“Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird” to create your thesis and contextualize the artwork in the exhibition.
Write a 2-3 page assessment of the artwork. If it’s a group exhibition featuring more than one artist, choose a few artworks to compare and contrast. If it’s a solo exhibition featuring one artist, also choose at least three artworks to support your thesis. The goal of the assignment is to use any of the “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird” to create your thesis and contextualize the artwork in the exhibition.
Include an introduction, thesis statement, and conclusion. Your discussion of the artwork should support your thesis statement.
To make your writing cohesive, also pay attention to the following notes:
Describe the artwork you’re writing about in detail as you analyze it. Imagine you are writing for someone who has not seen the exhibition.
Include a sentence or two of relevant background information on the artist. You can get this from the Press Release at the gallery’s front desk or perhaps a quick Google Search.
Do not rely on the Press Release to form your thesis of the exhbition. Press Releases are marketing pieces for the exhbitiion, and they usually include flowery phrases and “buzzwords” that are irrelevant to your basic understanding of Contemporary Art in this class.
To refer to an artwork and its artist, refer to the following punctuation:
Refer to artists by their last name: Warhol
Italicize the title of the artwork: Campbell Soup Cans
Include the creation date in parentheses: (1962)
In a sentence, you would report something like this: “Warhol turned the commercial process of silk-screening into fine art when he produced POP paintings such as Campbell Soup Cans (1962).”
CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING EXHIBITIONS:
Walter de Maria
Note: Attend both installations for your review.
The Broken Kilometer – 393 W Broadway, New York, NY 10012
The New York Earth Room – 141 Wooster Street
Open Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6 pm (closed from 3-3:30 pm)
Takashi Murakami: In The Land of the Dead, Stepping On The Tail of a Rainbow
Gagosian Gallery
555 West 24th Street (Chelsea)
Design, inspired by POP Art, invented a style called “SuperFlat,” inspired by manga aesthetics in Japan.
Steven Pippin
291 Grand St, between Eldridge and Allen Sts, third floor
Lower East Side
NOTE: Photography, he uses found objects to make pinhole cameras for his work.
Keith Haring
Pace Prints
521 West 26th Street, 3rd Floor
painting, grafitti
Hannah Wilke – Drawings and Ceramics
Tibor De Nagy
724 5th Ave (between 56th and 57th Street)
NOTE: This exhibition closes November 22!
Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
NOTE: This exhibition is $7 with a student ID. Paik was a pioneering video artist, and he is recorded in interviews talking about “video phones” in the 1960s.
