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Art 108 Ancient-Medieval Art history

F O R M + C O N T E N T: A D E S C R I P T I VE P A P E R

Due: See your calendar for the first significant deadline. Due at the beginning of class. No late drafts for full
credit.
Length: 600 words minimum
Source: See my list below of artworks featured in the ART 108 text*.
Audience: A general adult audience
Presentation: All drafts are to be word processed, MLA style, and double-spaced.
Value: 100 points for the entire writing process. To be done in stages…an early part of the process marked by
the first draft (25 pts.),
followed by additional drafts and responses, and ending with the final draft with a reflective commentary
attached (75 pts.).

Assignment Imagine that Spokane’s NW Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC) is featuring a
spectacular show titled Figurative Sculpture of the Ancient World with fifty works of sculpture from
Prehistory through the Late Roman Empire. Imagine that I have been hired by the museum to
prepare the audio essays to be used by visitors to the exhibit. You are employed by me to draft
the material for one audio essay.

Write a descriptive paper in which you demonstrate that you can observe and describe three
salient aspects of the form of a single work of art and you can reasonably interpret from the form
the most compelling aspect of the content. In this assignment you will be teaching the listener
how to appreciate any work of art by observing its form in order to sense, intuit, feel, or
understand something of the content. Furthermore, as your drafts progress, you will move your
listener from this generalized art appreciation approach toward an awareness of an art historical
perspective; the listener will be able to consider how this work of art expresses the cultural or
historical context of its time.

Procedure Choose one work (from my short list at the end of this handout). Focus on those
aspects of form to which the artist gives greatest attention. Then, connect each of three aspects
of form to a single content idea, demonstrating to your listener how you formed this interpretation
or came to this conclusion. Sharing your personal connection and your sensitivity is valid and
welcome; you could try to describe what motivated your responses or how you related form to
content. Describing the content of a work of art requires thought processes both logical and
sensitive. You get better at doing this. Each experience you have looking at art and attempting to
make judgments about the content helps you refine your thinking and it gives you a larger field of
experience from which to draw comparisons. In contemporary museum practices — at the Seattle
Art Museum (SAM), for example — docents are encouraged to be personal in their introductory
responses to the art during their gallery walkthroughs with their audiences. The emphasis is on
appreciating the physical work in front of you. Before the tour is over, however, the SAM docent is
expected to distinguish a broad-based appreciation for the artwork - without much consideration
of the historical context - from a more scholarly analysis that emerges out of an awareness of the
historical or cultural context. Since the artist was likely educated in and the artist works within
his/her culture, the work of art is of the culture.

Form/Structure of Paper #1 What I expect to easily find:


1. An appropriate and creative title for your audio essay;
2. Opening paragraph: Your introduction to the exhibition at large and to the gallery you are
now entering, bringing the listener to your selected work. You helped the listener grasp
how you looked at the form to draw a conclusion about the content. You created a thesis
statement about the content of the work as it is revealed by 3 significant aspects of
form;
3. At least 3 body paragraphs describing each of the 3 aspects of form and, with each,
how that aspect of form shows the viewer what you said the content was about; and,
finally,
4. A short conclusion paragraph to end the audio essay and to lead the viewer/listener on
to the next gallery in the large exhibition where they can expect to see something new
and exciting.

Evaluation You will be evaluated on [1] your thoroughness in describing the form (roughly 60%
of your grade here); [2] your reasonable conclusion about the content based on the observed
relationship of form to content; [3] your overall sensitivity to the work of art shared with a listener;
and [4] your creative approach to this audio essay. College level MLA presentation is expected; to
include a Work Cited page.

Choose your focus artwork from the following list: Plate number from textbook first-

* 1-5 Venus of Willendorf; 2-17 Gudea; 3-11 Seated statue of Khafre enthroned; 3-13 Seated
scribe; 3-30 Colossal statue of Akhenaton; 5-38 Zeus (or Poseidon?); 5-83 Aphrodite (Venus de
Milo); 7-27 Portrait of Augustus; 7-59 Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

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