Unit Three: Focus on the Visual

Art resonates with us in ways other media don't and perhaps can't. We are visual creatures. We see millions of things every day and in doing so, we rely heavily on our sight. Visual artists take our enormous practice of seeing the world and use it to make us see something new. Artists use what you already use. Therefore you should not be intimidated by art or by this project. Like written language, visual art enjoys its own set of rules and structures. You don't have to know all or many of these terns or ideas to enjoy or understand art, but it does help to decode individual artistic texts. Think about the term composition. You are in a composition course right now and while artistic composition is slightly different it is also similar. Composition means to place together. In this way, the composition of a painting resembles the composition of your essays: Both are texts that have been assembled from various components. The composition of a work of art is the plan or the placement of the various elements of the piece. Most of the time, a painting's composition is related to the principles of design, such as balance, color, rhythm, texture, emphasis and proportion. These all contribute to the piece's effect.

Option One: Write a paper in which you define art, then, show why three paintings, photographs, or sculpture meet your definition. Your definition may be based on other's opinions, articles you've read or something you create entirely on your own. However, since this paper involves secondary research you must compare your definition with others and somehow integrate research into your paper.

Option Two: Choose a medium (photography, watercolor, oils, sculpture etc) and a contemporary artist who works with that medium. Write a paper in which you explore the artist, their medium, their influences, their agenda. How are they impacting the art community? How are they breaking rules? Be creative.

Option Three: Look at architecture. What kind of statement is being made in architecture today? Both internally and externally architectural elements can be considered art. Write a paper in which you examine a particular building or space with which you are familiar and explain and argue how it could be considered art. Does it remind of you of something besides a building in 1) its physical construction; 2) the emotional response it encourages; 3) its purpose; or 4)its structure? In what ways are these disparate elements alike? Different?

Option Four: Write a paper on the relationship between gender and art. Many of the most famous paintings, photographs, and sculptures are of nude women. How has art altered how men and women see the female body? Research will come in handy here, as well.

Option Five: Write a paper in which you demonstrate and explain how a particular work of art makes a political statement.

Option Six: Compare a contemporary piece of art (a Diane Arbus photograph, for example) with a classic painting. Are both art? Compare what Francesca or da Vinci or Vermeer tries to do with is art with what Arbus or your artist tries to accomplish. How might their respective cultures influence their ideas about what art should do?

Option Seven: Look at some images used in advertising. Argue how advertisements adhere to notions of artistic design and could be considered art.

Some Hints: Let yourself be drawn into the work. Don't try to figure out what the painting, photograph, sculpture or other visual art "means." Instead try and pay attention to what the art evokes. What sort of reaction or response does the piece elicit? Is there a mood or tone? Does the painting or its colors create any particular emotion?

You might also ask yourself how the artist works with beauty or notions of beauty. Is the sculpture or picture conventional in its use of beauty, or does the artist challenge typical ideas about beauty? Perhaps the point is to make a statement about today's cultural norms and make viewers uncomfortable. If so, then the piece succeeds as a rhetorical text even if it leaves you confused at your emotions. If Monet's paintings of waterlilies give you a sense of calmed, pastoral elegance then Monet has probably achieved his goal. If you find Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of flowers, pistils, and stamens strangely erotice, then you are probably experiencing the kind of reaction she intended. A work like Picasso's Guernica might affect you emotionally first, then begin to move you intellectually or vice-versa. Either way artists use shapes, colors, scale, and tone to make you feel a certain way. Thus, you may be reading the text of the painting on a subconscious level and not even know it.