Modern Art and Visual Culture 1660-1900

This question invites you to respond to a piece you don’t know, by an artist whose work you do know. In your response, be guided by the three principles, invoked more than once in these pages:

(i) Situate the unfamiliar image within its historical moment and its specific social milieu.

(ii) Attend closely to the way the image is constructed. Relying on your own immediate observations, take note of its principal features, begin to look for significant details; and

(iii) Where possible, draw on relevant course Readings and Lecture notes.

You already know the general situation surrounding this work, but what is singular about this new work you are examining? Does it present aspects that surprise you? Does this work make you want to revise your understanding so far, of the artist who created it.?

From the following group of six, choose three works and write a short essay around each one.

Note: the thumbnail images on the next page are intended to assist you with your selection. Once you know which images you want to write about, look for high res pictures online, and work from those. Otherwise, do not use resources beyond those supplied through Canvas.

Degas, Singer with Glove, 1878

Toulouse-Lautrec, Circus Ferrando: The Equestrienne, 1888

Manet, The Railway, 1873

Caillebotte, The House Painters, 1877

Gauguin, Nevermore,1897

Van Gogh, Sunflowers,1888

Formatting Guidelines

1. Heading: The heading goes in the upper right corner of the first page of your exam and should look like this:

Your Name

VIS 22– Final Exam

Professor Norman Bryson

Date

2. Formatting:

12-point font for the main text, footnotes are 10-point, illustration captions are 9-point

Times New Roman

1” page margins

Insert page number at the top right corner of each page

Heading is single-spaced, the entire body is DOUBLE SPACED

Need help? Consult your TA. The conventions are definitively stated in the

Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.docstyles.com/ctslite.htm

3. When you cite a book or article in your essay

You must always specify your exact source by means of a footnote placed at the bottom of the page. The footnote should be formatted like the example below & at the bottom of this page.

Example: Part of the difficulty in representing Mameluke figures in painting was that Mameluke society was ethnically so diverse. As Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has pointed out, “Mamelukes came from throughout Eurasia and Africa and spoke many languages, among them, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Turkish, Flemish, Italian, German, and French.”2

Footnote (at the bottom of the page, 10-pt font):

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 108.

4. When you cite a work of art in your essay.

You must always specify exactly which work you are referring to by means of a footnote placed at the bottom of the page. In art history, referencing particular works of art normally includes the artist’s full name, the title of the work, the date, medium, dimensions and location – but we are only requiring the information that appears in the Slides: the artist’s surname [only], the title of the work, and the date.

Example: David, The Oath of the Horatii, 17853

___________________________________________

2 Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 108.

3 David, The Oath of the Horatii

5. Bibliography: You are not required to supplement your essay with a Bibliography.