pick 8 works to write an exhibition for 4-5 pages
This assignment has two parts.
First, choose a topic from the ones listed below and design a museum exhibition of works of art relevant to that topic. Your exhibition should include at least 8 works of art chosen from the works discussed in our textbook. You have unlimited exhibition space and an unlimited budget, so don’t worry about the size of the work or how expensive it might be to borrow. (In the case of architecture, perhaps you could subsitute large, high-definition photographs for the actual building.)
Second, write an essay of about 1250 words (4 to 5 pages) that explains why you have chosen these 8 works, and what those works say about the theme you have chosen. In many cases you will have to define your topic more precisely. For example, if you choose “Art and Death”, does that mean all the works will feature scenes of death or killing (such as Assurbanipal killing lions, or the Dying Trumpeter)? Or does it mean that all the works will be “funerary” in some sense, like the Etruscan Married Couple Sarcophagus or the the Dipylon Vase? Most importantly, your essay should talk about how each work reflects the attitudes toward death held by the culture that produced the work.
Your essay should feature a selection of works from the first, second, and third parts of the course. As long as at least one of your works is from the first part, one from the second, and one from the third, you’ll be okay. But you’ll probably wind up with 2 or 3 from each.
1. Prehistoric Art (Paleolithic, Neolithic)
2. Art of the Ancient Near East (Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian)
3. Ancient Egyptian Art
4. Agean Art (Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean)
5. Art of Ancient Greece (Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic periods)
6. Etruscan and Roman Art
7. Early Christian Art
8. Byzantine Art
9. Barbarian and Hiberno-Saxon art
10. Carolingian and Ottonian art
11. Romanesque Art
12. Gothic Art in Northern Europe (France, England, Germany)
13. Gothic Art in Italy
Here are the topics you can choose from, and some questions you might want to consider. If you’d like to base your exhibiton on a different topic, please check with me first.
1. Art and Death.
2. Art as Propaganda. What is propaganda? And how did art serve as a tool of propaganda in different cultures and periods?
3. The Human Figure. We find radically different depictions of the human figure in the history of art, from the Venus of Willendorf to the Venus de Milo. How and why does the human figure differ so dramatically from culture to culture?
4. Representing the Divine in Art. How did various periods and cultures represent their god or gods? And how did they indicate that something was holy or spiritual? Could architecture express divinity?
5. Art and Narrative. How did the art of story-telling differ from culture to culture or period to period? Did certain periods or cultures place a higher value on narrative than others?
6. Art and Style. We think of art as an expression of cultural values. But often a single culture produced two or more distinct styles. Discuss four different cultures in which you can identify two distinct styles. Explain how those styles differed, and what forces or attitudes helped bring about two different styles in a single culture.
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