Art commentary essay
Description Details
Discipline Arts
Assignment type : Essay
Description
Writing Task:
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The examination of identity, both individual and communal, is one that echoes through the history of art. As a contemporary theme in art, however, the idea of identity presents an especially tantalizing and, sometimes, contentious, issue to explore. Perhaps this is because we live in a time in which individual “identity” is increasingly recognized as a complex, multi-layered concept that is shaped, influenced, and constructed from both internal and external influences. Today’s artists seek to discover and identify their identities through a variety of means and experiences, which they convey to us through their art. The reading assigned for this module (Chapter 2: Identity in the course textbook) introduces us to many contemporary artists who are exploring identity in ways that are startlingly new and unfamiliar and which introduce audiences to entirely new ways of considering how one can define “identity.” This assignment is designed as an exercise in exploring and reflecting on the different ways in which contemporary artists explore “identity” and how artistic expressions can contribute to shaping the identity of viewers.
Assignment Guidelines:
Select a pair of artists from the list below whose work you find to be appealing, intriguing, or which you find especially provocative with regard to how he or she addresses issues of identity in their work; and
Write an essay in which you discuss how each artist explores “identity” in his/her work by comparing the different formal and conceptual approaches the artists take in creating their art and the purposes they have for it.
You may use additional sources as to support your discussion but you are required to use the course textbook as a primary source of reference for your essay. Be careful to not just reiterate or restate comments made in the text or other sources. Instead, your essay should reflect a thoughtful reflection of and response to the different comments and ideas presented in the textbook about the role of identity in the work of the pair of artists you select.
As you compose your response to this assignment, it’s important to consider the fluid nature of identity and the different ethnic, class, gender, cultural, political factors that artists explore and address in their art. A key question for you to reflect on is “How does art and the discussions it introduces to us contribute to the construction of identity.”
List of Artist Pairs: Select one pair of artists from the list to use as the focus of your comparative essay:
Nancy Burson and Do Ho Suh
James Luna and Catherine Opie
Shirin Neshat and Carrie Mae Weems
Will Wilson and Kerry James Marshall
Carrie Mae Weems and Lyle Ashton Harris
Ah Xian and Kerry James Marshall
Do Ho Suh and Shirin Neshat
Nancy Burson and Catherine Opie
Hung Liu and Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Successful participation in this module exercise will demonstrate the student’s ability to:
Identify and analyze issues and problems relating to contemporary art, artists, and the institutional frameworks in which art is experienced; and
Define, apply, and convey his / her understandings of and opinions about contemporary art in discipline-specific written conventions.
Technical Requirements:
Your response to this assignment must be a minimum 600 and a maximum of 750 words in length (not including bibliography).
Your response must be conceptually polished and fully edited when submitted as a finished product.
Your response must be submitted to its assigned CANVAS assignment box by the due date and time assigned for this assignment.
All research sources used must be fully and accurately documented using the citation standards of one of the following: American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), or the Chicago Manual of Style.
Your response must be formatted in a readable typeface (e. g., Arial or Helvetica) and saved as either a RTF (rich text format) or a DOC/DOCX (Microsoft word) file. No other file formats will be accepted for evaluation.
When submitting your response to the CANVAS assignment box, please identify the submitted file in the following manner “yourlastname. xxx. For example, a Microsoft Word file submitted by “Riley Smith” would be labeled “smith.doc”. It may also be helpful for your records if you insert a number after your name to correspond with the exercise number. For example, consider labeling your files in the following manner, using Riley Smith’s last name as an example: “smith1.doc” for Module Exercise 1, “smith2.doc” for Module Exercise 2, etc.
Successful participation in this Learning Module Exercise will demonstrate the student’s ability to:
Identify and analyze issues and problems relating to contemporary art, artists, and the institutional frameworks in which art is experienced; and
Define, apply, and convey his / her understandings of and opinions about contemporary art in discipline-specific written conventions.
Late submission of assignments: Papers or projects submitted late (i. e., past their due date and time) are subject to a 20% penalty for every 24 hours or portion thereof that they are submitted late, including weekends and holidays. After three days, no late submissions of any project will be accepted unless extremely unusual circumstances warrant an exception and the student (or his/her authorized agent) has conferred with the instructor. Examples of such exceptions would include a student’s hospitalization or a death in a student’s immediate family (father, mother, sibling, or grandparent).
Evaluation Criteria:
You may review the Evaluation Rubric for this assignment here. Please note that this assignment will be submitted by the instructor for review to Turnitin.com for instances of plagiarism or possible misuse of research information and sources. Evidence of such actions may result in the student receiving a failing grade and referral for additional academic sanctions.
Format MLA
Academic Level: High School
Volume of 2 pages (550 words)
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