Extra Credit Assignment

20th C. Art
Assignment Overview
This extra credit assignment will be an exercise in critical thinking and formal analysis. The
assignment is also an introduction to researching and utilizing online resources, including
museum websites. Please read the following instructions carefully.
Step 1: Choose a brief artist passage from the Chipp reading to interpret and analyze. Please
indicate which passage you have chosen at the beginning of the response. The excerpt
should be no more or less than one paragraph, and should convey an explicit, specific
concept or idea related to the coursework.
e.g., Matisse: “What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded
that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to
proceed beyond purely visual satisfaction… [but] the purpose of a painter must not be
conceived as separate from his pictorial means… the whole arrangement of my picture is
expressive. […] All that is not useful in the picture is detrimental.” Chipp, p. 132.
Step 2: Provide a condensed explanation of the core ideas presented in the passage.
Step 3: Choose a work of art produced by the author. The work must come from a major
museum collection, and should not be one that we have discussed in class, or one that is
in your textbook.
Step 4: Provide a brief formal analysis of the work, discussing how the artist constructed the
piece according to material, technique, composition, and style. (For tips on formal
analysis, please review this guide-sheet.)
Step 5: Explain how the artist has incorporated – or failed to incorporate – the ideas into their
artistic practice. Are the concepts expressed actually present in the work itself? If so,
discuss how they are present. If not, discuss how they are absent.
Assignment Format
This assignment is meant to be an exercise in formal analysis, and should be seen as an occasion
to sharpen your critical thinking and writing skills. However, this is a supplementary project, and
should not be approached as a research paper. Please be as concise as possible.
Your response should be approximately two pages in length; please use typical formatting:
single-spaced; 12pt, Times New Roman; 1” margins. Do not include an image of the work in
your response; simply link to it as such at the top of the page:
Extra Credit Assignment: Artist, Title, Date. Medium.
URL
Sample:
Extra Credit Assignment: Jackson Pollock, Untitled, 1950. Black ink.
http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.66395.html
Museum Websites These are suggestions; feel free to search a museum of your choice.
Museum of Modern Art: http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/index
Metropolitan Museum: http://www.metmuseum.org/collections
Whitney Museum: http://whitney.org/Collection
Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/collections/
Philadelphia Museum: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/search.html
Cleveland Museum: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/collections
Victoria & Albert Museum (UK): http://collections.vam.ac.uk/
National Gallery of Art (US): http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection.html
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR PROMOTIONAL DISCOUNT DISPLAYED ON THE WEBSITE AND GET A DISCOUNT FOR YOUR PAPER NOW!