A Short Guide to Writing About Art / Edition 11

by Sylvan Barnet

Overview

The best-selling guide to writing about art

Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing About Art guides students through every aspect of writing about art. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing. Coverage of essential writing assignments includes formal analysis, comparison, research paper, review of an exhibition, and essay examination. New to the 11th edition is a chapter on “Virtual Exhibitions: Writing Text Panels and Other Materials.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780205886999
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	01/15/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

Read an Excerpt

PREFACE:

Preface

Another book for the student of art to read? I can only echo William James's report of the unwed mother's defense: "It's such a little baby."

Still, a few additional words may be useful. Everyone knows that students today do not write as well as they used to. Probably they never did, but it is a truth universally acknowledged (by English teachers) that the cure is not harder work from instructors in composition courses; rather, the only cure is a demand, on the part of the entire faculty, that students in all classes write decently. But instructors outside of departments of English understandably say that they lack the time—and perhaps the skill—to teach writing in addition to, say, art.

This book may offer a remedy. Students who read it—and it is short enough to be read in addition to whatever texts the instructor regularly requires— should be able to improve their essays

• by getting ideas both about works of art and about approaches to art, from the first four chapters ("Writing about Art," "Analysis," "Writing a Comparison," "How to Write an Effective Essay"), and from Chapter 6 ("Some Critical Approaches")
• by studying the principles on writing explained in Chapter 5, "Style in Writing" (e.g., on tone, paragraphing, and concreteness), and Chapters 7, 8, and 9 ("Art-Historical Research," "Writing a Research Paper," and "Manuscript Form")
• by studying the short models throughout the book, which give the student a sense of some of the ways in which people talk about art

As Robert Frost said, writing is a matter of having ideas. This book tries to helpstudents to have ideas by suggesting questions they may ask themselves as they contemplate works of art. After all, instructors want papers that say something, papers with substance, not papers whose only virtue is that they are neatly typed and that the footnotes are in the proper form.

One is reminded of a story that Giambologna (1529-1608) in his old age told about himself. The young Flemish sculptor (his original name was jean de Boulogne), having moved to Rome, went to visit the aged Michelangelo. To show what he could do, Giambologna brought with him a carefully finished, highly polished wax model of a sculpture. The master took the model, crushed it, shaped it into something very different from Giambologna's original, and handed it back, saying, "Now learn the art of modeling before you learn the art of finishing." This story about Michelangelo as a teacher is harrowing, but it is also edifying (and it is pleasant to be able to say that Giambologna reportedly told it with pleasure). The point of telling it here is not to recommend a way of teaching; the point is that a highly finished surface is all very well, but we need substance first of all. A good essay, to repeat, says something.

A Short Guide to Writing about Art contains notes and two sample essays by students, an essay by a professor, and numerous model paragraphs by students and by published scholars such as Rudolf Arnheim, Albert Elsen, Mary D. Garrard, Anne Hollander, and Leo Steinberg. These discussions, as well as the numerous questions that are suggested, should help students to understand the sorts of things one says, and the ways one says them, when writing about art. After all, people do write about art, not only in the classroom but in learned journals, catalogs, and even in newspapers and magazines.

A NOTE ON THE SIXTH EDITION

I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures which I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy-three I have at last caught every aspect of nature— birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further, and will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach one hundred my art will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life.
—Hokusai (I780-I849)

Probably all artists share Hokusai's self-assessment. And so do all writers of textbooks. Each edition of this book seemed satisfactory to me when I sent the manuscript to the publisher, but with the passing not of decades but of only a few months I detected inadequacies, and I wanted to say new things. This sixth edition, therefore, not only includes sixth thoughts about many topics discussed in the preceding editions but it also introduces new topics.

The emphasis is still twofold— on seeing and saying, or on getting ideas about art (Chapters 1-4) and on presenting those ideas effectively in writing (Chapters 5-8)— but this edition includes new thoughts about these familiar topics, as well as thoughts about new topics. For instance, the pages concerned with generating ideas contain new material about:

• the canon
• cultural materialism
• queertheory
• realism and idealism
• critical values
• the uses of the Internet

The pages concerned with effective writing contain:

• boxed summaries, each with "A Rule for Writers"
• seven checklists for revising paragraphs, writing a comparison, evaluating a web site, and researching on the internet

and the discussion of documentation now includes:

• Chicago Manual Style
• the Art Bulletin Style Guide
• forms used for Asian names
• citations of electronic sources

Eleven illustrations are new, including Segal's The Diner, Paik's TV Bud` dha, Brancusi's Torso, and a photograph of the Guggenheim Bilbao.

Much of the new material concerned with generating ideas responds to relatively new trends in the study of art. Today an interest in political, economic, and social implications of art has in large measure replaced the h earlier interest in matters of style, authenticity, and quality. In short, contemporary interest seems to have moved from the text to the context, from the artwork as a unique object with its distinctive meaning to the artwork as a manifestation of something more important (gender, politics, ethnicity), from aesthetics to a criticism of social and political cultures. This shift in the study of art is a response to a shift in art itself— the shift from Modernism to Post-Modernism. In the first half of the twentieth century, art— in the movement called Modernism— sloughed off the earlier concern with subject matter, illusionism, and beauty; what F counted was the artist's sensibility. Post-Modernism, rejecting this elite ` sensibility, sees artists as deeply embedded in their society, understood only in the context of that society. The emphasis is now on the historical conditions governing the production and consumption of art.

Nevertheless, A Short Guide continues to give generous space to the formal analysis of art. I continue to use the term art rather than visual culture, though I uneasily recall Andy Warhol's observation that in America most people think that Art is a man's name. I grant, too, that visual culture has the advantage of including works— for instance, boomerangs, nose rings, and Native American feathered bonnets— that we might call art but that are not called art by the cultures that produced them. Indeed, one has only to do a very little reading to learn that many languages do not include a word for art; apparently no Native American language has such a word, and the Japanese invented such a word only after coming into contact with European ideas. My use of art, then, should be considered not only affection for an old word but also shorthand for visual culture.

Table of Contents

In this Section:

1. Brief Table of Contents
2. Full Table of Contents

1. Writing About Art
2. Writing About Art: The Big Picture
3. Formal Analysis and Style
4. Analytical Thinking
5. Writing A Comparison
6. Writing an Entry in an Exhibition Catalog
7. Writing a Review of an Exhibition
8. Virtual Exhibitions: Writing Text Panels and Other Materials
9. How to Write an Effective Essay
10. Style in Writing
11. Art Historical Research
12. Some Critical Approaches
13. Writing a Research Paper
14. Manuscript Form
15. Writing Essay Examinations

• Chapter 1: Writing About Art
  • What Is Art?
  • Why Write about Art?
  • The Imagined Reader as the Writer's Collaborator
  • The Functions of Critical Writing
  • Some Words about Critical Thinking
  • A Sample Critical Essay
  • What Is an Interpretation—and Are All interpretations Equally Valid?
  • Expressing Opinions: The Writer's “I”
• Chapter 2: Writing About Art: The Big Picture
  • Standing Back: Kinds of Writing (Informing and Persuading)
  • Close-Up: Drafting the Essay
  • Checklist of Basic Matters
• Chapter 3: Formal Analysis and Style
  • What Formal Analysis Is
  • Formal Analysis Versus Description
  • Sample Essay: A Formal Analysis
  • Postscript: Thoughts about the Words "Realistic" and "Idealized"
  • Cautionary Words about Slides and Reproductions in Books and on the World Wide Web
• Chapter 4: Analytical Thinking
  • Subject Matter and Content
  • Form and Content
  • Getting ideas for Essays: Asking Questions to Get Answers
  • Another Look at the Questions
• Chapter 5: Writing A Comparison
  • Comparing as a Way of Discovering
  • Two ways of Organizing a Comparison
  • Sample Essay: A Student's Comparison
  • Rebecca Bedell: "John Singleson Copley's Early Development: From Mrs. Joseph Mann to Mrs. Ezekial Goldthwait"
  • Checklist for Writing a Comparison
• Chapter 6: Writing an Entry in an Exhibition Catalog
  • Keeping the Reader in Mind
  • A Sample Entry
  • Checklist for Writing a Catalog Entry
• Chapter 7: Writing a Review of an Exhibition
  • What a Review Is
  • Three Sample Reviews
• Chapter 8: Virtual Exhibitions: Writing Text Panels and Other Materials
  • Kinds of Exhibitions
  • Kinds of Writing Assignments
• Chapter 9: How to Write an Effective Essay
  • The Basic Strategy
  • Looking Closely: Approaching a First Draft
  • Revising: Achieving a Readable Draft
  • Peer Review
  • Preparing the Final Version
• Chapter 10: Style in Writing
  • Principles of Style
  • Get the Right Word
  • Writing Effective Sentences
  • Write Unified and Coherent Paragraphs
  • A Note on Tenses
• Chapter 11: Art Historical Research
  • Accounting for Taste
  • Historical Scholarship and Values
• Chapter 12: Some Critical Approaches
  • Social History: The New Art History and Marxism
  • Gender Studies: Feminist Criticism and Gay and Lesbian Studies
  • Biographical Studies
  • Psychoanalytic Studies
  • Iconography and Iconology
• Chapter 13: Writing a Research Paper
  • Primary and Secondary Materials
  • From Subject to Thesis
  • Finding the Material
  • Art Research and the World Wide Web
  • Keeping a Sense of Proportion
  • Reading and Taking Notes
  • Checklist for Note-Taking
  • Incorporating Your Reading into Your Thinking: The Art of Synthesis and Drafting and Revising the Paper
  • Checklist for Reviewing a Revised Draft of a Research Paper
• Chapter 14: Manuscript Form
  • Basic Manuscript Form
  • Some Conventions of Language Usage
  • Quotations and Quotation Marks
  • Acknowledging Sources
  • Documentation
  • Footnotes and Endnotes: Chicago Manual Style
  • Chicago Manual of Style
• Chapter 15: Writing Essay Examinations
  • What Examinations Are
  • Writing Essay Answers
  • Last Words

Preface

PREFACE:

Preface

Another book for the student of art to read? I can only echo William James's report of the unwed mother's defense: "It's such a little baby."

Still, a few additional words may be useful. Everyone knows that students today do not write as well as they used to. Probably they never did, but it is a truth universally acknowledged (by English teachers) that the cure is not harder work from instructors in composition courses; rather, the only cure is a demand, on the part of the entire faculty, that students in all classes write decently. But instructors outside of departments of English understandably say that they lack the time—and perhaps the skill—to teach writing in addition to, say, art.

This book may offer a remedy. Students who read it—and it is short enough to be read in addition to whatever texts the instructor regularly requires— should be able to improve their essays

• by getting ideas both about works of art and about approaches to art, from the first four chapters ("Writing about Art," "Analysis," "Writing a Comparison," "How to Write an Effective Essay"), and from Chapter 6 ("Some Critical Approaches")
• by studying the principles on writing explained in Chapter 5, "Style in Writing" (e.g., on tone, paragraphing, and concreteness), and Chapters 7, 8, and 9 ("Art-Historical Research," "Writing a Research Paper," and "Manuscript Form")
• by studying the short models throughout the book, which give the student a sense of some of the ways in which people talk about art

As Robert Frost said, writing is a matter of having ideas. This book tries tohelpstudents to have ideas by suggesting questions they may ask themselves as they contemplate works of art. After all, instructors want papers that say something, papers with substance, not papers whose only virtue is that they are neatly typed and that the footnotes are in the proper form.

One is reminded of a story that Giambologna (1529-1608) in his old age told about himself. The young Flemish sculptor (his original name was jean de Boulogne), having moved to Rome, went to visit the aged Michelangelo. To show what he could do, Giambologna brought with him a carefully finished, highly polished wax model of a sculpture. The master took the model, crushed it, shaped it into something very different from Giambologna's original, and handed it back, saying, "Now learn the art of modeling before you learn the art of finishing." This story about Michelangelo as a teacher is harrowing, but it is also edifying (and it is pleasant to be able to say that Giambologna reportedly told it with pleasure). The point of telling it here is not to recommend a way of teaching; the point is that a highly finished surface is all very well, but we need substance first of all. A good essay, to repeat, says something.

A Short Guide to Writing about Art contains notes and two sample essays by students, an essay by a professor, and numerous model paragraphs by students and by published scholars such as Rudolf Arnheim, Albert Elsen, Mary D. Garrard, Anne Hollander, and Leo Steinberg. These discussions, as well as the numerous questions that are suggested, should help students to understand the sorts of things one says, and the ways one says them, when writing about art. After all, people do write about art, not only in the classroom but in learned journals, catalogs, and even in newspapers and magazines.

A NOTE ON THE SIXTH EDITION

I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures which I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy-three I have at last caught every aspect of nature— birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further, and will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach one hundred my art will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life.
—Hokusai (I780-I849)

Probably all artists share Hokusai's self-assessment. And so do all writers of textbooks. Each edition of this book seemed satisfactory to me when I sent the manuscript to the publisher, but with the passing not of decades but of only a few months I detected inadequacies, and I wanted to say new things. This sixth edition, therefore, not only includes sixth thoughts about many topics discussed in the preceding editions but it also introduces new topics.

The emphasis is still twofold— on seeing and saying, or on getting ideas about art (Chapters 1-4) and on presenting those ideas effectively in writing (Chapters 5-8)— but this edition includes new thoughts about these familiar topics, as well as thoughts about new topics. For instance, the pages concerned with generating ideas contain new material about:

• the canon
• cultural materialism
• queertheory
• realism and idealism
• critical values
• the uses of the Internet

The pages concerned with effective writing contain:

• boxed summaries, each with "A Rule for Writers"
• seven checklists for revising paragraphs, writing a comparison, evaluating a web site, and researching on the internet

and the discussion of documentation now includes:

• Chicago Manual Style
• the Art Bulletin Style Guide
• forms used for Asian names
• citations of electronic sources

Eleven illustrations are new, including Segal's The Diner, Paik's TV Bud` dha, Brancusi's Torso, and a photograph of the Guggenheim Bilbao.

Much of the new material concerned with generating ideas responds to relatively new trends in the study of art. Today an interest in political, economic, and social implications of art has in large measure replaced the h earlier interest in matters of style, authenticity, and quality. In short, contemporary interest seems to have moved from the text to the context, from the artwork as a unique object with its distinctive meaning to the artwork as a manifestation of something more important (gender, politics, ethnicity), from aesthetics to a criticism of social and political cultures. This shift in the study of art is a response to a shift in art itself— the shift from Modernism to Post-Modernism. In the first half of the twentieth century, art— in the movement called Modernism— sloughed off the earlier concern with subject matter, illusionism, and beauty; what F counted was the artist's sensibility. Post-Modernism, rejecting this elite ` sensibility, sees artists as deeply embedded in their society, understood only in the context of that society. The emphasis is now on the historical conditions governing the production and consumption of art.

Nevertheless, A Short Guide continues to give generous space to the formal analysis of art. I continue to use the term art rather than visual culture, though I uneasily recall Andy Warhol's observation that in America most people think that Art is a man's name. I grant, too, that visual culture has the advantage of including works— for instance, boomerangs, nose rings, and Native American feathered bonnets— that we might call art but that are not called art by the cultures that produced them. Indeed, one has only to do a very little reading to learn that many languages do not include a word for art; apparently no Native American language has such a word, and the Japanese invented such a word only after coming into contact with European ideas. My use of art, then, should be considered not only affection for an old word but also shorthand for visual culture.

Editorial Reviews

Extraordinarily useful and necessary for any class in art history!”

- Johanna Movassat, San Jose State University

“A step-by-step guide, incorporating both theory and practice, to critically thinking and writing about art.”

- Janet Carpenter, City College of San Francisco

“An extremely useful book for art history students at all levels of study.”

- Melissa Dabakis, Kenyon College

“I find the text to be fundamental in teaching students to write. It is concise enough to cover in a course on a particular art historical topic without overtaking the topic itself. It is always my secondary text.”

- Rebecca Trittel, Savannah College of Art and Design

“Excellent definitive source on writing about art for the advanced student.”

- Carey Rote, Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi

From the Publisher