Instructions: The following questions are designed to examine how you have absorbed and digested the material weve covered in Chapters 21-24. You should be able to express the main ideas and demonstrate them through works of art that you select in response to the questions below. This is not a research paper. Instead, your responses should be a distillation of what youve learned from your text and video lectures.
Answer each of the questions below using examples of artworks in your response to make your point. As weve practiced all semester, call attention to specific details to illustrate your discussion. Each response requires at minimum 1.5 pages, double spaced. I wont deduct points for exceeding this amount, but I will for not meeting it.
Question 1: Define Romanticism using works of art. What are its primary elements and how is it a reaction to Neoclassicism?
Question 2: How did the development of photography alter the course of art history? What observable changes did it make to art and in which art styles is it evident and how?
Question 3: Define abstraction. Where and when do we first find it in Post-Renaissance Art? Make an argument for how and why it is a more suitable way of representing the 20th century than the realism of previous eras.
Images: Refer to works of art to develop your exam responses, but do not supply images for these works. Instead, simply refer to them by figure number from your textbook. Example: figure 24-30. The first time you mention the work, you should use the artists last or common name, the title in italics, followed by the figure number in parentheses. Example: Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (24- 30). You may refer to it afterwards in any way you see fit. As long as it is clear to me, you do not need to use the full name, title or figure number each time, unless, in certain instances you feel it clears up confusion. Please remember that titles must always be italicized, and artists are always referred to by their last name (p. ex. Malevich, once they are first fully named), unless your book has given them a common moniker, (i.e. Christo.)
Select your own images: Part of this test is to see which images you select as emblematic. So, be careful to ask yourself, What are the hallmarks of art at this time? and, Is this work sufficiently representative of them? Just because a work of art appeals to you does not make it the best representation of one of these periods of art. Likewise, just because a work is very famous doesnt necessarily make it a good representation of a period as well.
Use your images to make your points: Art History is about understanding how art is a reflection of its environment. Explain how and why the works you chose are products of their periods in relationship to the questions Ive posed. A good place to start when writing is to assume that I dont agree with what youve written and that you have to prove it to me, by connecting ideas to images and offering evidence of your thinking. The more evidence you give, the more you convince me.
This is not a research paper. This is your biggest opportunity to show me what you have learned from Chapters 21-24. Use vocabulary and concepts that the lectures and texts have covered to validate the scope of your new knowledge and to demonstrate that you have faithfully done the reading and followed the video lectures. Make sure all your comments reflect a valid response to the question and avoid filling space by giving details that are not pertinent to the exam questions. An essay exam requires you to demonstrate that you have made connections across eras of art, and between the social-political environment and the art that is a product of it. Reciting facts about art without demonstrating an understanding of the impetus behind their creation will not be successful.
Use formal writing: Avoid references to self (I/we/our/etc.) Omit contractions (wont/hasnt/couldnt) Avoid colloquialisms and anachronistic terms. Avoid qualitative assessments of the works of art (good/excellent/beautiful).
