Assignment: The Best and Worst of Art
NOTE: You should view the narrated PowerPoint on Analyzing Art
Based on Feldman’s 4-Step Method in this Module BEFORE working on Part 2.
Your first task of this assignment is to simply
decide what your most and least favorite works of art are. Identify
what you think is the ONE best work of art in the textbook and the ONE worst
work of art in the textbook. You will need to fully identify the work by
artist name, title, image # AND page # from the book.
Your next step is taking time to carefully study each work you
selected. I suggest you copy both images and place them where you can see them
frequently as you go through the day—on your computer desktop, copied and
taped on your wall, on your phone. You’ll be referring to these two works
throughout the course.
Discuss how the visual elements of art and the principles of
design from chapters you’ve read thus far are applied and organized in each of
your selected works. What art elements are apparent? Lines? Colors? Shapes?
Textures? Space? Describe what you see. How are the forms arranged in space?
What organizing principles are at work? Asymmetrical balance? Unity and/or
variety? Emphasis? Rhythm? Scale or proportion?
Don’t try to interpret work or speculate on its meaning—you
will do this in a later assignment.
Write up to one page (250-400 words) for each work.
Mini-Essay Questions
Answer the following questions in short paragraphs. Each short
paragraph is worth up to 5 points:
1- Using image 14.1 Hall of Bulls in the cave of Lascaux (pg
249…but you can also find other images from this cave online – easily),
identify the types of lines (this depends in part on your prior reading
about line) that were drawn, in what kinds of drawing media and using
what kinds of techniques.
2- After referring to the discussion about what drives artists
to use one kind of paint vs. another (page 122), identify how that discussion
relates to artists’ paint choices in Berthe Morisot’s Young Girl by
the Window (image 19.21, page 433) and Frank Stella’s Mas o Menos (More
or Less) (image 21.14, page 501).
3. What kind of print is Albrecht Durer’s Adam and Eve
(image 17.5, page 359), what type of printmaking (relief or intaglio?) is it,
and how would this early form of printmaking have possibly made the artist both
VERY well-known in his own and a lot of money?
4. How does artist Barbara Kruger use typography
to give meaning to her subject in Untitled, We Don’t Need Another Hero (image
21.32, page 513)? Put another way: what choices does the artist
make with regard to the use of type in her print?
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