Museum Report
Prof. Vasquez
Art 107/108
Due: Monday, April 28
Description
You will write a 3-5 page double spaced report citing and comparing the use of color in TWO examples of historical and/or contemporary painting. Use your intuition and your experience in the classroom to make material and conceptual comparisons. Include your name, Museum name, artists’ names and titles of the works.
Process for researching your Museum Report
Sketch the works and take notes. If you have a camera, take a picture of the work but do not use a flash. That’s against the rules. Since you are going to write about color, pay close attention to the palette the artist uses. Make a list of the colors you can identify and make it as detailed as possible. Make a sketch of the piece and indicate color zones with arrows.
Process for writing your Museum Report
In order to answer the following questions you may have to refer to the lecture on color. (http://apollo13art.com/National/art100/lectures/color/overview.html )
Describe the paintings
Note title, artist, date, medium and country of origin. Was the artist associated with any particular style such as Surrealism? Are the paintings representational or abstract? If representational, what is the content? If abstract, are the forms organic or geometric or other? Mention anything else that strikes you as important.
Identify the colors
- What hues dominate?
- Which hues are used as accents?
- Identify the color palette. Is it made up of mostly primary, secondary, complementary, monochromatic or analogous colors?
Address the level of contrast.
- Do the colors have a high or low level of contrast?
- What is the relationship between active and passive colors?
(http://apollo13art.com/National/art100/lectures/color/color-contrast.html )
Itten’s Contrasts
- Referring to Itten’s Contrasts, decide which category of contrast the paintings you are writing about fall into. In some cases you maybe able to identify more than one kind of contrast in a single painting.
(http://apollo13art.com/National/art100/lectures/color/itten.html )
Color and Mood
Finally, address the emotional and psychological mood created by color. This part of the essay should simply reflect your own intuitive response and doesn’t need to refer to any objective knowledge about color theory that we learned in class.
Why did you choose to write about these paintings? How might you incorporate what you learned into your own painting style?
Summary
Go back and choose the main points of your essay and end by re-emphasizing them once more.
Submission
Proofread, spell check and submit your report with your sketches and/or other visual materials that support your essay. Please type out your report using a word processor. Hand written assignments will not be accepted.
Helpful Links
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/arthistory.html
This handout discusses different approaches to writing an art history paper.
http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/seabury/art.html
A brief and to the point guide taken from the context of an actual assignment. |
