For the paper topic, students will be required to select one of the ten works of art from the list below. Francisco Goya, Yard with Lunatics, ca. 1794 (Meadows Museum at SMU) Luis Jimenez Aranda, Lady at the Paris Expositon, 1889 (Meadows Museum at SMU) Claes Olderburg, Geometric Mouse II, 1969 (Meadows Museum at SMU) Claude-Joseph Vernet, Moutain Landscape with Approaching Storm, 1775 (Dallas Museum of Art, downtown Dallas) Constantin Brancusi, Beginning of the World, ca. 1920 (Dallas Museum of Art) Frederic Church, The Icebergs, 1861 (Dallas Museum of Art) Herter Brothers, Vanderbilt console, ca. 1882 (Dallas Museum of Art) Charles and Henry Greene, Front doors from the Robert R. Blacker house, 1907 (Dallas Museum of Art) Edward Hopper, Lighthouse Hill, 1927 (Dallas Museum of Art) Richard Serra, My Curves Are Not Mad, 1987 (Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas) The aim of the paper is for students to explain how bringing more than one practice to an examination of the course topic (e.g., the artist’s view and that of the cultural historian) contributes to knowing about that topic. This paper should consist of 4-5 pages of text (typed, double-spaced, 12 point), with a title page, 6-8 numbered illustrations (numbered in the text—Fig. 1, etc.) with labels (artist, title, date), 2-4 endnotes or footnotes, and a bibliography. The illustrations should not be in the text, but grouped in the back. This paper consists of 8 parts: A title page with your name and a paper title that distills your argument. The first paragraph should include a 3-4 sentence thesis or argument. The second paragraph should consist of a detailed description of the image and its composition. Research will be required to describe exactly what is depicted in the painting. The same is true of detailed descriptions of the pieces of furniture or sculptures. The third paragraph should place the work of art within the context of that artist’s work from that specific period (within 10 years), illustrating 3-5 works to make your argument. The fourth paragraph should examine how your work was created. The fifth paragraph should place the work within a larger social context. The sixth paragraph should consist of a conclusion that argues what is gained by seeing the work through both the lens of the artist and the cultural historian. The paper should also include a short bibliography of the sources. Those who employ both the internet, including articles on JSTOR through the SMU Library site, as well as books in the library, will do best. The illustrations must be placed in the back of the paper, with proper labels (artist, title, date, collection). The illustrations should include a selfie of you in front of the work (all three museum allow photographs without a flash), a drawing of the work, a good reproduction of the work, as well as reproductions of 3-5 comparative works from that period by that artist. example: Normally, few of you will work on the Vernet Mountain Landscape painting at the Dallas Museum of Art. I have given that work more thought, so, in case you work on it, please see my points below. HERE ARE MY SUGGESTIONS If I were working on this painting, I would stick with my template structure, but would consider adding in places these things: 1. What interests me about this painting is that it was created when artists were just beginning to represent the sublime in art. If you compare with it with later full-blown sublime works (Turner’s Burning of the Houses of Parliament or his Hannibal Crossing the Alps or Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Avalanch in the Alps, etc.—illustrate one of those to make your point), the Vernet offers more of a mix of violent and arcadian. It presages later representations of the sublime, but also looks back to landscape painting from the seventeenth-century. 2. As I said in class today, use JSTOR to find articles about your artist rather than about that specific work. For Vernet, see “Salvator Rosa and Claude-Joseph Vernet,” by Philip Consibee (from 1973 in The Burlington Magazine) because it examines Vernet’s debt to earlier wild landscapes and his compositional devices. Also see the book in Hamon Library, French Painting of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century (National Gallery of Art). 3. In the paragraph on other works by Vernet, illustrate a couple of his sea storm ship wreck scenes and another work by him. But I would also illustrate a landscape by Claude Lorrain to illustrate Vernet’s debt to his works for their framing devices of trees, Salvator Rosa, for his wild scenes Vernet soaked up, and Salomon van Ruysdael’s storm scenes (another painter from the previous century). 4. For the social section, I would research the uses of the Sublime in eighteenth century (especially the writings of Edmund Burke and Lord Shaftsbury). 5. Finally, in the conclusion, it makes sense to illustrate Fragonard’s contemporary painting The Swing because it is polar opposite in effect (even though both contain wild nature, the Rococo painting is a lush garden while this sweeping scene overwhelms man). Hope this is of help.
