IDS 100: Art Gallery Essay Assignment
Background
You have read the chapter by Waldo Pratt about African music; so you have seen how he described many features of the music in detail to serve as premises for his argument that African traditional music is primitive -- not developed artistically. You have also seen how his argument jumped probably too quickly from his description of the music to his conclusion. Apparently, to him it seemed just obvious that music based mostly on rhythm, lacking harmony, recognizable melody, and a definite key was not very developed. Apparently, to him it was just obvious that music that makes your body want to move is not very civilized. Apparently, to him a civilized way to have a musical experience is to sit quietly in a concert hall and be moved mentally but not physically. It apparently did not occur to him that he was appealing to standards of development and civilization that were very 19th Century European, and that those standards themselves needed to be added to his argument as premises before the argument would be free of loopholes. (In the terminology of the textbook, there were “background assumptions” or "implicit premises" at work in his argument.)
Once his unstated premises about standards are brought out into the open, it becomes possible to question them. Are these standards really the only possible reasonable standards to use?
You can use Pratt’s essay as an example of what to do and what not to do when you write your own essay about visual art, in this assignment. Pratt’s chapter is a good model for getting into detailed description of the elements that are crucial to some aspect of the arts. Pratt obviously worked hard to get the details right, and to be as complete as possible. On the other hand, when it came to connecting the details to his conclusion, Pratt got into trouble. His assumptions came from his own cultural background, and now that we look at those assumptions we might decide that they represent a kind of cultural bias. So, this aspect of Pratt’s chapter is not something one would want to try to copy.
Assignment
1. Choose one piece or a collection of closely-related pieces from the exhibits in the ISU Gallery opening 10/12. Or choose a sculpture on campus, for example, In Exchange (the complex of walkways, fountain, and concrete structures just west of STV), or the one just west of Bone. Or choose a painting on the wall inside Bone Student Center. Or get a good print from Milner's collection. Choose on the basis that you found that work interesting, that you had a reaction to it. You do not have to find the piece attractive. You only need to be able to say intelligent things about it. You might even choose work that you find offensive or obnoxious. Your paper is not going to evaluate it, so all that matters is that you be able to relate to the piece enough to be able to talk intelligently about it.
2. Make a note of the work's exact title and the exact name of its creator, if it is available. Also make note of the location where I can see it, or somehow make a copy of the work available to me along with your paper. I can't grade the papers without access to the pieces that they are about. Include this type of information in the body of your paper.
3. By paying close attention, figure out all the details of the work that combine to make the whole thing produce a reaction in you, or that make it relate to you on some level. There are likely to be many details about the piece that all work together to create the overall theme, the overall impact.
4. Write an essay of more than three pages in which you construct an argument for some conclusion about what is going on in the work you have chosen. Your conclusion might be that the work is trying to make some particular statement. Or your conclusion might be that the work is likely to create a certain feeling in those who view it. Perhaps you want to argue that the creator of the piece intended to accomplish a particular thing with the piece. Or you might have some other conclusion about the piece. You might even want to argue that the work gets its identity solely from its form or structure, and that it "works" because of the juxtaposition of certain elements. You might want to argue that the creator of the work should never have bothered to create it because the piece is immoral. But in any case, your essay is to be an argument for something; not just a listing of descriptions of various details, and not just a rant about art in general.