FACS 2900 ESSAY ASSIGNMENTS

Suggested topics

ALL projects should incorporate both course materials and materials from outside of the course. ALL projects should have a bibliography or a works cited section (depending on the style guide used). Please see the criteria for evaluation for this assignment. All of these projects may be adapted, if you wish, for the web, but please see me first.

You may choose your own essay topic, if you wish, but you must clear it with me by March 28th.
You may also elect to do an annotated bibliography instead of an essay or project.

Everyone: Read the suggestions for generating a thesis statement!

1 a. Construct an alternative narrative of art history from the perspective of a group marginalized by the traditional Western canon (colonial subjects, working class or queer subjects, for example -- but there are many possibilities). You might also want to consider an alternative to a traditional narrative -- a different format. (What would an alternative narrative look like? What might be at stake in proposing a different format? Will you organize this history in terms of chronology? why/why not?). Don't tackle 'all' of art history, of course -- do some reading and define a manageable area of inquiry....this will depend on the story you wish to tell. If you're unsure whether your topic is still too big, come to see me and we can discuss the breadth of your project together.

or

b. Web-based variation:
Curating assignment: As above, only you construct a digital gallery, using scanned images or images found on the net (properly attributed), that tells an alternative history of western art. You will need an curator's statement (4-5 pages) describing your selection criteria, and outlining the story/ies you hope the site communicates.

(NB -- if you were in the Guerrilla Girls group you may *not* construct this alternative history from the perspective of women... branch out!)

2. Consider the relationship between a high art form (opera, classical painting) and a 'low' or popular art form (for example, advertising, comics or graphic novels) in light of the following quotation:
" Art is no longer automatically identified as painting, sculpture, and architecture; clear distinctions between "high art" and "popular culture" have either evaporated or remain as sites of contention among artists, critics, and theorists. The authority of traditional media--oil paint, marble, bronze--has been similarly eroded. Art can now take the form of an ephemeral performance or interaction, as well as a physical object; it can be made out of long-lasting precious materials, or out of ordinary, unvalued, and impermanent ones."

3. As nineteenth and early twentieth century arguments about whether photography was really "art" have lost their bite and urgency, contemporary constructions of the idea of art have come to readily include advanced technologies: in fact, acceptance of methods of photomechanical reproduction and electronic media have even resulted in theoretical and practical re-evaluations of concepts such as originality and individual expression. Discuss this re-evaluation in light of new information technologies. Ground your discussion in concrete examples of art that relies on new media technologies for its realization.

4. Web gallery analysis:
Do a cultural studies analysis of one of a large art-based website (click here for options), taking into account the ideas and issues raised in this course. How is the website curated? Does it have a physical counterpart or does this curated collection only exist digitally? What story/ies does it tell about art? About society? To what effect? In your analysis, think of what is excluded, as well as what is included. Can you identify criteria for inclusion or exclusion? Be sure to provide concrete examples and support for the conclusions you present.

5. "In a sense, the arrival of pop art in the early sixties was just one element in a much more general cultural shift: Warhol and Lichtenstein should be seen alongside cultural critics such as McLuhan (or Eco or Barthes), writers like Burroughs, obsessed by advertising, the image bank, the word virus and the 'Reality Studios' and, of course, film-makers like Godard. Artists had to come to terms with new images, whether through irony, celebration, aesthetic enhancement or detournement. "
Wollin, Raiding the Icebox
Select an artist working in the 1960s in Pop art or advertising, literature, music, film or dance and situate the artist and their work in relationship to this 'coming to terms' with new images -- how does the artist you selected 'fit' with the above quotation in terms of irony, celebration, aesthetic enhancement or detournement?

6. Choose a decade from this past century -- 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s-- and write a paper that makes an argument about the relationship between 'the artist' and 'the city'. It's up to you to define 'the artist' for the purposes of this assignment (a painter? jazz musician? breakdancer? musician? a real person or group or the *ideal* or stereotype?) , and to define 'the city' in a way that makes sense. Perhaps it's a real city -- New York City in the 1950s?, Toronto in the 1990s?-- perhaps it's the *idea* of the city (in opposition to the country, as a symbol of modernity or chaos or enterprise or consumerism etc.) that is important. This topic gives you wide scope -- be sure to FOCUS.

7. web-based projects:

If you intend to produce a website, do check in with me first -- the criteria for evaluation will be slightly modified to reflect the differences between a print essay and a web-based work and the specific demands of your project.

You may elect to engage with any of the above topics (or a topic of your own choosing) in the form of a website. If you elect to construct a website, you will still need to have a central thesis to guide your execution. Before you select this options, be sure to think of reasons why building a website might help to communicate your ideas better than producing a traditional print essay -- there should be a reason for your choice. Good reasons might include easy integration of images, sound or moving images, or the capacity to disrupt linear narratives.