman. Writings by Jeff Wall.

For more than 20 years, Jeff Wall’s pioneering work has contributed significantly to placing the medium of photography in the midst of contemporary art.  His compositions in both color and black-and-white maintain a constant dialogue with nineteenth-century genre painting. This substantial monograph collects Wall’s works alongside his writings in 300 pages featuring almost 150 illustrations.

Fabric

Veil: Veiling, Representation, and Contemporary Art ( GT 1380 .V45 2003 )  Veil, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the Institute of International Visual Arts in London, explores the representation of the veil in contemporary visual arts. Providing a context for the commissioned essays are a number of classical historical texts crossing religions, cultures, genders, and ages—from Greek myths to articles published in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Some of the contemporary artists and scholars write autobiographically about the meaning of the veil in their lives. Others take a more political approach, discussing, for example, how the events of September 11 changed the use and reception of veil imagery throughout the world. Still others take a historical approach, examining how nineteenth-century technological developments in travel and photography led to photographic depictions of both the veiled and unveiled body in relation to landscape. A number of essays look at the art historical precedents for the current interest in artwork addressing the veil, while others examine how codes of modesty and gender segregation have affected the making and viewing of films in postrevolutionary Iran.

Demons, Yarns and Tales: Tapestries by Contemporary Artists ( NK 3007.86  .D46 2008 ) Fifteen internationally renowned artists explore a medium foreign to their usual practise, experimenting within the lost world of wall-hanging tapestry. Three years in the making, the fourteen tapestries in Demons, Yarns and Tales address a range of subjects from fictive landscapes and architectural abstraction to fashion and flora while considering the politics of race, gender, international conflict and the environment. Adjusting to the new medium while adapting to unfamiliar textures and surfaces, each artist has found ways to expand their practice and develop the ongoing themes in their work. Demons, Yarns and Tales sees them translate familiar languages of paint, paper, pencil, ink on canvas, ceramics or wood panel into that of hand woven stitch and silk thread. The artists included in the book are Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh, avaf, Peter Blake, Jaime Gili, Gary Hume, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Shahzia Sikander, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, Julie Verhoeven and Kara Walker.

The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art

The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art

Volume III: Faith Ringgold ( M Ringg .F37 2004 ) Faith Ringgold is an accomplished painter, sculptor, printmaker, and an art quilter. Selected works from several of her famous series are presented, including The Flag Is Bleeding, Help: the Slave Rape Series #11, The Purple Dolt Series, Mother’s Quilt, and We Came to America.

Volume IV: Archibald J. Motley Jr. ( M Motle .M66 2004 ) Archibald J. Motley Jr. (1891–1981) devoted his prodigious and critically acclaimed career to portraying African Americans seriously rather than as caricatures, hoping that honest African American art would become accepted. Drawing on recently unearthed taped interviews; unpublished paintings and sketches; and her own interviews, Amy M. Mooney examines Motley’s work from the 1920s through the 1940s and discusses his significant contributions to the American art scene.

Volume V: Keith Morrison ( M Morri .A84 2005 ) Artist, academician, art critic, author Keith Morrison’s artistic range covers both abstraction and figuration. Jamaican born, Morrison was exposed to both traditional art and the larger global art community; in the United States he studied figure drawing, painting, and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, basing his style of abstraction on geometric forms, music, and geography.

Volume VI: Charles Alston ( M Alsto .W37 2007 )  Charles Alston (1907–1977) helped establish the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Art Workshop and was the first African American to be named a supervisor for the WPA’s Federal Art Project.  Alston was the first African American instructor at both the Art Students League of New York and the Museum of Modern Art and was a professor of painting at the City University of New York. Determined to assist artists who would follow in his footsteps, he cofounded Spiral, a renowned black artists’ alliance.

Research Guide Lan 102

Here is the assignment and research guide for Foundations in Writing II, Spring 2009.

Art History 207

Here are Kevin Richard’s assignment and the Library research guide for Art history 207.

Art History 209

Here are the assignment and research guide for Kevin Richards’ Spring 2009 Contemporary Art class.

Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley       The World Stage: Africa: Lagos-Dakar (M Wiley .N5 W55 2008)

From the Studio Museum Harlem “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar is Kehinde Wiley’s (b. 1977) first solo exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem and features ten new paintings from his multinational “The World Stage” series. Wiley is known for his stylized paintings of young, urban African-American men in poses borrowed from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European figurative paintings, a practice he started in the early 2000s while an artist in residence at the Studio Museum. Over the last two years, Wiley has expanded his project by living and working abroad; he temporarily relocates to different countries and opens satellite studios to become familiar with local culture, history and art. His “The World Stage” series is the result of these travels.

Wiley’s first trip was to China, where he placed his models in poses based on Chinese propaganda art from the Cultural Revolution. The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar, organized by Christine Y. Kim, features paintings from Wiley’s next stops, Senegal and Nigeria. For this exhibition, Wiley’s models mimic historical public sculptures from Dakar, Senegal, and Lagos, Nigeria. Wiley received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2001 before becoming an artist in residence at the Studio Museum. His work is represented in the collections of several museums, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Brooklyn Museum; Denver Art Museum and Virginia Museum of Fine Art.”

New Book

Bea Emsbach: Beutezuge im Bodensatz der Wissenschaften (M Emsbach .E636 A4 2002)

From DAP “ In the intersection of comics, biotechnology, fairly tales, and science fiction lies the work of  Bea Emsbach Through the characteristic precision of her blood-red ink drawings, Emsbach creates scenarios–real and unreal–that serve to perturb and transfix the viewing eye. She designs imaginary scenarios of the future, traversing various pictorial worlds as a matter of course. Strange beings evolve as a result–peculiar mutants, hybrid humanoid creatures, entangled in bizarre situations and bound together with veins, tubes, and cords. This publication provides a comprehensive overview of Emsbach’s pen drawings from 1995 onwards (these comprise the body of her work), as well as selected lesser-known installation and object work.” Essays by Beate Ermacora, Verena Kuni, Annelie Pohlen and Edwin Schâfer.

Hammershoi (M Hamme .H282 A4 2008)

From The Royal Academy “The first Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) retrospective in the UK, this exhibition features over 60 paintings spanning the career of this celebrated Danish artist. The works have been selected from museums and private collections in Europe, the United States and Japan.

Hammershøi’s most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist’s wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection.

In addition to the interiors, the exhibition also includes Hammershøi’s arresting portraits, landscapes and his evocative city views, notably the deserted streets of London on a misty winter morning. The magical quietness of Hammershøi’s work can be seen in the context of international Symbolist movements of the turn of the last century but the containment and originality of his art makes it unique.”

Interactive graphic: ‘Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30′

New Book

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton (M Peyto .P428 A4 2008)

From The New Museum  ”Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton is the first survey of Elizabeth Peyton’s work in an American institution. The survey will include more than 100 works made over the past fifteen years.

Peyton’s oeuvre can be read in chapters, each of which feature portraits of friends, family, personal heroes, and fleeting passions. Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton will offer a visual biography of the artist, and at the same time create a snapshot of the popular culture of the past decade.

From her earliest portraits of musicians like Kurt Cobain, Liam Gallagher, and Jarvis Cocker to more recent paintings featuring friends and figures from the worlds of art, fashion, cinema, and politics including Rirkrit Tiravanija, Matthew Barney, and Marc Jacobs, Elizabeth Peyton’s body of work presents a chronicle of America at the end of the last century. A painter of modern life, Peyton’s small, jewel-like portraits are also intensely empathetic, intimate, and even personal. Together, her works capture an artistic zeitgeist that reflects the cultural climate of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.”

See the exhibition’s website here.