Unit 3 - Ekphrasis, Narrative, and Analysis - ENG 105-08 (Ryan) - Research Guides at Virginia Wesleyan University

Additional Resources

The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (5 ed.) by Ian Chilvers
Call Number: View eBook
ISBN: 9780191782763
Publication Date: 2015
"Covering Western art from the ancient Greeks to the present day, this dictionary contains clear and concise entries on styles and movements, materials and techniques, and museums and galleries. It also includes biographical entries for artists, critics, collectors, dealers, and patrons, with places and full dates of birth and death (in many instances correcting misinformation that has found its way into other sources). For this new edition, entries have been thoroughly revised and updated, and almost fifty new entries have been added." - from the publisher
The Oxford dictionary of American art and artists (2ed) by Ann Lee Morgan
Call Number: View eBook
ISBN: 9780191807671
Publication Date: 2018
"An indispensable biographical and critical guide to American art from colonial times to contemporary postmodernism, this dictionary offers readers a wealth of factual detail on and analysis of America's leading artists, along with analysis of their work. The new edition includes more than 4,000 links to online resources, providing quick access to images of almost all of the works discussed. There are new entries on topics such as fiber art, light and space, Native American art, and shaped canvas, as well as new or expanded entries on artists such as Ellen Day Hale, John Hesselius, and Shirin Neshat. Providing a wealth of authoritative information and well-informed analysis and criticism, this is the ideal reference for students of American art and an invaluable resource for art lovers everywhere" - from the publisher
OED Online (Oxford English Dictionary)
"The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. The OED started life more than 150 years ago. Today, the dictionary is in the process of its first major revision. Updates revise and extend the OED at regular intervals, each time subtly adjusting our image of the English language." - Publisher description.
How to Write about Contemporary Art by Gilda Williams
Call Number: N7476 .W544 2014
ISBN: 9780500291573
Publication Date: 2014-10-14
"How to Write About Contemporary Art is the definitive guide to writing engagingly about the art of our time. Invaluable for students, arts professionals and other aspiring writers, the book first navigates readers through the key elements of style and content, from the aims and structure of a piece to its tone and language. Brimming with practical tips that range across the complete spectrum of art-writing, the second part of the book is organized around its specific forms, including academic essays; press releases and news articles; texts for auction and exhibition catalogues, gallery guides and wall labels; op-ed journalism and exhibition reviews; and writing for websites and blogs. In counselling the reader against common pitfalls such as jargon and poor structure, Gilda Williams points instead to the power of close looking and research, showing how to deploy language effectively; how to develop new ideas; and how to construct compelling texts."
Art in the Modern Era : styles, schools, movements by Amy Dempsey
Call Number: FOLIO N6490 .D415 2002
ISBN: 9780810941724
Publication Date: 2002-05-01
"Art in the modern era has come to be defined by its styles, schools, and movements. This guide to three hundred movements from 1860 to the present is without peer - it is the key to understanding more than a century of dynamic change in Western painting, sculpture, architecture, and design.""Who, where, when, how, and why? - these are the essential questions answered in the one hundred main entries that make up the heart of the book. Presented chronologically, the subjects range from Impressionism in the nineteenth century to Earth Art, Sound Art, and Internet Art in the twenty-first. The entries examine the context and evolution of each movement - the claims of the artists' manifestos, the drama of the exhibitions, the judgments of the critics, and the delight, or outrage, of the public. Two hundred supplementary entries provide fully cross-referenced summaries of other essential styles and movements, tracing intriguing patterns of influence and development. The foldout illustrated time line shows the evolution of the art of this period at a glance, providing a thorough overview of the entire era." - from the publisher

Schedule an appointment with a librarian

You can schedule a research appointment with a librarian through our LibCal page, which syncs with the librarians' calendars. You are welcome to schedule an appointment for help with this assignment, or for help with any other project for a class. - Abe

Assignment : Ekphrastic Narrative and Analysis

At some point in March, our class will travel to the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk and view their various collections. During this visit, you will be asked to observe the space around you as you view these artworks, and you will choose one artwork to respond to and analyze in an ekphrastic narrative and analysis paper. In this paper, you will engage with outside research on the artist and their work while also reflecting on your experience of viewing this artwork in the museum space. This assignment will allow you to “read” the artwork you choose like a text and analyze not only the choices of the artist but of the museum curators and yourself, as the audience, in how this artwork is situated in culture and space. (Length: minimum of 3 pages double spaced)

Ekphrasis defined

For your second assignment of ENG 105-08, you are being asked to write an ekphrastic narrative and analysis about a painting you see on your visit to the Chrysler Museum of Art.

"The intense pictorial description of an object. This very broad term has been limited by some to the description of art-objects, and even to the self-description of ‘speaking’ art-objects (objects whose visual details are significant). A more generous account would define ekphrasis as virtuosic description of physical reality (objects, scenes, persons) in order to evoke an image in the mind’s eye as intense as if the described object were actually before the reader."

-J.A. Cuddon and M.A.R. Habib, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, "ekphrasis/ecphrasis"

❝"In your initial semiotic analysis--your initial reading of the text--try to consider all aspects of a text before applying a label like 'good' or 'bad' (or 'interesting' or 'boring'). Such labels are earned only after a thorough reading of the text under question"
–Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader, The World is a Text

At the Museum : How to Use Your Time

Come prepared to take notes: Bring a steno pad or small notebook and 1-2 writing utensils.

Consider the mind map below: What are the kinds of information you would only be able to gather by seeing an art object (the primary source) up close?

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Consider the mind map below: What are the kinds of information you would only be able to gather through doing secondary research?

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Key Art Terms

Medium (Art Media) - the materials that a work of art is made out of

Technique - the method or way the artist used their materials and tools

Print - a work of art that was reproduced using a block, plate, type piece, inkjet or other method that allows the image to be printed/produced multiple times

(types include: intaglio vs. relief, etching vs. engraving, lithography, monochrome vs. chromolithography vs. photolithography)

Writing Inspiration / Models

Q: What does art writing feel like / sound like?

25 Art Blogs You Should Follow in 2024 (Pixpa.com)

Talk Art: Everything you wanted to know about contemporary art but were too afraid to ask by Russell Tovey; Robert Diament
Call Number: Leisure Reading N6497 .T684 2021
ISBN: 9781797214245
Publication Date: 2021-05-18
"When launching the Talk Art podcast in 2018, actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament had one clear aim: to make the art world more accessible. Since then, the podcast has grown to be a global hit, featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators, gallerists, actors, musicians and fellow art lovers... Now, Tovey and Diament have created a guidebook to engaging with contemporary art. Covering a range of different media from photography and ceramics to performance and sound art, the book explores the way art interacts with our society, highlights lesser-known artists, and provides a snapshot of the art world as it is today." - from publisher
Interpreting Art by Sam Rose
Call Number: View eBook
ISBN: 9781800081796
Publication Date: 2022-08-05
"How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various 'theories' and 'methods', but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general and largely unspoken norms shared by interpreters of many kinds. Ranging widely, though taking writing within the Western tradition of art history as its primary focus, Interpreting Art highlights the norms, premises, and patterns that tend to guide interpretation along the way. Why, for example, is the concept of artistic 'intention' at once so reviled and yet so hard to let go of? What does it really involve when an interpretation appeals to an artwork's 'reception'? How can 'context' be used by some to keep things under control and by others to make the interpretation of art seem limitless? And how is it that artworks only seem to grow in complexity over time? Interpreting Art reveals subtle features of art writing central to the often unnoticed interpretative practices through which we understand works of art. In doing so, the book also sheds light on possible alternatives, pointing to how writers on art might choose to operate differently in the future." - from the publisher

Describing an Art Object : a Mind Map

Art Objects Practice

Right-click on an image and click Open in a new tab to be able to make the image larger or smaller. Press CTRL + or CTRL -, or use your mouse wheel to increase or decrease the size.

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