What types of art are featured here? What kinds of art are not represented here? How does the organization feel to you? Did you feel comfortable in this space—why or why not?

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Art Question

Hunt: During Visit

  • Find the works of art you selected within the museum. Set a timer for one minute and observe: What do you see? Write down three observations each (just notes, not full sentences).
  • Find a third work of art that interests you anywhere in the museum. Complete the same process.

Questions: After Your Visit

– The notes from each of the paintings with the painting name included.

– Choose one work and answer: How does this relate to what you’ve learned about the Italian Renaissance?

– About the museum generally: What types of art are featured here? What kinds of art are not represented here? How does the organization feel to you? Did you feel comfortable in this space—why or why not?

The controversy over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition of 1982 is discussed. If you were allowed to vote for whether or not the NEA should fund this exhibition or part of it, what would your decision have been? Explain your decision.

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DISCUSSION PUBLIC ART MONUMENTS/NEA/ PUBLIC ART

1) Discuss the role of the NEA(National Endowment for the Arts) in public art. While the government does not fund many public artworks, the government agency of the NEA does select and provide funds for some artists, museums, artist groups, as well as programs in music and art for children in economically challenged communities who apply for funding. The NEA has limited funds, so getting funding is very competitive. In your opinion, is the role of the NEA important in our government and to our culture? Why or why not?

3) The controversy over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition of 1982 is discussed. If you were allowed to vote for whether or not the NEA should fund this exhibition or part of it, what would your decision have been? Explain your decision.

OR

Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial is discussed. Although this memorial was not funded by the NEA, the government had to get involved because the memorial was being placed on Federal land. Describe the controversy over her design and the resolution to this controversy. Did you agree with the selection of her design? Did you agree with the resolution to the controversy? Include in your discussion reasons why you agreed or disagreed.

4) History is all around us. Let’s use technology and our enlightened awareness of our world to document and live this history. Let’s use our phones and cameras to document the world we live in. As you go about your daily lives, see if your readings and lecture material sink into your world.

Challenge yourself to think, live, and breathe the history you are learning. If there is something in your daily life that reminds you or makes you think about your history content, document it. (Example: you read about Concept “A” in your text. You’re at work, and you witness something that makes you think about Concept “A.” Take a photo or video of it. Remember that it has to be a real picture or video taken by you in real life, and it has to be taken in THE PRESENT MOMENT-meaning within the past day or two). Give a brief description of the photo (what is happening, where, why, etc.) Most importantly: Explain what this has to do with what you are learning. Photos/Videos must be taken physically by you within the past day or two. Be in the moment, don’t script this, and don’t just sit there planning out a “History Matters.” It should be organic and spontaneous.

Using what you have learned through your research and prior coursework, and what you know about trends in your chosen specializations, develop a creative project that demonstrates your knowledge of what’s up and coming in your specialization industry that focuses on your selected inspiration above (Entertainment, Fashion, or Music).

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Understanding

Throughout this module you learned the significance of Information Literacy to the design field and how to leverage this skill as a designer. In this week’s discussion post you also need to research and understand the importance of visual design trends like color, typography and layout for communicating with a specific audience. Now it is time to put what you learned to the test. For this week’s challenge you will research and choose a current visual design trend popular in one of the industries listed below:

  • Entertainment
  • Fashion
  • Music

Using what you have learned through your research and prior coursework, and what you know about trends in your chosen specializations, develop a creative project that demonstrates your knowledge of what’s up and coming in your specialization industry that focuses on your selected inspiration above (Entertainment, Fashion, or Music).

For example: If your specialization is web design, you could design the home page for a band that’s popular with today’s trending music style. If your specialization is animation, you could create a dimensional fashion illustration or clothing model that focuses on current color trends in fashion. The choice of what you create is entirely up to you as long as it leverages your specialization software skills and focuses on one of the three supplied categories for today’s trends.

Describe the subject matter to give the reader an overview of the artwork. Explain how the work speaks to your/our human experiences.

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Art Question

  • Write a 3 page paper using the interpretive sentence as your thesis statement.

Paper Content Outline:

  1. Introductory paragraph with title, artist and interpretation.
  2. Describe the subject matter to give the reader an overview of the artwork.
  3. 3 or 4 paragraphs explaining your proofs – how the Elements of Art and/or the Principles of Design helped you discover the subtext or hidden meaning. Make sure that you include associations, ideas and feelings that are connected to your analysis.
  4. Explain how the work speaks to your/our human experiences.
  5. Conclusion that describes (again) and restates your interpretation.

Is classical music growing and changing as rapidly as popular music? Which of these four pieces is the most innovative?

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Discussion using 250 words for each post.

Question 1:

Read: Classical music is alive and well and being created right now. Sometimes classical music is perceived as stuffy or too intellectual to people unfamiliar with the genre; sometimes it does take a little bit of research to understand the music.

The operatic example by George Gershwin is the first major commercial opera written about the lives of black people (completed in 1935); he had a hard time getting it produced because of the subject matter, and because he refused to allow white singers in black face to portray the characters. If you’re interested in learning more about opera, Houston Grand Opera will be performing Turandot and Romeo and Juliet this spring, and it’s one of the best opera companies in the nation.

The ballet example from Appalachian Spring is a great example of how art forms support each other. Ballet is music and dance combined to tell stories. Copland is considered to have a truly “American” style of writing music; it doesn’t sound anything like the music being written in Europe at the time (1944). Houston Ballet is a great ballet company; I would recommend seeing one of their productions.

The choral example by the Houston Chamber Choir (I’m in the video!) is by living composer Frank Ticheli. This is the poem that he set to music:

Sing, Be, Live, See.
This dark stormy hour,
The wind, it stirs.
The scorched earth
Cries out in vain:
O war and power,
You blind and blur,
The torn heart
Cries out in pain.
But music and singing
Have been my refuge,
And music and singing
Shall be my light.
A lightof song
Shining Strong: Allelulia!
Through darkness, pain, and strife, I’ll
Sing, Be, Live, See…
Peace.

The instrumental example is by HCC professor (and my office-mate) Dr. Joel Love. He writes for many different instruments, but has become well-known for his excellent writing for Saxophone.

Watch the following videos:

Answer

  • Is classical music growing and changing as rapidly as popular music? Which of these four pieces is the most innovative?

 

Question 2:

Watch these videos:

Answer these questions:

Is there anything in these videos that was really exciting to learn? What do you still have questions about?

Take a photo to provide the visual image for the idea you want to convey in your work. Print or upload to computer in black and white. Then incorporate written text to the photo in poetic, narrative, or explanatory verse to reinforce the social issue of your work.

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Shirin Neshat’s work

Read Chapter 5, pages 129-156 in online text

Links to an external site..

A Social Invitation.

View this video of Shirin Neshat’s work on YouTube:

Shirin Neshat created a series of works titled Women of Allah that incorporate text on photographs of Islamic women. Neshat was born and raised in Iran, and she moved to the United States to study art as well as to escape the unrest that was happening in Iran due to the Islamic Revolution. According to Neshat, the focus of her work is “the subject of women in relation to Iranian society and the revolution…” using both black and white photography as well as film. View the series Women of Allah

Links to an external site.. The text that is incorporated includes religious quotes and poetry, juxtaposing with the beautiful compositions showing disturbing images of Islamic women.

Consider social and political issues that affect you in your culture and region to make that the subject of your work.

  1. Take a photo to provide the visual image for the idea you want to convey in your work. Print or upload to computer in black and white. Then incorporate written text to the photo in poetic, narrative, or explanatory verse to reinforce the social issue of your work.
  2. Then tell us what type of criticism you believe people would use to view that work you created and why.

There are a number of different types of contemporary art criticism:

  1. Ideological criticism relates the political ideas of art.
  2. Structuralist-based criticism deals with the overall structure of art (formal elements) or the multiple layers of meanings that deconstruct art.
  3. Psychoanalytic criticism deals with the experiences of the individual, in their past, their subconscious mind, or in their social histories.
  4. Feminist criticism deals with gender issues such as oppression of women.

Write about what you liked and what you didn’t like about this art. What’s your opinion on this art.

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The School of Athens

Write about what you liked and what you didn’t like about this art.  What’s your opinion on this art. Do not write anything formal or any information online.

The School of Athens

The controversy over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition of 1982 is discussed. If you were allowed to vote for whether or not the NEA should fund this exhibition or part of it, what would your decision have been? Explain your decision.

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DISCUSSION PUBLIC ART MONUMENTS/NEA/ PUBLIC ART

1) Discuss the role of the NEA(National Endowment for the Arts) in public art. While the government does not fund many public artworks, the government agency of the NEA does select and provide funds for some artists, museums, artist groups, as well as programs in music and art for children in economically challenged communities who apply for funding. The NEA has limited funds, so getting funding is very competitive. In your opinion, is the role of the NEA important in our government and to our culture? Why or why not?

3) The controversy over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition of 1982 is discussed. If you were allowed to vote for whether or not the NEA should fund this exhibition or part of it, what would your decision have been? Explain your decision.

OR

Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial is discussed. Although this memorial was not funded by the NEA, the government had to get involved because the memorial was being placed on Federal land. Describe the controversy over her design and the resolution to this controversy. Did you agree with the selection of her design? Did you agree with the resolution to the controversy? Include in your discussion reasons why you agreed or disagreed.

4) History is all around us. Let’s use technology and our enlightened awareness of our world to document and live this history. Let’s use our phones and cameras to document the world we live in. As you go about your daily lives, see if your readings and lecture material sink into your world.

Challenge yourself to think, live, and breathe the history you are learning. If there is something in your daily life that reminds you or makes you think about your history content, document it. (Example: you read about Concept “A” in your text. You’re at work, and you witness something that makes you think about Concept “A.” Take a photo or video of it. Remember that it has to be a real picture or video taken by you in real life, and it has to be taken in THE PRESENT MOMENT-meaning within the past day or two). Give a brief description of the photo (what is happening, where, why, etc.) Most importantly: Explain what this has to do with what you are learning. Photos/Videos must be taken physically by you within the past day or two. Be in the moment, don’t script this, and don’t just sit there planning out a “History Matters.” It should be organic and spontaneous.

Discuss where and how the work was placed in the public arena. How does the placement of the work affect the meaning or the way it is seen. Why did the artist choose this particular public space? Is the work site specific? Or in other words does the work gain its meaning from the site in which it is located?

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HISTORY 042

Choose one work from the list below of public artworks

  • 1) Richard Serra, Tilted Arc
  • 2) Maya LIn’s Vietnam War Memorial
  • 3) Guillermo Gomez Pina and Coco Fusco’s, Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit London, May 1992. or Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes, The Cruci-fiction Project, or The Temple of Confessions, 1994.
  • 5) Krzystof Wodiczko, Homeless Vehicle
  • 6) Suzanne Lacy, Whisper, the Waves, the Wind or one of her performances mentioned in module 4

Answer the following questions in relation to the work you chose:

1) Explain the ‘form’ of the work and how it relates to the content; discuss the aesthetics(relationship to beauty or ugliness) of the work. Remember scale, dimensions, color, and use of specific material are important visual considerations.

2) Discuss where and how the work was placed in the public arena. How does the placement of the work affect the meaning or the way it is seen. Why did the artist choose this particular public space? Is the work site specific? Or in other words does the work gain its meaning from the site in which it is located?

3) Explain the pros and cons of the public debate/controversy over the work you chose. If there was no controversy discussed in the book, or the modules, research the work and see if you can find opinions, questions, controversy regarding the public artwork. Do you personally think there should have been a controversy over the public artwork? Why or why not?

4) What kinds of resolutions or concessions to public opinion were made in relation to the artwork after the work was selected? You may need to do some research on the net to find out more about this. Would you have voted to have the work you are discussing placed into the “public arena”?

5) How well do you think the controversy was resolved?

6) State your subjective response to the work you chose. Is it successful? Why or why not? Do you believe the work to be valuable as “public” art? Why or why not?

Critically analyse a range of textual and non-textual sources concerning art exhibitions in a variety of contexts. Articulate how exhibitions operate for contemporary art, clearly presenting responses that are imaginative, rigorous and nuanced.

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Contemporary art exhibition

Present evidence of a high level of independent, scholarly research.
Critically analyse a range of textual and non-textual sources concerning art exhibitions in a variety of contexts.
Articulate how exhibitions operate for contemporary art, clearly presenting responses that are imaginative, rigorous and nuanced.

“Major exhibitions or curated projects initiated in different places around the world have variously convened a shared present across distance through art. We will reflect on the implications for selected artworks at the moment of public engagement: how do these conjure with or disrupt the idea of international, cross-cultural, global, planetary – or another understanding of – contemporaneity?

On this course we will discuss the “extreme internationalism” of Conceptual art shows since the late 1960s, and the “global contemporary” framing of survey exhibitions – notably art biennials – since the late 1980s. We will consider the roles played by concepts such as national representation, multiculturalism and anti-imperial nationalism. We will analyse how numerous factors – for example: artist networks, curatorial agency, installation serendipity, national backing, educational experience and cultural identity – may affect visibility, especially when exhibiting “at large” rather than “at home” (however many places may be counted as “home”). Visibility afar, or critical engagement in a distant locality, will be prioritised above successful commercial access to new art markets, when thinking about exhibiting abroad.”