art essays

By Will Fenstermaker

June 14, 2017

There has never been a time when art critics held more power than during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the Second World War, with the relocation of the world’s artistic epicenter from Paris to New York, a different kind of war was waged in the pages of magazines across the country. As part of the larger “culture wars” of the mid-century, art critics began to take on greater influence than they’d ever held before. For a time, two critics in particular—who began as friends, and remained in the same social circles for much of their lives—set the stakes of the debates surrounding the maturation of American art that would continue for decades. The ideas about art outlined by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg are still debated today, and the extent to which they were debated in the past has shaped entire movements of the arts. Below are ten works of criticism through which one can trace the mainstreaming of Clement Greenberg’s formalist theory, and how its dismantling led us into institutional critique and conceptual art today.

The American Action Painters

Harold Rosenberg

Harold Rosenberg, a poet who came to art through his involvement with the Artist’s Union and the WPA, was introduced to Jean-Paul Sartre as the “first American existentialist.” Soon, Rosenberg became a contributor to Sartre’s publication in France, for which he first drafted his influential essay. However, when Sartre supported Soviet aggression against Korea, Rosenberg brought his essay to Elaine de Kooning , then the editor of ARTnews , who ran “The American Action Painters” in December, 1952.

RELATED: What Did Harold Rosenberg Do? An Introduction to the Champion of “Action Painting”

Rosenberg’s essay on the emerging school of American Painters omitted particular names—because they’d have been unfamiliar to its original French audience—but it was nonetheless extraordinarily influential for the burgeoning scene of post-WWII American artists. Jackson Pollock claimed to be the influence of “action painting,” despite Rosenberg’s rumored lack of respect for the artist because Pollock wasn’t particularly well-read. Influenced by Marxist theory and French existentialism, Rosenberg conceives of a painting as an “arena,” in which the artist acts upon, wrestles, or otherwise engages with the canvas, in what ultimately amounts to an expressive record of a struggle. “What was to go on the canvas,” Rosenberg wrote, “was not a picture but an event.”

Notable Quote

Weak mysticism, the “Christian Science” side of the new movement, tends … toward easy painting—never so many unearned masterpieces! Works of this sort lack the dialectical tension of a genuine act, associated with risk and will. When a tube of paint is squeezed by the Absolute, the result can only be a Success. The painter need keep himself on hand solely to collect the benefits of an endless series of strokes of luck. His gesture completes itself without arousing either an opposing movement within itself nor the desire in the artist to make the act more fully his own. Satisfied with wonders that remain safely inside the canvas, the artist accepts the permanence of the commonplace and decorates it with his own daily annihilation. The result is an apocalyptic wallpaper.

‘American-Type’ Painting

Clement Greenberg

Throughout the preceding decade, Clement Greenberg, also a former poet, had established a reputation as a leftist critic through his writings with The Partisan Review —a publication run by the John Reed Club, a New York City-centered organization affiliated with the American Communist Party—and his time as an art critic with The Nation . In 1955, The Partisan Review published Greenberg’s “‘American-Type’ Painting,” in which the critic defined the now-ubiquitous term “abstract expressionism.”

RELATED: What Did Clement Greenberg Do? A Primer on the Powerful AbEx Theorist’s Key Ideas

In contrast to Rosenberg’s conception of painting as a performative act, Greenberg’s theory, influenced by Clive Bell and T. S. Eliot, was essentially a formal one—in fact, it eventually evolved into what would be called “formalism.” Greenberg argued that the evolution of painting was one of historical determinacy—that ever since the Renaissance, pictures moved toward flatness, and the painted line moved away from representation. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were two of the landmarks of this view. Pollock, who exhibited his drip paintings in 1951, freeing the line from figuration, was for Greenberg the pinnacle of American Modernism, the most important artist since Picasso. (Pollock’s paintings exhibited in 1954, with which he returned to semi-representational form, were regarded by Greenberg as a regression. This lead him to adopt Barnett Newman as his new poster-boy, despite the artist’s possessing vastly different ideas on the nature of painting. For one, Greenberg mostly ignored the Biblical titles of Newman’s paintings.)

Greenberg’s formalist theories were immensely influential over the subsequent decades. Artforum in particular grew into a locus for formalist discourse, which had the early effect of providing an aesthetic toolkit divorced from politic. Certain curators of the Museum of Modern Art, particularly William Rubin, Kirk Varnedoe, and to an extent Alfred Barr are credited for steering the museum in an essentially formalist direction. Some painters, such as Frank Stella , Helen Frankenthaler , and Kenneth Noland, had even been accused of illustrating Greenberg’s theories (and those of Michael Fried, a prominent Greenbergian disciple) in attempt to embody the theory, which was restrictive in its failure to account for narrative content, figuration, identity, politics, and more. In addition, Greenberg’s theories proved well-suited for a burgeoning art market, which found connoisseurship an easy sell. (As the writer Mary McCarthy said, “You can’t hang an event on your wall.”) In fact, the dominance of the term “abstract expressionism” over “action painting,” which seemed more applicable to Pollock and Willem de Kooning than any other members of the New York School, is emblematic of the influence of formalist discourse.

The justification for the term, “abstract expressionist,” lies in the fact that most of the painters covered by it took their lead from German, Russian, or Jewish expressionism in breaking away from late Cubist abstract art. But they all started from French painting, for their fundamental sense of style from it, and still maintain some sort of continuity with it. Not least of all, they got from it their most vivid notion of an ambitious, major art, and of the general direction in which it had to go in their time.

Barbara Rose

Like many critics in the 1950s and 60s, Barbara Rose had clearly staked her allegiance to one camp or the other. She was, firmly, a formalist, and along with Fried and Rosalind Krauss is largely credited with expanding the theory beyond abstract expressionist painting. By 1965, however, Rose recognized a limitation of the theory as outlined by Greenberg—that it was reductionist and only capable of account for a certain style of painting, and not much at all in other mediums.

RELATED: The Intellectual Origins Of Minimalism

In “ABC Art,” published in Art in America where Rose was a contributing editor, Rose opens up formalism to encompass sculpture, which Greenberg was largely unable to account for. The simple idea that art moves toward flatness and abstraction leads, for Rose, into Minimalism, and “ABC Art” is often considered the first landmark essay on Minimalist art. By linking the Minimalist sculptures of artists like Donald Judd to the Russian supremacist paintings of Kasimir Malevich and readymades of Duchamp, she extends the determinist history that formalism relies on into sculpture and movements beyond abstract expressionism.

I do not agree with critic Michael Fried’s view that Duchamp, at any rate, was a failed Cubist. Rather, the inevitability of a logical evolution toward a reductive art was obvious to them already. For Malevich, the poetic Slav, this realization forced a turning inward toward an inspirational mysticism, whereas for Duchamp, the rational Frenchman, it meant a fatigue so enervating that finally the wish to paint at all was killed. Both the yearnings of Malevich’s Slavic soul and the deductions of Duchamp’s rationalist mind led both men ultimately to reject and exclude from their work many of the most cherished premises of Western art in favor of an art stripped to its bare, irreducible minimum.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Philip Leider

Despite the rhetorical tendency to suggest the social upheaval of the '60s ended with the actual decade, 1970 remained a year of unrest. And Artforum was still the locus of formalist criticism, which was proving increasingly unable to account for art that contributed to larger cultural movements, like Civil Rights, women’s liberation, anti-war protests, and more. (Tellingly, The Partisan Review , which birthed formalism, had by then distanced itself from its communist associations and, as an editorial body, was supportive of American Interventionism in Vietnam. Greenberg was a vocal hawk.) Subtitled “Art and Politics in Nevada, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Utah,” the editor’s note to the September 1970 issue of Artforum , written by Philip Leider, ostensibly recounts a road trip undertaken with Richard Serra and Abbie Hoffman to see Michael Heizer’s Double Negative in the Nevada desert.

RELATED: A City of Art in the Desert: Behind Michael Heizer’s Monumental Visions for Nevada

However, the essay is also an account of an onsetting disillusion with formalism, which Leider found left him woefully unequipped to process the protests that had erupted surrounding an exhibition of prints by Paul Wunderlich at the Phoenix Gallery in Berkeley. Wunderlich’s depictions of nude women were shown concurrently to an exhibition of drawings sold to raise money for Vietnamese orphans. The juxtaposition of a canonical, patriarchal form of representation and liberal posturing, to which the protestors objected, showcased the limitations of a methodology that placed the aesthetic elements of a picture plane far above the actual world in which it existed. Less than a year later, Leider stepped down as editor-in-chief and Artforum began to lose its emphasis on late Modernism.

I thought the women were probably with me—if they were, I was with them. I thought the women were picketing the show because it was reactionary art. To the women, [Piet] Mondrian must be a great revolutionary artist. Abstract art broke all of those chains thirty years ago! What is a Movement gallery showing dumb stuff like this for? But if it were just a matter of reactionary art , why would the women picket it? Why not? Women care as much about art as men do—maybe more. The question is, why weren’t the men right there with them?

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Linda Nochlin

While Artforum , in its early history, had established a reputation as a generator for formalist theory, ARTnews had followed a decidedly more Rosenberg-ian course, emphasizing art as a practice for investigating the world. The January 1971 issue of the magazine was dedicated to “Women’s Liberation, Woman Artists, and Art History” and included an iconoclastic essay by Linda Nochlin titled “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

RELATED: An Introduction to Feminist Art

Nochlin notes that it’s tempting to answer the question “why have there been no great women artists?” by listing examples of those overlooked by critical and institutional organizations (a labor that Nochlin admits has great merit). However, she notes, “by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications,” namely that women are intrinsically less capable of achieving artistic merit than men. Instead, Nochlin’s essay functions as a critique of art institutions, beginning with European salons, which were structured in such a way as to deter women from rising to the highest echelons. Nochlin’s essay is considered the beginning of modern feminist art history and a textbook example of institutional critique.

There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cézanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. If there actually were large numbers of “hidden” great women artists, or if there really should be different standards for women’s art as opposed to men’s—and one can’t have it both ways—then what are feminists fighting for? If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is. But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education.

Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

Thomas McEvilley

One of the many extrapolations of Nochlin’s essay is that contemporary museum institutions continue to reflect the gendered and racist biases of preceding centuries by reinforcing the supremacy of specific master artists. In a 1984 Artforum review, Thomas McEvilley, a classicist new to the world of contemporary art, made the case that the Museum of Modern Art in New York served as an exclusionary temple to certain high-minded Modernists—namely, Picasso, Matisse, and Pollock—who, in fact, took many of their innovations from native cultures.

RELATED: MoMA Curator Laura Hoptman on How to Tell a Good Painting From a “Bogus” Painting

In 1984, MoMA organized a blockbuster exhibition. Curated by William Rubin and Kirk Varnedoe, both of whom were avowed formalists, “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” collected works by European painters like Paul Gaugin and Picasso with cultural artifacts from Zaire, arctic communities, and elsewhere. McEvilley takes aim at the “the absolutist view of formalist Modernism” in which MoMA is rooted. He argues that the removal tribal artifacts from their contexts (for example, many were ritual items intended for ceremonies, not display) and placement of them, unattributed, near works by European artists, censors the cultural contributions of non-Western civilizations in deference to an idealized European genius.

The fact that the primitive “looks like” the Modern is interpreted as validating the Modern by showing that its values are universal, while at the same time projecting it—and with it MoMA—into the future as a permanent canon. A counter view is possible: that primitivism on the contrary invalidates Modernism by showing it to be derivative and subject to external causation. At one level this show undertakes precisely to coopt that question by answering it before it has really been asked, and by burying it under a mass of information.

Please Wait By the Coatroom

Not content to let MoMA and the last vestiges of formalism off the hook yet, John Yau wrote in 1988 an essay on Wifredo Lam, a Cuban painter who lived and worked in Paris among Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, and others. Noting Lam’s many influences—his Afro-Cuban mother, Chinese father, and Yoruba godmother—Yau laments the placement of Lam’s The Jungle near the coatroom in the Museum of Modern Art, as opposed to within the Modernist galleries several floors above. The painting was accompanied by a brief entry written by former curator William Rubin, who, Yau argues, adopted Greenberg’s theories because they endowed him with “a connoisseur’s lens with which one can scan all art.”

RELATED: From Cuba With Love: Artist Bill Claps on the Island’s DIY Art Scene

Here, as with with McEvilley’s essay, Yau illustrates how formalism, as adapted by museum institutions, became a (perhaps unintentional) method for reinforcing the exclusionary framework that Nochlin argued excluded women and black artists for centuries.

Rubin sees in Lam only what is in his own eyes: colorless or white artists. For Lam to have achieved the status of unique individual, he would have had to successfully adapt to the conditions of imprisonment (the aesthetic standards of a fixed tradition) Rubin and others both construct and watch over. To enter this prison, which takes the alluring form of museums, art history textbooks, galleries, and magazines, an individual must suppress his cultural differences and become a colorless ghost. The bind every hybrid American artist finds themselves in is this: should they try and deal with the constantly changing polymorphous conditions effecting identity, tradition, and reality? Or should they assimilate into the mainstream art world by focusing on approved-of aesthetic issues? Lam’s response to this bind sets an important precedent. Instead of assimilating, Lam infiltrates the syntactical rules of “the exploiters” with his own specific language. He becomes, as he says, “a Trojan horse.”

Black Culture and Postmodernism

Cornel West

The opening up of cultural discourse did not mean that it immediately made room for voices of all dimensions. Cornel West notes as much in his 1989 essay “Black Culture and Postmodernism,” in which he argues that postmodernism, much like Modernism before it, remains primarily ahistorical, which makes it difficult for “oppressed peoples to exercise their opposition to hierarchies of power.” West’s position is that the proliferation of theory and criticism that accompanied the rise of postmodernism provided mechanisms by which black culture could “be conversant with and, to a degree, participants in the debate.” Without their voices, postmodernism would remain yet another exclusionary movements.

RELATED: Kerry James Marshall on Painting Blackness as a Noun Vs. Verb

As the consumption cycle of advanced multinational corporate capitalism was sped up in order to sustain the production of luxury goods, cultural production became more and more mass-commodity production. The stress here is not simply on the new and fashionable but also on the exotic and primitive. Black cultural products have historically served as a major source for European and Euro-American exotic interests—interests that issue from a healthy critique of the mechanistic, puritanical, utilitarian, and productivity aspects of modern life.

Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power

Anna C. Chave

In recent years, formalist analysis has been deployed as a single tool within a more varied approach to art. Its methodology—that of analyzing a picture as an isolated phenomena—remains prevalent, and has its uses. Yet, many of the works and movements that rose to prominence under formalist critics and curators, in no small part because of their institutional acceptance, have since become part of the rearguard rather than the vanguard.

In a 1990 essay for Arts Magazine , Anna Chave analyzes how Minimalist sculpture possesses a “domineering, sometimes brutal rhetoric” that was aligned with “both the American military in Vietnam, and the police at home in the streets and on university campuses across the country.” In particular, Chave is concerned with the way Minimalist sculptures define themselves through a process of negation. Of particular relevance to Chave’s argument are the massive steel sculptures by Minimalist artist Richard Serra.

Tilted Arc was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in 1981. Chave describes the work as a “mammoth, perilously tilted steel arc [that] formed a divisive barrier too tall to see over, and a protracted trip to walk around.” She writes, “it is more often the case with Serra that his work doesn’t simply exemplify aggression or domination, but acts it out.” Tilted Arc was so controversial upon its erecting that the General Services Administration, which commissioned the work, held hearings in response to petitions demanding the work be removed. Worth quoting at length, Chave writes:

A predictable defense of Serra’s work was mounted by critics, curators, dealers, collectors, and some fellow artists…. The principle arguments mustered on Serra’s behalf were old ones concerning the nature and function of the avant-garde…. What Rubin and Serra’s other supporters declined to ask is whether the sculptor really is, in the most meaningful sense of the term, an avant-garde artist. Being avant-garde implies being ahead of, outside, or against the dominant culture; proffering a vision that implicitly stands (at least when it is conceived) as a critique of entrenched forms and structures…. But Serra’s work is securely embedded within the system: when the brouhaha over Arc was at its height, he was enjoying a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art…. [The defense’s] arguments locate Serra not with the vanguard but with the standing army or “status quo.” … More thoughtful, sensible, and eloquent testimony at the hearing came instead from some of the uncouth:

My name is Danny Katz and I work in this building as a clerk. My friend Vito told me this morning that I am a philistine. Despite that I am getting up to speak…. I don’t think this issue should be elevated into a dispute between the forces of ignorance and art, or art versus government. I really blame government less because it has long ago outgrown its human dimension. But from the artists I expected a lot more. I didn’t expect to hear them rely on the tired and dangerous reasoning that the government has made a deal, so let the rabble live with the steel because it’s a deal. That kind of mentality leads to wars. We had a deal with Vietnam. I didn’t expect to hear the arrogant position that art justifies interference with the simple joys of human activity in a plaza. It’s not a great plaza by international standards, but it is a small refuge and place of revival for people who ride to work in steel containers, work in sealed rooms, and breathe recirculated air all day. Is the purpose of art in public places to seal off a route of escape, to stress the absence of joy and hope? I can’t believe this was the artistic intention, yet to my sadness this for me has become the dominant effect of the work, and it’s all the fault of its position and location. I can accept anything in art, but I can’t accept physical assault and complete destruction of pathetic human activity. No work of art created with a contempt for ordinary humanity and without respect for the common element of human experience can be great. It will always lack dimension.

The terms Katz associated with Serra’s project include arrogance and contempt, assault, and destruction; he saw the Minimalist idiom, in other words, as continuous with the master discourse of our imperious and violent technocracy.

The End of Art

Arthur Danto

Like Greenberg, Arthur Danto was an art critic for The Nation . However, Danto was overtly critical of Greenberg’s ideology and the influence he wielded over Modern and contemporary art. Nor was he a follower of Harold Rosenberg, though they shared influences, among them the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Danto’s chief contribution to contemporary art was his advancing of Pop Artists, particularly Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein .

In “The End of Art” Danto argues that society at large determines and accepts art, which no longer progresses linearly, categorized by movements. Instead, viewers each possess a theory or two, which they use to interpret works, and art institutions are largely tasked with developing, testing, and modifying various interpretive methods. In this way, art differs little from philosophy. After decades of infighting regarding the proper way to interpret works of art, Danto essentially sanctioned each approach and the institutions that gave rise to them. He came to call this “pluralism.”

RELATED: What Was the Pictures Generation?

Similarly, in “Painting, Politics, and Post-Historical Art,” Danto makes the case for an armistice between formalism and the various theories that arose in opposition, noting that postmodern critics like Douglas Crimp in the 1980s, who positioned themselves against formalism, nonetheless adopted the same constrictive air, minus the revolutionary beginnings.

Modernist critical practice was out of phase with what was happening in the art world itself in the late 60s and through the 1970s. It remained the basis for most critical practice, especially on the part of the curatoriat, and the art-history professoriat as well, to the degree that it descended to criticism. It became the language of the museum panel, the catalog essay, the article in the art periodical. It was a daunting paradigm, and it was the counterpart in discourse to the “broadening of taste” which reduced art of all cultures and times to its formalist skeleton, and thus, as I phrased it, transformed every museum into a Museum of Modern Art, whatever that museum’s contents. It was the stable of the docent’s gallery talk and the art appreciation course—and it was replaced, not totally but massively, by the postmodernist discourse that was imported from Paris in the late 70s, in the texts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Lacan, and of the French feminists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. That is the discourse [Douglas] Crimp internalizes, and it came to be lingua artspeak everywhere. Like modernist discourse, it applied to everything, so that there was room for deconstructive and “archeological” discussion of art of every period.

Editor’s Note: This list was drawn in part from a 2014 seminar taught by Debra Bricker Balken in the MFA program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts titled Critical Strategies: Late Modernism/Postmodernism. Additional sources can be found here , here , here (paywall), and here . Also relevant are reviews of the 2008 exhibition at the Jewish Museum, “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976,” notably those by Roberta Smith , Peter Schjeldahl , and Martha Schwendener .

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Ann Lowe (ca. 1898–1981)

All essays (1055), abraham and david roentgen, abstract expressionism, the achaemenid persian empire (550–330 b.c.), adélaïde labille-guiard (1749–1803), the aesthetic of the sketch in nineteenth-century france, african christianity in ethiopia, african christianity in kongo, african influences in modern art, african lost-wax casting, african rock art, african rock art of the central zone, african rock art of the northern zone, african rock art of the southern zone, african rock art: game pass, african rock art: tassili-n-ajjer (8000 b.c.–), african rock art: the coldstream stone, africans in ancient greek art, afro-portuguese ivories, the age of iron in west africa, the age of saint louis (1226–1270), the age of süleyman “the magnificent” (r. 1520–1566), the akkadian period (ca. 2350–2150 b.c.), albrecht dürer (1471–1528), alexander jackson davis (1803–1892), alfred stieglitz (1864–1946) and american photography, alfred stieglitz (1864–1946) and his circle, alice cordelia morse (1863–1961), allegories of the four continents, the amarna letters, america comes of age: 1876–1900, american bronze casting, american federal-era period rooms, american furniture, 1620–1730: the seventeenth-century and william and mary styles, american furniture, 1730–1790: queen anne and chippendale styles, american georgian interiors (mid-eighteenth-century period rooms), american impressionism, american ingenuity: sportswear, 1930s–1970s, american needlework in the eighteenth century, american neoclassical sculptors abroad, american portrait miniatures of the eighteenth century, american portrait miniatures of the nineteenth century, american quilts and coverlets, american relief sculpture, american revival styles, 1840–76, american rococo, american scenes of everyday life, 1840–1910, american sculpture at the world’s columbian exposition, chicago, 1893, american silver vessels for wine, beer, and punch, american women sculptors, americans in paris, 1860–1900, amulets and talismans from the islamic world, anatomy in the renaissance, ancient american jade, ancient egyptian amulets, ancient greek bronze vessels, ancient greek colonization and trade and their influence on greek art, ancient greek dress, ancient maya painted ceramics, ancient maya sculpture, ancient near eastern openwork bronzes, andean textiles, animals in ancient near eastern art, animals in medieval art, annibale carracci (1560–1609), anselm kiefer (born 1945), antelopes and queens: bambara sculpture from the western sudan: a groundbreaking exhibition at the museum of primitive art, new york, 1960, antique engraved gems and renaissance collectors, antoine watteau (1684–1721), antonello da messina (ca. 1430–1479), the antonine dynasty (138–193), antonio canova (1757–1822), apollo 11 (ca. 25,500–23,500 b.c.) and wonderwerk (ca. 8000 b.c.) cave stones, architectural models from the ancient americas, architecture in ancient greece, architecture in renaissance italy, architecture, furniture, and silver from colonial dutch america, archtop guitars and mandolins, arms and armor in medieval europe, arms and armor in renaissance europe, arms and armor—common misconceptions and frequently asked questions, art and craft in archaic sparta, art and death in medieval byzantium, art and death in the middle ages, art and identity in the british north american colonies, 1700–1776, art and love in the italian renaissance, art and nationalism in twentieth-century turkey, art and photography: 1990s to the present, art and photography: the 1980s, art and society of the new republic, 1776–1800, art and the fulani/fulbe people, art for the christian liturgy in the middle ages, art nouveau, the art of classical greece (ca. 480–323 b.c.), the art of ivory and gold in northern europe around 1000 a.d., the art of the abbasid period (750–1258), the art of the almoravid and almohad periods (ca. 1062–1269), art of the asante kingdom, the art of the ayyubid period (ca. 1171–1260), the art of the book in the ilkhanid period, the art of the book in the middle ages, art of the edo period (1615–1868), the art of the fatimid period (909–1171), art of the first cities in the third millennium b.c., art of the hellenistic age and the hellenistic tradition, the art of the ilkhanid period (1256–1353), art of the korean renaissance, 1400–1600, the art of the mamluk period (1250–1517), the art of the mughals after 1600, the art of the mughals before 1600, the art of the nasrid period (1232–1492), the art of the ottomans after 1600, the art of the ottomans before 1600, art of the pleasure quarters and the ukiyo-e style, art of the roman provinces, 1–500 a.d., the art of the safavids before 1600, the art of the seljuq period in anatolia (1081–1307), the art of the seljuqs of iran (ca. 1040–1157), art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in naples, art of the sufis, the art of the timurid period (ca. 1370–1507), the art of the umayyad period (661–750), the art of the umayyad period in spain (711–1031), art, architecture, and the city in the reign of amenhotep iv / akhenaten (ca. 1353–1336 b.c.), the art, form, and function of gilt bronze in the french interior, arthur dove (1880–1946), an artisan’s tomb in new kingdom egypt, artistic interaction among cultures in medieval iberia, artists of the saqqakhana movement, the arts and crafts movement in america, the arts of iran, 1600–1800, arts of power associations in west africa, the arts of the book in the islamic world, 1600–1800, arts of the greater himalayas: kashmir, tibet, and nepal, arts of the mission schools in mexico, arts of the san people in nomansland, arts of the spanish americas, 1550–1850, asante royal funerary arts, asante textile arts, the ashcan school, asher brown durand (1796–1886), assyria, 1365–609 b.c., the assyrian sculpture court, astronomy and astrology in the medieval islamic world, asuka and nara periods (538–794), athenian vase painting: black- and red-figure techniques, athletics in ancient greece, augustan rule (27 b.c.–14 a.d.), the augustan villa at boscotrecase, auguste renoir (1841–1919), auguste rodin (1840–1917), augustus saint-gaudens (1848–1907), aztec stone sculpture, the bamana ségou state, barbarians and romans, the barbizon school: french painters of nature, baroque rome, baseball cards in the jefferson r. burdick collection, bashford dean and the development of helmets and body armor during world war i, baths and bathing culture in the middle east: the hammam, the bauhaus, 1919–1933, benin chronology, bessie potter vonnoh (1872–1955), birds of the andes, birth and family in the italian renaissance, the birth and infancy of christ in italian painting, the birth of islam, blackwater draw (ca. 9500–3000 b.c.), blackwork: a new technique in the field of ornament prints (ca. 1585–1635), blown glass from islamic lands, board games from ancient egypt and the near east, body/landscape: photography and the reconfiguration of the sculptural object, the book of hours: a medieval bestseller, boscoreale: frescoes from the villa of p. fannius synistor, botanical imagery in european painting, bronze sculpture in the renaissance, bronze statuettes of the american west, 1850–1915, buddhism and buddhist art, building stories: contextualizing architecture at the cloisters, burgundian netherlands: court life and patronage, burgundian netherlands: private life, byzantine art under islam, the byzantine city of amorium, byzantine ivories, the byzantine state under justinian i (justinian the great), byzantium (ca. 330–1453), calligraphy in islamic art, cameo appearances, candace wheeler (1827–1923), capac hucha as an inca assemblage, caravaggio (michelangelo merisi) (1571–1610) and his followers, carolingian art, carpets from the islamic world, 1600–1800, cave sculpture from the karawari, ceramic technology in the seljuq period: stonepaste in syria and iran in the eleventh century, ceramic technology in the seljuq period: stonepaste in syria and iran in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, ceramics in the french renaissance, cerro sechín, cerro sechín: stone sculpture, the cesnola collection at the metropolitan museum of art, charles eames (1907–1978) and ray eames (1913–1988), charles frederick worth (1825–1895) and the house of worth, charles james (1906–1978), charles sheeler (1883–1965), chauvet cave (ca. 30,000 b.c.), childe hassam (1859–1935), chinese buddhist sculpture, chinese calligraphy, chinese cloisonné, chinese gardens and collectors’ rocks, chinese handscrolls, chinese hardstone carvings, chinese painting, the chiton, peplos, and himation in modern dress, the chopine, christian dior (1905–1957), christopher dresser (1834–1904), classical antiquity in the middle ages, classical art and modern dress, classical cyprus (ca. 480–ca. 310 b.c.), classicism in modern dress, claude lorrain (1604/5–1682), claude monet (1840–1926), coffee, tea, and chocolate in early colonial america, collecting for the kunstkammer, colonial kero cups, colossal temples of the roman near east, commedia dell’arte, company painting in nineteenth-century india, conceptual art and photography, constantinople after 1261, contemporary deconstructions of classical dress, contexts for the display of statues in classical antiquity, cosmic buddhas in the himalayas, costume in the metropolitan museum of art, the countess da castiglione, courtly art of the ilkhanids, courtship and betrothal in the italian renaissance, cristobal balenciaga (1895–1972), the croome court tapestry room, worcestershire, the crucifixion and passion of christ in italian painting, the crusades (1095–1291), the cult of the virgin mary in the middle ages, cut and engraved glass from islamic lands, cyprus—island of copper, daguerre (1787–1851) and the invention of photography, the daguerreian age in france: 1839–55, the daguerreian era and early american photography on paper, 1839–60, the damascus room, daniel chester french (1850–1931), daoism and daoist art, david octavius hill (1802–1870) and robert adamson (1821–1848), death, burial, and the afterlife in ancient greece, the decoration of arms and armor, the decoration of european armor, the decoration of tibetan arms and armor, design reform, design, 1900–1925, design, 1925–50, design, 1950–75, design, 1975–2000, the development of the recorder, direct versus indirect casting of small bronzes in the italian renaissance, divination and senufo sculpture in west africa, domenichino (1581–1641), domestic art in renaissance italy, donatello (ca. 1386–1466), drawing in the middle ages, dress rehearsal: the origins of the costume institute, dressing for the cocktail hour, dualism in andean art, duncan phyfe (1770–1854) and charles-honoré lannuier (1779–1819), dutch and flemish artists in rome, 1500–1600, eagles after the american revolution, early cycladic art and culture, early documentary photography, early dynastic sculpture, 2900–2350 b.c., early excavations in assyria, early histories of photography in west africa (1860–1910), early maori wood carvings, early modernists and indian traditions, early netherlandish painting, early photographers of the american west: 1860s–70s, early qur’ans (8th–early 13th century), east and west: chinese export porcelain, east asian cultural exchange in tiger and dragon paintings, easter island, eastern religions in the roman world, ebla in the third millennium b.c., edgar degas (1834–1917): bronze sculpture, edgar degas (1834–1917): painting and drawing, edo-period japanese porcelain, édouard baldus (1813–1889), édouard manet (1832–1883), edward hopper (1882–1967), edward j. steichen (1879–1973): the photo-secession years, edward lycett (1833–1910), egypt in the late period (ca. 664–332 b.c.), egypt in the middle kingdom (ca. 2030–1650 b.c.), egypt in the new kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 b.c.), egypt in the old kingdom (ca. 2649–2130 b.c.), egypt in the ptolemaic period, egypt in the third intermediate period (ca. 1070–664 b.c.), egyptian faience: technology and production, egyptian modern art, egyptian red gold, egyptian revival, egyptian tombs: life along the nile, eighteenth-century european dress, the eighteenth-century pastel portrait, eighteenth-century silhouette and support, eighteenth-century women painters in france, el greco (1541–1614), élisabeth louise vigée le brun (1755–1842), elizabethan england, elsa schiaparelli (1890–1973), empire style, 1800–1815, the empires of the western sudan, the empires of the western sudan: ghana empire, the empires of the western sudan: mali empire, the empires of the western sudan: songhai empire, enameled and gilded glass from islamic lands, english embroidery of the late tudor and stuart eras, english ornament prints and furniture books in eighteenth-century america, english silver, 1600–1800, ernest hemingway (1899–1961) and art, ernst emil herzfeld (1879–1948) in persepolis, ernst emil herzfeld (1879–1948) in samarra, etching in eighteenth-century france: artists and amateurs, the etching revival in nineteenth-century france, ethiopia’s enduring cultural heritage, ethiopian healing scrolls, etruscan art, etruscan language and inscriptions, eugène atget (1857–1927), europe and the age of exploration, europe and the islamic world, 1600–1800, european clocks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, european exploration of the pacific, 1600–1800, european revivalism, european tapestry production and patronage, 1400–1600, european tapestry production and patronage, 1600–1800, exchange of art and ideas: the benin, owo, and ijebu kingdoms, exoticism in the decorative arts, extravagant monstrosities: gold- and silversmith designs in the auricular style, eynan/ain mallaha (12,500–10,000 b.c.), fabricating sixteenth-century netherlandish boxwood miniatures, the face in medieval sculpture, famous makers of arms and armors and european centers of production, fashion in european armor, fashion in european armor, 1000–1300, fashion in european armor, 1300–1400, fashion in european armor, 1400–1500, fashion in european armor, 1500–1600, fashion in european armor, 1600–1700, fashion in safavid iran, fatimid jewelry, fell’s cave (9000–8000 b.c.), fernand léger (1881–1955), feudalism and knights in medieval europe, figural representation in islamic art, filippino lippi (ca. 1457–1504), fire gilding of arms and armor, the five wares of south italian vase painting, the flavian dynasty (69–96 a.d.), flemish harpsichords and virginals, flood stories, folios from the great mongol shahnama (book of kings), folios from the jami‘ al-tavarikh (compendium of chronicles), fontainebleau, food and drink in european painting, 1400–1800, foundations of aksumite civilization and its christian legacy (1st–8th century), fra angelico (ca. 1395–1455), francisco de goya (1746–1828) and the spanish enlightenment, françois boucher (1703–1770), frank lloyd wright (1867–1959), frans hals (1582/83–1666), frederic edwin church (1826–1900), frederic remington (1861–1909), frederick william macmonnies (1863–1937), the french academy in rome, french art deco, french art pottery, french decorative arts during the reign of louis xiv (1654–1715), french faience, french furniture in the eighteenth century: case furniture, french furniture in the eighteenth century: seat furniture, french porcelain in the eighteenth century, french silver in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, frescoes and wall painting in late byzantine art, from geometric to informal gardens in the eighteenth century, from italy to france: gardens in the court of louis xiv and after, from model to monument: american public sculpture, 1865–1915, the fulani/fulbe people, the function of armor in medieval and renaissance europe, funerary vases in southern italy and sicily, furnishings during the reign of louis xiv (1654–1715), gabrielle “coco” chanel (1883–1971) and the house of chanel, gardens in the french renaissance, gardens of western europe, 1600–1800, genre painting in northern europe, geometric abstraction, geometric and archaic cyprus, geometric art in ancient greece, geometric patterns in islamic art, george inness (1825–1894), george washington: man, myth, monument, georges seurat (1859–1891) and neo-impressionism, georgia o’keeffe (1887–1986), gerard david (born about 1455, died 1523), german and austrian porcelain in the eighteenth century, the ghent altarpiece, gian lorenzo bernini (1598–1680), gilbert stuart (1755–1828), giovanni battista piranesi (1720–1778), giovanni battista tiepolo (1696–1770), gladiators: types and training, glass from islamic lands, glass ornaments in late antiquity and early islam (ca. 500–1000), glass with mold-blown decoration from islamic lands, the gods and goddesses of canaan, gold in ancient egypt, gold in asante courtly arts, gold in the ancient americas, gold of the indies, the golden age of french furniture in the eighteenth century, the golden harpsichord of michele todini (1616–1690), golden treasures: the royal tombs of silla, goryeo celadon, the grand tour, the graphic art of max klinger, great plains indians musical instruments, great serpent mound, great zimbabwe (11th–15th century), the greater ottoman empire, 1600–1800, greek art in the archaic period, greek gods and religious practices, greek hydriai (water jars) and their artistic decoration, the greek key and divine attributes in modern dress, greek terracotta figurines with articulated limbs, gustave courbet (1819–1877), gustave le gray (1820–1884), hagia sophia, 532–37, the halaf period (6500–5500 b.c.), han dynasty (206 b.c.–220 a.d.), hanae mori (1926–2022), hans talhoffer’s fight book, a sixteenth-century manuscript about the art of fighting, harry burton (1879–1940): the pharaoh’s photographer, hasanlu in the iron age, haute couture, heian period (794–1185), hellenistic and roman cyprus, hellenistic jewelry, hendrick goltzius (1558–1617), henri cartier-bresson (1908–2004), henri de toulouse-lautrec (1864–1901), henri matisse (1869–1954), henry kirke brown (1814–1886), john quincy adams ward (1830–1910), and realism in american sculpture, heroes in italian mythological prints, hinduism and hindu art, hippopotami in ancient egypt, hiram powers (1805–1873), the hittites, the holy roman empire and the habsburgs, 1400–1600, hopewell (1–400 a.d.), horse armor in europe, hot-worked glass from islamic lands, the house of jeanne hallée (1870–1924), the housemistress in new kingdom egypt: hatnefer, how medieval and renaissance tapestries were made, the hudson river school, hungarian silver, icons and iconoclasm in byzantium, the idea and invention of the villa, ife (from ca. 6th century), ife pre-pavement and pavement era (800–1000 a.d.), ife terracottas (1000–1400 a.d.), igbo-ukwu (ca. 9th century), images of antiquity in limoges enamels in the french renaissance, impressionism: art and modernity, in pursuit of white: porcelain in the joseon dynasty, 1392–1910, indian knoll (3000–2000 b.c.), indian textiles: trade and production, indigenous arts of the caribbean, industrialization and conflict in america: 1840–1875, the industrialization of french photography after 1860, inland niger delta, intellectual pursuits of the hellenistic age, intentional alterations of early netherlandish painting, interior design in england, 1600–1800, interiors imagined: folding screens, garments, and clothing stands, international pictorialism, internationalism in the tang dynasty (618–907), introduction to prehistoric art, 20,000–8000 b.c., the isin-larsa and old babylonian periods (2004–1595 b.c.), islamic arms and armor, islamic art and culture: the venetian perspective, islamic art of the deccan, islamic carpets in european paintings, italian painting of the later middle ages, italian porcelain in the eighteenth century, italian renaissance frames, ivory and boxwood carvings, 1450–1800, ivory carving in the gothic era, thirteenth–fifteenth centuries, jacopo dal ponte, called bassano (ca. 1510–1592), jade in costa rica, jade in mesoamerica, jain manuscript painting, jain sculpture, james cox (ca. 1723–1800): goldsmith and entrepreneur, james mcneill whistler (1834–1903), james mcneill whistler (1834–1903) as etcher, jan gossart (ca. 1478–1532) and his circle, jan van eyck (ca. 1390–1441), the japanese blade: technology and manufacture, japanese illustrated handscrolls, japanese incense, the japanese tea ceremony, japanese weddings in the edo period (1615–1868), japanese writing boxes, jasper johns (born 1930), jean antoine houdon (1741–1828), jean honoré fragonard (1732–1806), jean-baptiste carpeaux (1827–1875), jean-baptiste greuze (1725–1805), jewish art in late antiquity and early byzantium, jews and the arts in medieval europe, jews and the decorative arts in early modern italy, jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 b.c.), joachim tielke (1641–1719), joan miró (1893–1983), johannes vermeer (1632–1675), johannes vermeer (1632–1675) and the milkmaid, john constable (1776–1837), john frederick kensett (1816–1872), john singer sargent (1856–1925), john singleton copley (1738–1815), john townsend (1733–1809), jōmon culture (ca. 10,500–ca. 300 b.c.), joseon buncheong ware: between celadon and porcelain, joseph mallord william turner (1775–1851), juan de flandes (active by 1496, died 1519), julia margaret cameron (1815–1879), the julio-claudian dynasty (27 b.c.–68 a.d.), kamakura and nanbokucho periods (1185–1392), the kano school of painting, kingdoms of madagascar: malagasy funerary arts, kingdoms of madagascar: malagasy textile arts, kingdoms of madagascar: maroserana and merina, kingdoms of the savanna: the kuba kingdom, kingdoms of the savanna: the luba and lunda empires, kings and queens of egypt, kings of brightness in japanese esoteric buddhist art, the kirtlington park room, oxfordshire, the kithara in ancient greece, kodak and the rise of amateur photography, kofun period (ca. 300–710), kongo ivories, korean buddhist sculpture (5th–9th century), korean munbangdo paintings, kushan empire (ca. second century b.c.–third century a.d.), la venta: sacred architecture, la venta: stone sculpture, the labors of herakles, lacquerware of east asia, landscape painting in chinese art, landscape painting in the netherlands, the lansdowne dining room, london, lapita pottery (ca. 1500–500 b.c.), lascaux (ca. 15,000 b.c.), late eighteenth-century american drawings, late medieval german sculpture, late medieval german sculpture: images for the cult and for private devotion, late medieval german sculpture: materials and techniques, late medieval german sculpture: polychromy and monochromy, the later ottomans and the impact of europe, le colis de trianon-versailles and paris openings, the legacy of genghis khan, the legacy of jacques louis david (1748–1825), leonardo da vinci (1452–1519), letterforms and writing in contemporary art, life of jesus of nazareth, life of the buddha, list of rulers of ancient egypt and nubia, list of rulers of ancient sudan, list of rulers of byzantium, list of rulers of china, list of rulers of europe, list of rulers of japan, list of rulers of korea, list of rulers of mesopotamia, list of rulers of south asia, list of rulers of the ancient greek world, list of rulers of the islamic world, list of rulers of the parthian empire, list of rulers of the roman empire, list of rulers of the sasanian empire, lithography in the nineteenth century, longevity in chinese art, louis comfort tiffany (1848–1933), louis-rémy robert (1810–1882), lovers in italian mythological prints, the lure of montmartre, 1880–1900, luxury arts of rome, lydenburg heads (ca. 500 a.d.), lydia and phrygia, made in india, found in egypt: red sea textile trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, made in italy: italian fashion from 1950 to now, the magic of signs and patterns in north african art, maiolica in the renaissance, mal’ta (ca. 20,000 b.c.), mangarevan sculpture, the manila galleon trade (1565–1815), mannerism: bronzino (1503–1572) and his contemporaries, the mantiq al-tair (language of the birds) of 1487, manuscript illumination in italy, 1400–1600, manuscript illumination in northern europe, mapungubwe (ca. 1050–1270), marcel duchamp (1887–1968), mary stevenson cassatt (1844–1926), the master of monte oliveto (active about 1305–35), the materials and techniques of american quilts and coverlets, the materials and techniques of english embroidery of the late tudor and stuart eras, mauryan empire (ca. 323–185 b.c.), medicine in classical antiquity, medicine in the middle ages, medieval aquamanilia, medieval european sculpture for buildings, medusa in ancient greek art, mendicant orders in the medieval world, the mesoamerican ballgame, mesopotamian creation myths, mesopotamian deities, mesopotamian magic in the first millennium b.c., the metropolitan museum’s excavations at nishapur, the metropolitan museum’s excavations at ctesiphon, the metropolitan museum’s excavations at qasr-i abu nasr, michiel sweerts and biblical subjects in dutch art, the middle babylonian / kassite period (ca. 1595–1155 b.c.) in mesopotamia, military music in american and european traditions, ming dynasty (1368–1644), minoan crete, mission héliographique, 1851, miyake, kawakubo, and yamamoto: japanese fashion in the twentieth century, moche decorated ceramics, moche portrait vessels, modern and contemporary art in iran, modern art in india, modern art in west and east pakistan, modern art in west asia: colonial to post-colonial, modern materials: plastics, modern storytellers: romare bearden, jacob lawrence, faith ringgold, momoyama period (1573–1615), monasticism in western medieval europe, the mon-dvaravati tradition of early north-central thailand, the mongolian tent in the ilkhanid period, monte albán, monte albán: sacred architecture, monte albán: stone sculpture, monumental architecture of the aksumite empire, the monumental stelae of aksum (3rd–4th century), mosaic glass from islamic lands, mountain and water: korean landscape painting, 1400–1800, muromachi period (1392–1573), music and art of china, music in ancient greece, music in the ancient andes, music in the renaissance, musical instruments of oceania, musical instruments of the indian subcontinent, musical terms for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mycenaean civilization, mystery cults in the greek and roman world, nabataean kingdom and petra, the nabis and decorative painting, nadar (1820–1910), the nahal mishmar treasure, nature in chinese culture, the nature of islamic art, the neoclassical temple, neoclassicism, neolithic period in china, nepalese painting, nepalese sculpture, netsuke: from fashion fobs to coveted collectibles, new caledonia, the new documentary tradition in photography, new ireland, new vision photography, a new visual language transmitted across asia, the new york dutch room, nicolas poussin (1594–1665), nineteenth-century american drawings, nineteenth-century american folk art, nineteenth-century american jewelry, nineteenth-century american silver, nineteenth-century classical music, nineteenth-century court arts in india, nineteenth-century english silver, nineteenth-century european textile production, nineteenth-century french realism, nineteenth-century iran: art and the advent of modernity, nineteenth-century iran: continuity and revivalism, nineteenth-century silhouette and support, nok terracottas (500 b.c.–200 a.d.), northern italian renaissance painting, northern mannerism in the early sixteenth century, northern song dynasty (960–1127), northwest coast indians musical instruments, the nude in baroque and later art, the nude in the middle ages and the renaissance, the nude in western art and its beginnings in antiquity, nudity and classical themes in byzantine art, nuptial furnishings in the italian renaissance, the old assyrian period (ca. 2000–1600 b.c.), orientalism in nineteenth-century art, orientalism: visions of the east in western dress, the origins of writing, ottonian art, pablo picasso (1881–1973), pachmari hills (ca. 9000–3000 b.c.), painted funerary monuments from hellenistic alexandria, painting formats in east asian art, painting in italian choir books, 1300–1500, painting in oil in the low countries and its spread to southern europe, painting the life of christ in medieval and renaissance italy, paintings of love and marriage in the italian renaissance, paolo veronese (1528–1588), the papacy and the vatican palace, the papacy during the renaissance, papyrus in ancient egypt, papyrus-making in egypt, the parthian empire (247 b.c.–224 a.d.), pastoral charms in the french renaissance, patronage at the early valois courts (1328–1461), patronage at the later valois courts (1461–1589), patronage of jean de berry (1340–1416), paul cézanne (1839–1906), paul gauguin (1848–1903), paul klee (1879–1940), paul poiret (1879–1944), paul revere, jr. 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the toba batak, stained (luster-painted) glass from islamic lands, stained glass in medieval europe, still-life painting in northern europe, 1600–1800, still-life painting in southern europe, 1600–1800, the structure of photographic metaphors, students of benjamin west (1738–1820), the symposium in ancient greece, takht-i sulaiman and tilework in the ilkhanid period, talavera de puebla, tanagra figurines, tang dynasty (618–907), the technique of bronze statuary in ancient greece, techniques of decoration on arms and armor, telling time in ancient egypt, tenochtitlan, tenochtitlan: templo mayor, teotihuacan: mural painting, teotihuacan: pyramids of the sun and the moon, textile production in europe: embroidery, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: lace, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: printed, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: silk, 1600–1800, theater and amphitheater in the roman world, theater in ancient greece, theseus, hero of athens, thomas chippendale’s gentleman and cabinet-maker’s director, thomas cole (1801–1848), thomas eakins (1844–1916): painting, thomas eakins (1844–1916): photography, 1880s–90s, thomas hart benton’s america today mural, thomas sully (1783–1872) and queen victoria, tibetan arms and armor, tibetan buddhist art, tikal: sacred architecture, tikal: stone sculpture, time of day on painted athenian vases, tiraz: inscribed textiles from the early islamic period, titian (ca. 1485/90–1576), the tomb of wah, trade and commercial activity in the byzantine and early islamic middle east, trade and the spread of islam in africa, trade between arabia and the empires of rome and asia, trade between the romans and the empires of asia, trade relations among european and african nations, trade routes between europe and asia during antiquity, traditional chinese painting in the twentieth century, the transatlantic slave trade, the transformation of landscape painting in france, the trans-saharan gold trade (7th–14th century), turkmen jewelry, turquoise in ancient egypt, tutankhamun’s funeral, tutsi basketry, twentieth-century silhouette and support, the ubaid period (5500–4000 b.c.), ubirr (ca. 40,000–present), umberto boccioni (1882–1916), unfinished works in european art, ca. 1500–1900, ur: the royal graves, ur: the ziggurat, uruk: the first city, valdivia figurines, vegetal patterns in islamic art, velázquez (1599–1660), venetian color and florentine design, venice and the islamic world, 828–1797, venice and the islamic world: commercial exchange, diplomacy, and religious difference, venice in the eighteenth century, venice’s principal muslim trading partners: the mamluks, the ottomans, and the safavids, the vibrant role of mingqi in early chinese burials, the vikings (780–1100), vincent van gogh (1853–1890), vincent van gogh (1853–1890): the drawings, violin makers: nicolò amati (1596–1684) and antonio stradivari (1644–1737), visual culture of the atlantic world, vivienne westwood (born 1941) and the postmodern legacy of punk style, wadi kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 b.c.), walker evans (1903–1975), wang hui (1632–1717), warfare in ancient greece, watercolor painting in britain, 1750–1850, ways of recording african history, weddings in the italian renaissance, west asia: ancient legends, modern idioms, west asia: between tradition and modernity, west asia: postmodernism, the diaspora, and women artists, william blake (1757–1827), william henry fox talbot (1800–1877) and the invention of photography, william merritt chase (1849–1916), winslow homer (1836–1910), wisteria dining room, paris, women artists in nineteenth-century france, women china decorators, women in classical greece, women leaders in african history, 17th–19th century, women leaders in african history: ana nzinga, queen of ndongo, women leaders in african history: dona beatriz, kongo prophet, women leaders in african history: idia, first queen mother of benin, woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: florence in the 1490s, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: the first illustrated books, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: venice in the 1490s, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: venice in the sixteenth century, wordplay in twentieth-century prints, work and leisure: eighteenth-century genre painting in korea, x-ray style in arnhem land rock art, yamato-e painting, yangban: the cultural life of the joseon literati, yayoi culture (ca. 300 b.c.–300 a.d.), the year one, years leading to the iranian revolution, 1960–79, yuan dynasty (1271–1368), zen buddhism, 0 && essaysctrl.themev == 'departments / collections' && essaysctrl.deptv == null">, departments / collections '">.

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Writing Essays in Art History

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These OWL resources provide guidance on typical genres with the art history discipline that may appear in professional settings or academic assignments, including museum catalog entries, museum title cards, art history analysis, notetaking, and art history exams.

Art History Analysis – Formal Analysis and Stylistic Analysis

Typically in an art history class the main essay students will need to write for a final paper or for an exam is a formal or stylistic analysis.

A formal analysis is just what it sounds like – you need to analyze the form of the artwork. This includes the individual design elements – composition, color, line, texture, scale, contrast, etc. Questions to consider in a formal analysis is how do all these elements come together to create this work of art? Think of formal analysis in relation to literature – authors give descriptions of characters or places through the written word. How does an artist convey this same information?

Organize your information and focus on each feature before moving onto the text – it is not ideal to discuss color and jump from line to then in the conclusion discuss color again. First summarize the overall appearance of the work of art – is this a painting? Does the artist use only dark colors? Why heavy brushstrokes? etc and then discuss details of the object – this specific animal is gray, the sky is missing a moon, etc. Again, it is best to be organized and focused in your writing – if you discuss the animals and then the individuals and go back to the animals you run the risk of making your writing unorganized and hard to read. It is also ideal to discuss the focal of the piece – what is in the center? What stands out the most in the piece or takes up most of the composition?

A stylistic approach can be described as an indicator of unique characteristics that analyzes and uses the formal elements (2-D: Line, color, value, shape and 3-D all of those and mass).The point of style is to see all the commonalities in a person’s works, such as the use of paint and brush strokes in Van Gogh’s work. Style can distinguish an artist’s work from others and within their own timeline, geographical regions, etc.

Methods & Theories To Consider:

Expressionism

Instructuralism

Postmodernism

Social Art History

Biographical Approach

Poststructuralism

Museum Studies

Visual Cultural Studies

Stylistic Analysis Example:

The following is a brief stylistic analysis of two Greek statues, an example of how style has changed because of the “essence of the age.” Over the years, sculptures of women started off as being plain and fully clothed with no distinct features, to the beautiful Venus/Aphrodite figures most people recognize today. In the mid-seventh century to the early fifth, life-sized standing marble statues of young women, often elaborately dress in gaily painted garments were created known as korai. The earliest korai is a Naxian women to Artemis. The statue wears a tight-fitted, belted peplos, giving the body a very plain look. The earliest korai wore the simpler Dorian peplos, which was a heavy woolen garment. From about 530, most wear a thinner, more elaborate, and brightly painted Ionic linen and himation. A largely contrasting Greek statue to the korai is the Venus de Milo. The Venus from head to toe is six feet seven inches tall. Her hips suggest that she has had several children. Though her body shows to be heavy, she still seems to almost be weightless. Viewing the Venus de Milo, she changes from side to side. From her right side she seems almost like a pillar and her leg bears most of the weight. She seems be firmly planted into the earth, and since she is looking at the left, her big features such as her waist define her. The Venus de Milo had a band around her right bicep. She had earrings that were brutally stolen, ripping her ears away. Venus was noted for loving necklaces, so it is very possibly she would have had one. It is also possible she had a tiara and bracelets. Venus was normally defined as “golden,” so her hair would have been painted. Two statues in the same region, have throughout history, changed in their style.

Compare and Contrast Essay

Most introductory art history classes will ask students to write a compare and contrast essay about two pieces – examples include comparing and contrasting a medieval to a renaissance painting. It is always best to start with smaller comparisons between the two works of art such as the medium of the piece. Then the comparison can include attention to detail so use of color, subject matter, or iconography. Do the same for contrasting the two pieces – start small. After the foundation is set move on to the analysis and what these comparisons or contrasting material mean – ‘what is the bigger picture here?’ Consider why one artist would wish to show the same subject matter in a different way, how, when, etc are all questions to ask in the compare and contrast essay. If during an exam it would be best to quickly outline the points to make before tackling writing the essay.

Compare and Contrast Example:

Stele of Hammurabi from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), ca. 1792 – 1750 BCE, Basalt, height of stele approx. 7’ height of relief 28’

Stele, relief sculpture, Art as propaganda – Hammurabi shows that his law code is approved by the gods, depiction of land in background, Hammurabi on the same place of importance as the god, etc.

Top of this stele shows the relief image of Hammurabi receiving the law code from Shamash, god of justice, Code of Babylonian social law, only two figures shown, different area and time period, etc.

Stele of Naram-sin , Sippar Found at Susa c. 2220 - 2184 bce. Limestone, height 6'6"

Stele, relief sculpture, Example of propaganda because the ruler (like the Stele of Hammurabi) shows his power through divine authority, Naramsin is the main character due to his large size, depiction of land in background, etc.

Akkadian art, made of limestone, the stele commemorates a victory of Naramsin, multiple figures are shown specifically soldiers, different area and time period, etc.

Iconography

Regardless of what essay approach you take in class it is absolutely necessary to understand how to analyze the iconography of a work of art and to incorporate into your paper. Iconography is defined as subject matter, what the image means. For example, why do things such as a small dog in a painting in early Northern Renaissance paintings represent sexuality? Additionally, how can an individual perhaps identify these motifs that keep coming up?

The following is a list of symbols and their meaning in Marriage a la Mode by William Hogarth (1743) that is a series of six paintings that show the story of marriage in Hogarth’s eyes.

• Man has pockets turned out symbolizing he has lost money and was recently in a fight by the state of his clothes.
• Lap dog shows loyalty but sniffs at woman’s hat in the husband’s pocket showing sexual exploits.
• Black dot on husband’s neck believed to be symbol of syphilis.
• Mantel full of ugly Chinese porcelain statues symbolizing that the couple has no class.
• Butler had to go pay bills, you can tell this by the distasteful look on his face and that his pockets are stuffed with bills and papers.
• Card game just finished up, women has directions to game under foot, shows her easily cheating nature.
• Paintings of saints line a wall of the background room, isolated from the living, shows the couple’s complete disregard to faith and religion.
• The dangers of sexual excess are underscored in the Hograth by placing Cupid among ruins, foreshadowing the inevitable ruin of the marriage.
• Eventually the series (other five paintings) shows that the woman has an affair, the men duel and die, the woman hangs herself and the father takes her ring off her finger symbolizing the one thing he could salvage from the marriage.

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Mastering Critical Art Essays and Research Papers

One of the classical types of assignments that you will meet as a student in the visual or performing arts is the art essay or research paper. Art is fluid and dynamic and therefore requires one to give a unique perspective on the subject. This approach should be carried out in your paper. 

If you’re a high school or college student looking to sharpen your skills in art analysis and craft superb papers, you’re in the right place. From paintings and sculptures to photography, you’ll learn how to critically analyze artwork in its broader sense. Let’s go! 

Dimensions of Art Analysis Papers

Art analysis involves a thorough exploration of a piece of art to understand its various aspects and meanings. To determine meaning in the context of art analysis articles, one uses observation, investigation, and interpretation.

Generally, when it comes to the analysis of art, different elements should be analyzed. These may range from lighting and colors to visual symbols used. To understand this part better, you can pay for an essay or a sample paper. This will help you understand the elements we will discuss more practically.

Formal Analysis 

For the visual arts – for example, a painting – the student will focus on elements such as lines, colors, shapes, textures, and perspective. The student must examine the relationships between those different components and how each one adds to the piece’s overall meaning.  

For instance, a painting can feature strong color contrasts and angular, flowing lines. That could evoke a feeling of movement or turmoil. However, a sculpture with rounded, smooth forms could inspire peace or tranquility. 

The student will examine aspects including movement, music, conversation, lighting, and costume design in performing arts, such as a staged dance. The student examines how these diverse components work together to produce certain images and messages. 

Consider a theatrical play with a stark lighting scheme and a simple set design. This could suggest a more in-depth examination of the character’s feelings and internal conflicts. On the other hand, a dance performance using colorful costumes and upbeat music could suggest that the focus is on physical expression or cultural topics. 

Contextual Analysis 

Contextual analysis, as the name implies, examines the context of the artwork under study. In the case of performing and visual arts, this may entail looking into the background of the artist with the period or art trend. Analyzing the historical or social setting in which the artwork was produced will also be part of this. Therefore, the learner will be able to see the artwork from the lens of the artist.  

Consider a Cubist painting such as the Guernica . Such a painting has fragmented forms and abstract forms, which must be understood by the student. On the other hand, studying a sculpture such as Michelangelo’s Pieta might reveal classical or religious views of the time. 

Similar to the performing arts, the student must research the historical background of a performance art, such as a play. This covers the history of the dramatist or choreographer as well as any potential cultural or social themes they may be exploring. The objective for the student is to uncover the deeper meaning of the work. They should also relate this with their own experiences and thoughts. 

Interpretive Analysis 

Interpretation of the artwork is the next phase after contextual and visual analysis. This involves introspecting on what the particular means for you at a personal and deeper level. It is important to consider how the artist brings their ideas across. Are they successful or not? What can be improved in the artwork to better pass the message along? 

Writing an Art Analysis Essay or Research Paper 

From our discussion above, we now understand the dimensionality of art essays and research papers. As you research, you will explore the formal, contextual, and interpretive aspects of the art piece. However, art analysis is not limited to a single perspective or interpretation. The most important task you have is to give your unique appreciation of the work. 

Let’s now sum up how to practically write an art analysis or research paper:

Choose an Inspiring Art Piece 

If you have the leeway to do this, choose a piece that you’re genuinely interested in. Preferably, you should have the opportunity to experience this firsthand and not just through secondary literature or research. 

Choose a Thesis or Decode the Prompt

If you have already been provided with a hypothesis, then no need to choose your own. Your thesis should outline your main argument about the artwork. 

As an example, you can be provided with a prompt such as: 

Analyze the use of color and symbolism in Frida Kahlo’s “The Two Fridas” concerning her personal and artistic identity.

For research papers, the prompt might be broader, involving multiple artworks and comparative analysis. 

Deconstructing the Artwork

What this entails has previously been thoroughly discussed through interpretive, contextual, and visual assessments. Recall to extract your conclusions from the research in addition to analyzing the imagery and symbols for their significance. A straightforward prompt might look like: 

Scrutinize color, line, composition, and texture in “The Two Fridas,” unveiling Kahlo’s dual identities. Discuss how sharp lines and fragmented figures emphasize her internal struggle.

Use Clear and Specific Evidence 

Like other types of academic writing, art essays and research papers need one to use clear and specific evidence. Therefore, use detailed descriptions of visual elements, quotes from dialogues or lyrics, or references in similar art. 

Use arguments and their counters, for and against the thesis, and use evidence to back up your claims. 

Organize and Write 

Writing is one part where students slack or get comfortable, especially when they can’t piece their words together. That’s where a payforessay review can come in handy. A professional essay writing service can help you accomplish your writing goals much quicker while having an expert double-check your research. 

Assuming you’ve been doing all this on a separate research notebook, it’s now time to write. Work on a draft first with an outline of your essay, right from the intro to the conclusion. 

Conclusion 

We’ve just blitzed through the process of writing an art essay or research paper. In a nutshell, the art essay requires you to look closely at and understand a piece of art. You should then give your interpretation of the work after performing a visual and contextual analysis of the work. 

You’re now in a great place to work on your art essay or research paper. Follow through these simple tips and tricks above and you’ll be swinging at that paper!

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The meaning of art as viewed by various philosophers:

Tolstoy Hegel Wittgenstein Maritain

Leo Tolstoy on What is Art?

Aetheticians have attempted to work backwards by first listing acknowledged works of art, and then trying to find a theory to fit them all. So now, no matter what insanities appear in art, once they find acceptance among the upper classes of society, a theory is quickly invented to explain and sanction them, just as if there had never appeared in history people who produced false and deformed art, which was afterwards discarded and forgotten. And one may see now in the art of our circle, to what lengths the insanity and deformity of art may go.

So that theory of art is nothing but the setting up as good whatever pleases us, that is, pleases a certain class of people. In order define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its sense and importance; to do that one must examine the activity itself, and its causes and effects, not merely in relation to the pleasure we get out of it. If we say that the aim of any activity is merely pleasure, and is defined by that pleasure, our definition will be false. If we compare it to the food question, nobody would affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we get from eating it. We know that the satisfaction of the taste buds is no infallible guide to the best food from a health point of view, in the same way the pleasure we get from a painting is no indication of its worth. People who consider the meaning of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true meaning, in fact, people will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of art is pleasure.

So then – what is art?

The latest definitions are:

The first definition is inexact, because instead of speaking of the human activity itself, it only speaks of the derivation of it The second definition is inexact because a man may express his emotions by means of lines colours etc, and yet may not act on others by his expression so the result is not art. The third definition is inexact, because  in the production of objects or actions affording pleasure,  conjuring tricks or gymnastic exercises may be included, which are not art. Furthermore, the production of a play which does not afford pleasure to the producer or audience, may yet be a work of art. The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that, in them all, the object considered is the pleasure art may give, and not the purpose it may serve in the life of man and of humanity.

In order to define art correctly, it is necessary to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as one of the conditions of life. Viewed in this way, we see that art is one of the means of communication between man and man.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship, both with the artist and all who receive the same impression. Just as words transmit thoughts, so art transmits feelings. The activity of art is based on the fact that when we witness a man experiencing an emotion, we to some extent share it. To evoke in oneself a feeling that one has once experienced, and to transmit that feeling to others through forms and colours, sounds or movements.

That is art. Art is not pleasure, but a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity. Thanks to his capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know the debt he owes to the past, and be able to hand on what he has acheived to future generations. If humans lacked this capacity, we would be like wild beasts, and if people lacked this capacity for being infected by art, people might be more savage still, and more separated from one another.

All human life is filled with art, from cradle songs to fashion in clothes, but by the word ‘art’, we mean that part of artistic activity which we select as having special importance. This special importance has always been given to that part of art which transmits feelings flowing from religious perception. This was how Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle looked on art, and how all the great religious teachers understood it. Plato was so convinced of the power of art, that he suggested that artists should be banned from his ideal republic. Yet that is a less harmful attitude than the attitude in our European society today, where art is regarded as a good thing only if it affords pleasure.

How has our society come down to this? It is because the estimation of the value of art (that is, the feeling it transmits) depends on man’s perception of the meaning of life. Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial view of life to a higher and broader view. Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life accessible to the best and foremost people at a given time. Later the rest of society follows their lead. Therefore religions have always served as bases for the valuation of human semtiments. If feelings bring men nearer the ideal their religion indicates, they are good, if they oppose it, they are bad.

Thus in the case of the Greeks, if the religion places the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in beauty and strength, then art transmitting the joy and energy of life would be considered good, but art transmitting despondency would be bad. If the meaning of life is seen in the well-being of one’s nation, or in honouring one’s ancestors, as in the case of the Romans and Chinese, then art transmitting joy in self sacrifice for one’s country or exalting one’s ancestors would be good, and the contrary, bad. If the meaning of life is seen in freeing oneself from the yoke of animalism, as in Buddhism, then art which elevates the soul and humbles the flesh is good, whereas art exalting bodily passions would be bad. But art in our society has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is, has been lost.

In order to find out why, we must distinguish art from counterfeit art. Real art must be infectious – the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as though the work were his own – as if what it expresses was what he had been longing to express. A real work of art destroys the separation between himself and the artist, and even between himself and all those others who also appreciate this art. In this freeing of our personality from its isolation, and uniting it with others, lies the great attractive force of art. Not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is the sole measure of excellence in art.

This depends on three things: 1. The individuality of the feeling transmitted. 2. Its clarity. 3. The sincerity of the artist – ie, the the degree of force with which the artist feels the emotion he transmits.

If the viewer feels that the artist works for himself, he is affected, but if he feels that the artist is not infected, but is trying to influence him, the viewer feels a resistance, and is repelled instead. All can be summed up in a word – sincerity. The artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. Now, just as the evolution of knowledge proceeds by truer and more necessary knowledge displacing previous knowledge, so the evolution of feeling proceeds through art – feelings more kind and needful to humanity replace the older feelings. That is the purpose of art. In every age there exists an understanding of the meaning of life which represents the highest level which has been attained.

If it appears that in our Society there is no religious perception, this is not because there is none, but because we do not want to see it. And often this is because it exposes the fact that our life is inconsistent with that religious perception. In our times religion is regarded as a superstition which humanity has outgrown, and yet if humanity is to progress there must be a guide to the direction of that movement. Religions have always furnished that guide throughout history. So there must be some form of religious perception today – and in its widest and most practical application, it is the consciousness that or well-being – materially and spiritually – lies in the growth of brotherhood among men – in their loving harmony with one another.

The chief mistake made by the people of the upper classes at the time of the Renaissance was that they set up in place of religious art, an art which aimed only at giving pleasure. It is said that the great evil is not that we do not know God, but that we make a god of something lower. Instead of art which feeds the spirit, an empty and often vicious art is set up, which hides from us our need for true art. And true art for our time would demand the union of all people without exception – above all virtues it sets brotherly love to all men.

G.W.F.Hegel (1770 -1831) on the Philosophy of Fine Art

Art can serve many puposes, and even be a pastime, but we want to examine the kind of art that is free in its aim and means. This is the only true art. Its highest function is only served when it has established itself in a sphere which it shares with religion and philosophy, becoming thereby a mode and form through which the Divine, the profoundest interests of mankind, and spiritual truths of the widest range, are brought home to consciousness and expressed. It is in works of art that nations have deposited the richest ideas they possess, and often art serves as a key of interpretation to the wisdom and understanding of peoples. Philosophy and religion also do this, but art appeals to the senses and is nearer to Nature and to our sensitive and emotional life.

Art is the primary bond of mediation between the external world of the senses and the medium of pure thought and understanding. It could be objected that art was unworthy, being of the world of appearances and its deceptions.

But in the world of Nature appearance is essential to reality.There could be no such thing as truth if it did not actually appear for some person. And appearance in Nature itself is deceptive. It is only beyond the appearance of everyday life that we shall discover reality in any true sense. At least art does not pretend to be reality, whereas Nature, pretending to be the only reality,is more deceptive.

There are three factors determining a work of art:

1. A work of art is not produced by Nature; it is brought into being by the agency of man. 2. It is created essentially for man, and it is addressed to his senses 3. It contains an end bound up with it With regard to the first factor; a work of art cannot be imitated by mere dexterity, art is an activity of the soul, constrained to work out of its own wealth, and to bring before the mind’s eye a wholly other and far richer content; a unique creation.

The essential point to maintain is that although talent and genius imply natural power, yet it is indispensable that

(a) this power be thoughtfully cultivated (b) reflection should be brought to bear on the particular way it is exercised (c)  it should be kept alive with use and practice in actual work.

A work of art possesses a purely technical side – that of craft. This is most obvious in architecture and sculpture, less so in painting and music, least in poetry.

Added to this the more exalted the rank of the artist the more profoundly he ought to portray depths of soul and mind. Study is the means by which the artist brings to consciousness such a content.

Is art inferior to Nature? Art originates in the human spirit, it has received the baptism of the human mind and soul of man. The spiritual values are seized in the work of art and emphasized with greater purity and clarity than is possible in ordinary reality, therefore the work of art is greater.

What is the human need that stimulates art production?

Man is a thinking consciousness; he makes explicit to himself all that exists. He has a need to bring himself in his own inner life to consciousness. He needs to assert himself in that which is presented him in immediacy, external to himself, and by doing so at the same time to recognize himself therein. This purpose he achieves by the alteration he effects in external objects, upon which he imprints the seal of his inner life. He does this in order that he may divest the world of its alienation from himself.

A boy throws stones into a stream, and then looks with wonder at the circles which follow in the water, seeing there something of hs own doing. This need runs through everything up to the level of art. Man satisfies his spirit by making explicit to his inner life all that exists, as well as further giving a realized external embodiment to the self thus made explicit. And by this reduplication of what is his own he places before the vision and within the cognition of himself and others what is within him.

The second factor; art is addressed to man’s senses. Writers have asked what feelings art ought to excite. But feelings are subjective and passing, although powerful at the time, which is why people are so proud of having emotions. The trouble is that they do not attempt to study their emotions, which would help by creating thereby a distance from them. Art can give this distance, because by depicting emotions, it helps the onlooker towards the study of his own emotions.

Is art there to excite a feeling for beauty? To appreciate beauty people have cultivated taste, but taste is superficial, and cannot grasp the real profoundity of art. Art scholarship is too often concerned only with externals. Art therefore is not just for the senses. The mind is intended to be affected as well and to receive some kind of satisfaction in it. The creative imagination of a true artist is the imagination of a great mind and a big heart, it grasps the profoundest and most embracing human interests in the wholly definite presentation of imagery borrowed from objective experience.

The third factor: What is the end or aim of art?

Art is not meant to be a mere imitation of Nature – if it attempts a mere copy it will always lag a long way behind. Nevertheless the artist must learn the laws of Nature; of colour and chiaroscuro; of line and form. So what is the true content of art, and what is its aim? One opinion is that it is the the task of art to bring before us everything that the spirit of man can concieve. Is it the task of art to enflame man’s passions and set them staggering about in a Bacchantic riot?

Sensual desire is more brutal and domineering the more it appropriates the entire man, so that he does not retain the power to separate himself, and loses touch with his universal capacity.  Sometimes art showing such passions can awaken man to the horror of his condition, he can see them outside himself, they come before him as objects rather than part of himself – he begins to be free from them as aliens.

In the same way, wailing women were hired at funerals, to create an external expression of grief, so that the sufferer can see his sorrow in an objective form and in reflecting on it, his sorrow is made lighter. So art, while still remaining in the sphere of the senses, faces man from the might of his sensitive experience by means of its representations.

It has been said that art’s aim is the purification of passions, that it is its duty to instruct. Is this true? We have seen how art instructs by revealing to man the contents of his nature, but if art tries to bluntly teach, it becomes merely a maxim, with the art added on as bait. Thereby the very nature of art is abused. For a work of art ought not to bring before the creative imagination a content in its universality as such, but rather this universality under the mode of individual concreteness and distinctive sensuous particularity.

An external morality would limit the subject matter of art, but art, unlike history and the sciences, which have their subject matter determined, has a  free choice in the selection of its subjects. So when we ask what is the end of art, we must be careful that we are not saying in effect, what is the use of art, as if art had to have a reason for existing  other than for itself.  On the other hand we must maintain that it is art’s function to reveal

Truth under the mode of art’s sensuous or material configuration, to display reconciled differences and therefore prove that it possesses its final aim in itself. For other ends such as instruction, purification, improvement, riches, fame and honour have nothing to do with a work of art as such, still less with the concept of art.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)

Wittgenstein has said that in his opinion the subject of aesthetics is very big and entirely misunderstood. The use of the word “beautiful” is even more apt to be misunderstood. He would like a book on philosophy to contain chapters on words, and confusions that come up with them. He compares language to a tool chest; words are used together in a family of ways – yet the tools could be very different.

As to the word “beautiful”, a child hears the word mainly as an interjection. It is remarkable that in real life adjectives such as “beautiful”, “lovely” etc. play hardly any role at all. The words used are more like “right” or “correct”.

For example, take the question, “How should poetry be read?” For example you might discuss in reading blank verse, how to stress the rhythm correctly. A man says: “It ought to be read this way!” and reads it out, and you say, “Oh yes! Now it makes sense!”

What does a man ordering a suit at the tailor’s say? “That’s the right length. That’s too short!”.

In the case of the word “correct” you have a variety of related cases. In one case you learn the rules. A tailor learns how to measure and cut the coat. A customer comes in and says “This coat is too short!” but the tailor disagrees because he says “I made it according to the rules!”

So judgement is needed as well as rules.

Nevertheless we need the rules. In art, if someone hasn’t learned the rules he wouldn’t be able to make an aesthetic judgement. In learning the rules, you get a more and more refined judgement; in fact learning the rules actually changes your judgement.

The rules of harmony in music came about because they expressed the way most people wanted the chords to follow – their wishes crytallized in these rules. All the greatest composers wrote in accordance with these rules, and yet you can say that every composer changed the rules, but the variation was very slight, not all the rules were changed.

In the Arts, a person who has judgment also changes and develops. We can distinguish between a person who knows what he is talking about and one who does not.

A word we can discuss is the word “appreciate”. What is appreciation? If a man at the tailor’s looks at a great many patterns and says, “This is too dark” or “This is a little too loud’, he is what we call an appreciator of material. Similarly in music he might say, “Does this harmonize? No, the bass is not quite loud enough.”

Although we can see when someone appreciates something, it is impossible to describe. To do this we would have to describe the whole environment. On the subject of correctness, a good tailor won’t use any words except words like “Too long” or “All right”. But when we talk of a symphony by Beethoven we don’t talk of correctness. Entirely different things enter. One wouldn’t even talk of appreciating the really tremendous things in art. In a style of architecture a door may be correct, and you appreciate it, but in the case of a Gothic Cathedral, we do not just find it correct – it has a different role to play in our lives. It is as different as if we were talking about a man and said on the one hand “He behaves well.” and on the other “He made a great impression on me.”

To describe what you mean by a cultured taste, you have to describe a culture. What we describe as a cultured taste perhaps didn’t exist in the Middle Ages. An entirely different game is played in different ages. In order to become clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living. A landlady might love a sentimental painting, you might want to throw it in the fire …. alright! That’s that..

Jacques Maritain b. 1882

Art and poetry come from a deeper part of the intellect – not the reasoning part alone.

There is an interpenetration of art and nature – so that a place comes alive because of its history.

Oriental artists try to forget themselves, and meditate on the subject of nature, rendering it as truly as they can, becoming one with things but leaving their egos out.

In the West, artists evolved from studying things, to the portrayal of the Divine after the Christian Church was established. Man passed from a sense of the human self as object, to the sacred art which depicted Christ’s self as man, to a sense of human self as subject, and then became absorbed in his own inward development. Later artists such as Cezanne became intent on revealing the buried significance of the visible world. Man’s longing for order and harmony emerges from the brute universe of the eye in the act of seeing and brings forth a quality of emotion which finds an echo in other human beings. Three rules on art.

First: the very idea of rules in the fine arts changes and becomes transfigured through the impact of beauty on the activity of art. So the rules must be continually reborn, and the artist is forever exploring the unknown.

Second: the work to be made is unique, and an end in itself. Each time, and for every single work, there is for the artist a new and unique way to strive after the making of his art.

Third: because the work is an end in itself, and a unique participation in beauty, reason alone is not enough for the artist. Because in art as in contemplation, intellectuality at its peak goes beyond concepts and reason, and is achieved through union with the subject, which love alone can bring about.

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Essay on Art

500 words essay on art.

Each morning we see the sunshine outside and relax while some draw it to feel relaxed. Thus, you see that art is everywhere and anywhere if we look closely. In other words, everything in life is artwork. The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding.

What is Art?

For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art.  It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind.

It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art. Artists use their artwork for passing along their feelings.

Thus, art and artists bring value to society and have been doing so throughout history. Art gives us an innovative way to view the world or society around us. Most important thing is that it lets us interpret it on our own individual experiences and associations.

Art is similar to live which has many definitions and examples. What is constant is that art is not perfect or does not revolve around perfection. It is something that continues growing and developing to express emotions, thoughts and human capacities.

Importance of Art

Art comes in many different forms which include audios, visuals and more. Audios comprise songs, music, poems and more whereas visuals include painting, photography, movies and more.

You will notice that we consume a lot of audio art in the form of music, songs and more. It is because they help us to relax our mind. Moreover, it also has the ability to change our mood and brighten it up.

After that, it also motivates us and strengthens our emotions. Poetries are audio arts that help the author express their feelings in writings. We also have music that requires musical instruments to create a piece of art.

Other than that, visual arts help artists communicate with the viewer. It also allows the viewer to interpret the art in their own way. Thus, it invokes a variety of emotions among us. Thus, you see how essential art is for humankind.

Without art, the world would be a dull place. Take the recent pandemic, for example, it was not the sports or news which kept us entertained but the artists. Their work of arts in the form of shows, songs, music and more added meaning to our boring lives.

Therefore, art adds happiness and colours to our lives and save us from the boring monotony of daily life.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Art

All in all, art is universal and can be found everywhere. It is not only for people who exercise work art but for those who consume it. If there were no art, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty in things. In other words, art helps us feel relaxed and forget about our problems.

FAQ of Essay on Art

Question 1: How can art help us?

Answer 1: Art can help us in a lot of ways. It can stimulate the release of dopamine in your bodies. This will in turn lower the feelings of depression and increase the feeling of confidence. Moreover, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Question 2: What is the importance of art?

Answer 2: Art is essential as it covers all the developmental domains in child development. Moreover, it helps in physical development and enhancing gross and motor skills. For example, playing with dough can fine-tune your muscle control in your fingers.

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Art Essay Examples

Art Essay Examples to Get You Inspired - Top 10 Samples

Published on: May 4, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 30, 2024

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Are you struggling to come up with ideas for your art essay? Or are you looking for examples to help guide you in the right direction? 

Look no further, as we have got you covered!

In this blog, we provide a range of art writing examples that cover different art forms, time periods, and themes. Whether you're interested in the classics or contemporary art, we have something for everyone. These examples offer insight into how to structure your essay, analyze art pieces, and write compelling arguments.

So, let's explore our collection of art essay examples and take the first step toward becoming a better art writer!

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Good Art Essay Examples

In the following section, we will examine a selection of art essay examples that are inspiring for various academic levels.

College Art Essay Examples

Let’s take a look at college art essay examples below:  

The Intersection of Art and Politics: An Analysis of Picasso's Guernica

The Role of Nature in American Art: A Comparative Study

University Art Essay Examples

University-level art essay assignments often differ in length and complexity. Here are two examples:

Gender and Identity in Contemporary Art: A Comparative Study

Art and Activism: The Role of Street Art in Political Movements

A Level Art Essay Examples

Below are some art paper examples A level. Check out: 

The Use Of Color In Wassily Kandinsky's Composition Viii

The Influence of African Art on Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'avignon

A Level Fine Art Essay Examples

If you're a student of fine arts, these A-level fine arts examples can serve as inspiration for your own work.

The Use Of Texture In Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night

Exploring Identity Through Portraiture: A Comparative Study

Art Essay Examples IELTS 

The Impact of Art on Mental Health

The Effects of Technology on Art And Creativity

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AP Art Essay Examples

A Comparison of Neoclassical and Romantic Art

An Examination Of The Effects Of Globalization On Contemporary Art

Types of Art Essay with Examples

Art essays can be categorized into different types. Let's take a brief look at these types with examples:

Art Criticism Essay : A critical essay analyzing and evaluating an artwork, its elements, and its meaning.

The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali: A Critical Analysis

Art History Essay: A comprehensive essay that examines the historical context, development, and significance of an artwork or art movement.

The Renaissance: A Rebirth of Artistic Expression

Exhibition Review: A review of an art exhibition that evaluates the quality and significance of the artwork on display.

A Review of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Exhibition

Contemporary Art Essay: An essay that explores and analyzes contemporary art and its cultural and social context.

The Intersection of Technology and Art in Contemporary Society

Modern Art Essay: An essay that examines modern art and its significance in the development of modernism.

Cubism and its Influence on Modern Art [insert pdf]

Art Theory Essay: An essay that analyzes and critiques various theories and approaches to art.

Feminist Art Theory: A Critical Analysis of its Impact on Contemporary Art [insert pdf]

Additional Art Essay Example

Let’s take a brief look at some added art essay samples:

Artwork Essay Example

Artist Essay Example

Advanced Higher Art Essay Example

Common Art Essay Prompts

Here are some common art essay topics that you may encounter during your coursework:

• Describe a piece of artwork that has inspired you.
• A comparative analysis of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's David.
• Analyze the cultural significance of a particular art movement.
• Discuss the relationship between art and politics.
• Compare and contrast two works of art from different time periods or cultures.
• The representation of identity in art
• The Evolution of Artists' Paintings:
• From Traditional to Contemporary Art
• The representation of identity in Frida Kahlo's self-portraits.
• The significance of oil on canvas in the history of art.
• The significance of the Mona Lisa in the Italian Renaissance

Art Essay Topics IELTS

Here are some art essay topics for IELTS students. Take a look: 

• The value of art education.
• The role of museums in preserving art and culture.
• The impact of globalization on contemporary art.
• The influence of technology on art and artists.
• The significance of public art in urban environments.

Tips For Writing a Successful Art Essay

Here are some tips for writing a stand-out art essay:

• Develop a clear thesis statement that guides your essay: Your thesis statement should clearly and concisely state the main argument of your essay.
• Conduct thorough research and analysis of the artwork you are writing about : This includes examining the visual elements of the artwork, researching the artist, and considering the historical significance.
• Use formal and precise language to discuss the artwork: Avoid using colloquial language and instead focus on using formal language to describe the artwork.
• Include specific examples from the artwork to support your arguments: Use specific details from the artwork to back up your analysis.
• Avoid personal bias and subjective language: Your essay should be objective and avoid using personal opinions or subjective language.
• Consider the historical and cultural context of the artwork: Analyze the artwork in the context of the time period and cultural context in which they were created.
• Edit and proofread your essay carefully before submitting it: Ensure your essay is well-organized, coherent, and free of grammatical errors and typos.
• Use proper citation format when referencing sources: Follow the appropriate citation style guidelines and give credit to all sources used in your essay.
• Be concise and focused in your writing: Stick to your main thesis statement and avoid going off-topic or including irrelevant information.
• Read your essay aloud to ensure clarity and coherence: Reading your essay out loud can help you identify inconsistencies or any other mistakes.

The Bottom Line!

We hope that the art essay examples we've explored have provided you with inspiration for your own essay. Art offers endless possibilities for analysis, and your essay is a chance to showcase your unique opinions.

Use these examples as a guide to craft an essay that reflects your personality while demonstrating your knowledge of the subject.

Short on time? Let CollegeEssay.org help you! All you have to do is to ask our experts, " write college essay for me " and they'll help you secure top grades in college.

Don't wait, reach out to our art essay writing service.

Take the first step towards excellence in your art studies with our AI essay writer !

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ARTS - Herzberg: Writing Essays About Art

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What is a Compare and Contrast Essay?

What is a compare / contrast essay.

In Art History and Appreciation, contrast / compare essays allow us to examine the features of two or more artworks.

• Comparison -- points out similarities in the two artworks
• Contrast -- points out the differences in the two artworks

Why would you want to write this type of essay?

• To inform your reader about characteristics of each art piece.
• To show a relationship between different works of art.
• To give your reader an insight into the process of artistic invention.
• Use your assignment sheet from your class to find specific characteristics that your professor wants you to compare.

How is Writing a Compare / Contrast Essay in Art History Different from Other Subjects?

You should use art vocabulary to describe your subjects..

• Find art terms in your textbook or an art glossary or dictionary

You should have an image of the works you are writing about in front of you while you are writing your essay.

• The images should be of  high enough quality that you can see the small details of the works. 
• You will use them when describing visual details of each art work.

Works of art are highly influenced by the culture, historical time period and movement in which they were created.

• You should gather information about these BEFORE you start writing your essay.

If you describe a characteristic of one piece of art, you must describe how the OTHER piece of art treats that characteristic.

Example:  You are comparing a Greek amphora with a sculpture from the Tang Dynasty in China.

If you point out that the color palette of the amphora is limited to black, white and red, you must also write about the colors used in the horse sculpture.

Organizing Your Essay

Thesis statement.

The thesis for a comparison/contrast essay will present the subjects under consideration and indicate whether the focus will be on their similarities, on their differences, or both.

Thesis example using the amphora and horse sculpture -- Differences:

While they are both made from clay, the Greek amphora and the Tang Dynasty horse served completely different functions in their respective cultures.

Thesis example -- Similarities:

Ancient Greek and Tang Dynasty ceramics have more in common than most people realize.

Thesis example -- Both:

The Greek amphora and the Tang Dynasty horse were used in different ways in different parts of the world, but they have similarities that may  not be apparent to the casual viewer.

Visualizing a Compare & Contrast Essay: 

Introduction (1-2 paragraphs) .

• Creates interest in your essay
• Introduces the two art works that you will be comparing.
• States your thesis, which mentions the art works you are considering and may indicate whether the focus will be on similarities, differences, or both. 

Body paragraphs 

• Make and explain a point about the first subject and then about the second subject 
• Example: While both superheroes fight crime, their motivation is vastly different. Superman is an idealist, who fights for justice …… while Batman is out for vengeance. 

Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs) 

• Provides a satisfying finish 
• Leaves your reader with a strong final impression. 

Downloadable Essay Guide

• How to Write a Compare and Contrast Essay in Art History Downloadable version of the description on this LibGuide.

Questions to Ask Yourself After You Have Finished Your Essay

• Are all the important points of comparison or contrast included and explained in enough detail?
• Have you addressed all points that your professor specified in your assignment?
• Do you use transitions to connect your arguments so that your essay flows into a coherent whole, rather than just a random collection of statements?
• Do your arguments support your thesis statement?

Art Terminology

• British National Gallery: Art Glossary Includes entries on artists, art movements, techniques, etc.

Lee College Writing Center

Writing Center tutors can help you with any writing assignment for any class from the time you receive the assignment instructions until you turn it in, including:

• Brainstorming ideas
• MLA / APA formats
• Grammar and paragraph unity
• Thesis statements
• Second set of eyes before turning in

Contact a tutor:

• Phone: 281-425-6534
• Email:  w [email protected]
• Schedule a web appointment: https://lee.mywconline.com/

Other Compare / Contrast Writing Resources

• Southwestern University Guide for Writing About Art This easy to follow guide explains the basic of writing an art history paper.
• Purdue Online Writing Center: writing essays in art history Describes how to write an art history Compare and Contrast paper.
• Stanford University: a brief guide to writing in art history See page 24 of this document for an explanation of how to write a compare and contrast essay in art history.
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The Moscow Metro Museum of Art: 10 Must-See Stations

There are few times one can claim having been on the subway all afternoon and loving it, but the Moscow Metro provides just that opportunity.  While many cities boast famous public transport systems—New York’s subway, London’s underground, San Salvador’s chicken buses—few warrant hours of exploration.  Moscow is different: Take one ride on the Metro, and you’ll find out that this network of railways can be so much more than point A to B drudgery.

The Metro began operating in 1935 with just thirteen stations, covering less than seven miles, but it has since grown into the world’s third busiest transit system ( Tokyo is first ), spanning about 200 miles and offering over 180 stops along the way.  The construction of the Metro began under Joseph Stalin’s command, and being one of the USSR’s most ambitious building projects, the iron-fisted leader instructed designers to create a place full of svet (radiance) and svetloe budushchee (a radiant future), a palace for the people and a tribute to the Mother nation.

Consequently, the Metro is among the most memorable attractions in Moscow.  The stations provide a unique collection of public art, comparable to anything the city’s galleries have to offer and providing a sense of the Soviet era, which is absent from the State National History Museum.  Even better, touring the Metro delivers palpable, experiential moments, which many of us don’t get standing in front of painting or a case of coins.

Though tours are available , discovering the Moscow Metro on your own provides a much more comprehensive, truer experience, something much less sterile than following a guide.  What better place is there to see the “real” Moscow than on mass transit: A few hours will expose you to characters and caricatures you’ll be hard-pressed to find dining near the Bolshoi Theater.  You become part of the attraction, hear it in the screech of the train, feel it as hurried commuters brush by: The Metro sucks you beneath the city and churns you into the mix.

With the recommendations of our born-and-bred Muscovite students, my wife Emma and I have just taken a self-guided tour of what some locals consider the top ten stations of the Moscow Metro. What most satisfied me about our Metro tour was the sense of adventure .  I loved following our route on the maps of the wagon walls as we circled the city, plotting out the course to the subsequent stops; having the weird sensation of being underground for nearly four hours; and discovering the next cavern of treasures, playing Indiana Jones for the afternoon, piecing together fragments of Russia’s mysterious history.  It’s the ultimate interactive museum.

Top Ten Stations (In order of appearance)

Kievskaya station.

Kievskaya Station went public in March of 1937, the rails between it and Park Kultury Station being the first to cross the Moscow River.  Kievskaya is full of mosaics depicting aristocratic scenes of Russian life, with great cameo appearances by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  Each work has a Cyrillic title/explanation etched in the marble beneath it; however, if your Russian is rusty, you can just appreciate seeing familiar revolutionary dates like 1905 ( the Russian Revolution ) and 1917 ( the October Revolution ).

Mayakovskaya Station

Mayakovskaya Station ranks in my top three most notable Metro stations. Mayakovskaya just feels right, done Art Deco but no sense of gaudiness or pretention.  The arches are adorned with rounded chrome piping and create feeling of being in a jukebox, but the roof’s expansive mosaics of the sky are the real showstopper.  Subjects cleverly range from looking up at a high jumper, workers atop a building, spires of Orthodox cathedrals, to nimble aircraft humming by, a fleet of prop planes spelling out CCCP in the bluest of skies.

Novoslobodskaya Station

Novoslobodskaya is the Metro’s unique stained glass station.  Each column has its own distinctive panels of colorful glass, most of them with a floral theme, some of them capturing the odd sailor, musician, artist, gardener, or stenographer in action.  The glass is framed in Art Deco metalwork, and there is the lovely aspect of discovering panels in the less frequented haunches of the hall (on the trackside, between the incoming staircases).  Novosblod is, I’ve been told, the favorite amongst out-of-town visitors.

Komsomolskaya Station

Komsomolskaya Station is one of palatial grandeur.  It seems both magnificent and obligatory, like the presidential palace of a colonial city.  The yellow ceiling has leafy, white concrete garland and a series of golden military mosaics accenting the tile mosaics of glorified Russian life.  Switching lines here, the hallway has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel, impossibly long with decorative tile walls, culminating in a very old station left in a remarkable state of disrepair, offering a really tangible glimpse behind the palace walls.

Dostoevskaya Station

Dostoevskaya is a tribute to the late, great hero of Russian literature .  The station at first glance seems bare and unimpressive, a stark marble platform without a whiff of reassembled chips of tile.  However, two columns have eerie stone inlay collages of scenes from Dostoevsky’s work, including The Idiot , The Brothers Karamazov , and Crime and Punishment.   Then, standing at the center of the platform, the marble creates a kaleidoscope of reflections.  At the entrance, there is a large, inlay portrait of the author.

Chkalovskaya Station

Chkalovskaya does space Art Deco style (yet again).  Chrome borders all.  Passageways with curvy overhangs create the illusion of walking through the belly of a chic, new-age spacecraft.  There are two (kos)mosaics, one at each end, with planetary subjects.  Transferring here brings you above ground, where some rather elaborate metalwork is on display.  By name similarity only, I’d expected Komsolskaya Station to deliver some kosmonaut décor; instead, it was Chkalovskaya that took us up to the space station.

Elektrozavodskaya Station

Elektrozavodskaya is full of marble reliefs of workers, men and women, laboring through the different stages of industry.  The superhuman figures are round with muscles, Hollywood fit, and seemingly undeterred by each Herculean task they respectively perform.  The station is chocked with brass, from hammer and sickle light fixtures to beautiful, angular framework up the innards of the columns.  The station’s art pieces are less clever or extravagant than others, but identifying the different stages of industry is entertaining.

Baumanskaya Statio

Baumanskaya Station is the only stop that wasn’t suggested by the students.  Pulling in, the network of statues was just too enticing: Out of half-circle depressions in the platform’s columns, the USSR’s proud and powerful labor force again flaunts its success.  Pilots, blacksmiths, politicians, and artists have all congregated, posing amongst more Art Deco framing.  At the far end, a massive Soviet flag dons the face of Lenin and banners for ’05, ’17, and ‘45.  Standing in front of the flag, you can play with the echoing roof.

Ploshchad Revolutsii Station

Novokuznetskaya Station

Novokuznetskaya Station finishes off this tour, more or less, where it started: beautiful mosaics.  This station recalls the skyward-facing pieces from Mayakovskaya (Station #2), only with a little larger pictures in a more cramped, very trafficked area.  Due to a line of street lamps in the center of the platform, it has the atmosphere of a bustling market.  The more inventive sky scenes include a man on a ladder, women picking fruit, and a tank-dozer being craned in.  The station’s also has a handsome black-and-white stone mural.

Here is a map and a brief description of our route:

Start at (1)Kievskaya on the “ring line” (look for the squares at the bottom of the platform signs to help you navigate—the ring line is #5, brown line) and go north to Belorusskaya, make a quick switch to the Dark Green/#2 line, and go south one stop to (2)Mayakovskaya.  Backtrack to the ring line—Brown/#5—and continue north, getting off at (3)Novosblodskaya and (4)Komsolskaya.  At Komsolskaya Station, transfer to the Red/#1 line, go south for two stops to Chistye Prudy, and get on the Light Green/#10 line going north.  Take a look at (5)Dostoevskaya Station on the northern segment of Light Green/#10 line then change directions and head south to (6)Chkalovskaya, which offers a transfer to the Dark Blue/#3 line, going west, away from the city center.  Have a look (7)Elektroskaya Station before backtracking into the center of Moscow, stopping off at (8)Baumskaya, getting off the Dark Blue/#3 line at (9)Ploschad Revolyutsii.  Change to the Dark Green/#2 line and go south one stop to see (10)Novokuznetskaya Station.

Check out our new Moscow Indie Travel Guide , book a flight to Moscow and read 10 Bars with Views Worth Blowing the Budget For

Jonathon Engels, formerly a patron saint of misadventure, has been stumbling his way across cultural borders since 2005 and is currently volunteering in the mountains outside of Antigua, Guatemala.  For more of his work, visit his website and blog .

Photo credits:   SergeyRod , all others courtesy of the author and may not be used without permission

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Park Students Honored in 2024 Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Twelve Park students were honored in the 2024 Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, receiving a total of 45 awards and honorable mentions in both art and writing.

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the nation’s longest-running, most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the visual and literary arts. The program has an impressive legacy of being the first to acknowledge creative talent and is today’s largest source of scholarships for creative teens. 

This year, 2,738 teens from Baltimore and the surrounding region submitted thousands of works of visual and literary art. All works are blindly judged by local visual artists, novelists, poets, playwrights, educators, and editors. Each piece is judged based on originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice. Award recipients receive Gold Key, Silver Key, or Honorable Mention. Gold Keys are automatically forwarded for consideration at the national level of the Scholastic Writing Awards.

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards recognize student achievement in the visual and literary arts in 30 categories, including architecture, painting, flash fiction, poetry, printmaking, fashion design, Expanded Projects, and more. To learn more about the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and to read the full rules, visit: https://www.artandwriting.org/awards/how-to-enter/

Zara Cheek ’24 Silver Key – Ceramics & Glass 

Oliver Drachman ’24 Gold Key – Mixed Media
 Gold Key – Painting
 Silver Key – Film & Animation
 Silver Key – Portfolio
 Honorable Mention – Painting


Emma Heller ’24 Honorable Mention – Portfolio 

Wren Kraemer ’25 Silver Key – Ceramics and Glass

Lucienne Lallo ’25 Gold Key – Film & Animation Honorable Mention – Photograph y

Zach Maine ’25 Gold Key – Photography
 Silver Key – Photography
 Honorable Mention – Photography

Daniel Rowe ’26 Silver Key – Digital Art Honorable Mention – Photography

Isabel Yura ’25 Silver Key – Photography

Writing Awards

Zara Cheek ’24 Gold Key – Personal Essay & Memoir  Gold Key – Personal Essay & Memoir Gold Key – Journalism Gold Key – Critical Essay Silver Key – Poetry Silver Key – Poetry

Oliver Drachman ’24 Gold Key – Portfolio Gold Key – Science Fiction & Fantasy – American Vision Nomination Gold Key – Science Fiction & Fantasy Gold Key – Science Fiction & Fantasy Gold Key – Science Fiction & Fantasy Silver Key – Humor Honorable Mention – Short Story

Sammy Lauinger ’26 Gold Key – Flash Fiction Silver Key – Flash Fiction Silver Key – Flash Fiction Silver Key – Flash Fiction

Zach Maine ’25 Gold Key – Journalism Silver Key – Personal Essay and Memoir Honorable Mention – Poetry

Christine Oh ’24 Gold Key – Portfolio Gold Key – Personal Essay & Memoir Gold Key – Short Story Silver Key – Poetry

Bria Reiner ’25 Gold Key – Poetry

Juliet Sims ’25 Silver Key – Critical Essay Silver Key – Humor Silver Key – Humor

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A follow-up message to the campus community about the protest at Kirkland Hall on March 26, 2024

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• Vanderbilt University Statement – March 28, 2024

Mar 28, 2024, 9:07 AM

March 27, 2024

Dear Vanderbilt community,

I am writing with an update on yesterday’s occupation of Kirkland Hall.

All students remaining inside Kirkland left voluntarily around 6 a.m. after forcibly entering the building [see video] shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday. All protest participants who breached the building will be placed on interim suspension.

The Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office has charged three students with Class A misdemeanor assault for pushing a Community Service Officer as well as a staff member who offered to meet with them as they entered Kirkland Hall on Tuesday. A fourth student has been charged with vandalism after breaking a window in the building’s exterior Tuesday evening.

A reporter was detained outside the building after making repeated attempts to enter several locked doors that were clearly marked as such and being asked to leave. He was later released and not charged.

Another group of student protesters gathered outside the building this morning. The university will work with them to help ensure that their protest remains consistent with the university’s policies for peaceful demonstration.

Free expression is a core value at Vanderbilt, as is civil discourse. Our policies allow for members of the Vanderbilt community to protest and demonstrate regarding issues they care deeply about, and dozens of peaceful demonstrations have occurred in recent months. In consideration of safety and the university’s normal operations, we, as a matter of policy, define the time, place and manner limitations. The safety and well-being of our community is a top priority. The university will take action when our policies are violated, when the safety of our campus is jeopardized and when people intimidate or injure members of our community.

A university community, by definition, will rarely be in full agreement on any issue. The challenge is to move forward together despite our differences, based on our shared values and common purpose. This is what we must do—and what we shall do in the days to come.

Daniel Diermeier Chancellor

• March 26: A message to the campus community from the provost on the protest at Kirkland Hall

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I was born and raised in a working-class city, Elektrostal, Moscow region. I received a higher education in television in Moscow. I studied to be a documentary photographer. My vision of the aesthetics of the frame was significantly influenced by the aesthetics of my city – the endless forests and swamps of the Moscow region with endless factories, typical architecture and a meagre color palette. In this harsh world, people live and work, raise children, grow geranium, throw parties and live trouble, run a ski cross. They are the main characters of my photo projects.

I study a person in a variety of circumstances. We blog with friends with stories of such people. We are citizen journalists. In my works, I touch upon the topics of homelessness, people’s attitude to their bodies, sexual objectification, women’s work, alienation and living conditions of different people. The opportunity to communicate with my characters gives me a sense of belonging and modernity of life.

My photos create the effect of presence, invisible observation of people. I don’t interfere with what’s going on, I’m taking the place of an outside observer. I’m a participant in exhibitions in Rome (Loosenart Gallery), Collaborated with the Russian Geographical Community.

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• --> --> Nasan Tur: Hunted May 26, 2023 – Apr 1, 2024 Berlinische Galerie Berlin, Germany Nasan Tur explores the political and social conditions that define our times. His works are experimental arrangements that draw attention to ideologies, social norms and behavioural codes and expand our options for individual action. To this end, he examines statements, gestures and images found in the media or in the public space and distils them into miniatures reflecting current social crises and discourse. (more…) Show Post >
• --> --> Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning Mar 17 – Jul 6, 2024 MoMA New York, USA “I didn’t see a major difference between a poem, a sculpture, a film, or a dance,” Joan Jonas has said. For more than five decades, Jonas’s multidisciplinary work has bridged and redefined boundaries between performance, video, drawing, sculpture, and installation. The most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States, Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning traces the full breadth of her career (more…) Show Post >
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• --> --> Boros Collection / Bunker Berlin #4 Ongoing Sammlung Boros / Boros Collection Berlin, Germany We have rarely been as aware of the vulnerability of our physical bodies as in recent years. As a society, we are constantly upgrading our bodies through artificial enhancements to immunize ourselves against infections and maximize our performance. (more…) Show Post > See Full Article >
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HOCKEY; Islanders Pick Name With a Ring to It

Does the name Bertuzzi sound familiar to Rangers fans? It should. Larry Bertuzzi was the arbitrator who last summer ruled that Eric Lindros had been traded by Quebec to the Philadelphia Flyers instead of the Rangers.

Another Bertuzzi might soon torment the Rangers. He is Todd Bertuzzi, a grandnephew of the arbitrator, who was chosen today by the Islanders as their first choice in the National Hockey League entry draft.

Bertuzzi, selected 23d over all, is a 6-foot-3-inch, 227-pound right wing. He enjoys crashing into people and doesn't object to occasional fistfighting, an attitude the Islanders think they need. Wants to Play Right Now

Islanders General Manager Don Maloney said he hoped Bertuzzi could play another year with the Guelph Storm of the Ontario junior league and join the Islanders in 1994. Bertuzzi thinks that's too long.

Asked if he was ready to play this fall, he said: "Yeah, I'm capable. I play a physical game. That's what they need. It'll give me a better chance."

Maloney's eyes brightened when he heard about the comment.

"I like that attitude," Maloney said.

The other Bertuzzi is a Toronto lawyer. In addition to working for the league last summer in l'affaire Lindros, he worked on a freelance basis for the Islanders in salary arbitration cases. Bertuzzi masterminded management's victory in the Tom Kurvers case.

"Larry is my dad's uncle," Todd Bertuzzi said. Maloney joked that the Islanders could now get the "family rate" when hiring help in arbitrations.

Maloney said Bertuzzi could be a "project" and might need work on the mental aspects of the game.

"He's got all the raw material to be a real prototype power forward," Maloney said. The Islanders haven't had such a player since Clark Gillies helped them to four Stanley Cup championships from 1981-84. 'Fingers and Toes Crossed'

Maloney said the team "had our fingers and toes crossed" when they saw that Bertuzzi was still available late in the first round.

"I was sweating," Bertuzzi said. "I was getting real nervous."

With Guelph last season, Bertuzzi had 27 goals, 32 assists and 164 penalty minutes. The report on him from the league's Central Scouting Bureau said in part: "Very good skater with powerful stride. Smart around the net. Will take a hit. Finishes his check. Utilizes his size and strength in all facets. Stands up to a challenge." From Medicine Hat to Moscow

On the second round, with the 40th pick over all, the Islanders took Bryan McCabe, a 6-1, 200-pound defenseman from St. Catherine's, Ontario, who plays with Spokane in the Western League after being traded from Medicine Hat. In 60 games last season he had three goals and 57 assists and 217 penalty minutes. The scouting report says McCabe is an "offensive defenseman" who "uses size effectively" and "plays with intensity." On the third round, the Islanders chose Vladim Cherbaturkin, a 6-2, 198-pound defenseman from Moscow's Elektrostal in the second division of the Russian League. He is said to be a good player under pressure, but not one who uses his size and strength against other players.

Inside the World of Sports

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping professional, collegiate and amateur athletics..

No More  Cinderella Stories?: Expansion of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament has been a popular topic. But adding more teams could push small schools like Oakland, which upset Kentucky, out of the action .

Caitlin Clark’s Lasting Impact: People have flocked to watch the Iowa basketball star  on TV and in person. But will her effect on the popularity and economics of women’s sports linger after her college career ends ?

Gambling Poses Risks for Leagues:   The situation involving the former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher, shows that when it comes to wagering on games, professional leagues have more than just the players to watch .

Unionization Efforts: How is a football team different from a marching band? The National Labor Relations Board is considering this question as it tries to determine whether some college athletes should be deemed employees .

Delayed Gratification: Doping rules, legal challenges and endless appeals have left some Olympic medalists waiting for their golds .