Posted: April 22nd, 2015

Art and Social Protest

Art and Social Protest

Order Description

Social and political expression in Western visual arts, primarily during the modernist and postmodernist periods.

PREMISE OF ASSIGNMENT

Pretend you are part of a team arranging a museum exhibition titled “Art and Social Protest” for which there will be an accompanying catalog. The exhibit will be organized into various social themes, such as art protesting war, racism, poverty, sexism, immigration issues, etc. You have been assigned the task of dealing with one of the rooms of the exhibit that deals with a single social issue. Choose any social issue and two works of social protest art that deal with that issue in some way. NOTE: the two works have to be real art works, not something you have made up or imagined. The two works must be by different artists. Your assignment is to write six pages of text for the catalog that will accompany the overall exhibit. So you don’t have to write about the entire history of protest art. You are only concerned with writing about these two works that are protesting this general issue. You will describe, analyze and compare the two works of art regarding their strategies and effectiveness as works of social protest art. While doing so, you will find it necessary to give the reader some historical and cultural background and context for the works of art so that the viewer will gain greater understanding of their meanings. The issue can be almost anything, but try to do something that is somehow related to this course. The works chosen don’t have to be about the exact same topic; for example, they don’t have to be protesting the Vietnam War. They can simply both be about war. Or both be about racism. Or environmental issues.

The very first thing you will want to do in your paper is to introduce briefly the theme of your portion of the exhibit (the social issue the works are protesting) which becomes part of your thesis statement. The thesis statement basically explains why you are comparing the two works (hint: your reason is NOT because it is the assignment, you like them, or because you saw them in Paris last year.) The thesis statement is an idea that you have and intend to demonstrate in your paper. The works of art, and all other facts and materials, are essentially presented in evidentiary support of the statement you have made. To assist your reader you will want to identify the artists, titles of works, general time period and style and some brief cultural context to frame the thesis statement. You will also want to indicate the limits of the study in terms of time, works and ideas to be covered. This paragraph should be very concise. Remember that this is a formal research paper. It should read as if it were in fact published in a book or as part of an exhibition catalog. It should NOT read as a script for a tourist guide at Disney (i.e. “Welcome! I will be your guide today at this wonderful exhibit of protest art against etc).
Do not use the first person such as I or me in your paper! If you have something extra that you want to say to me personally, send it as an email. Don’t put it in your paper.

After that the organization is up to you. You can talk about one work, then other, then compare them. Alternatively, you can switch back and forth. Just make certain that you make explicit comparisons with regard to style, subject matter and content and that you have a conclusion. Briefly describe each work and analyze their style Style refers to those formal visual characteristics such as light, color, composition, texture, pictorial space, perspective, line, shape, form, brushwork, scale, media, etc. For this class, a discussion of the work’s subject matter , historical context and underlying meaning or content, is probably more important, unless the style chosen by the artist is directly tied to its meaning. This course is unlike most other art history courses because we are mostly concerned with historical issues. For that reason, the individual artist’s early background is probably irrelevant. On the other hand, the viewer in this exhibition will want to know more than usual about the historical events that surround the event that the artist is protesting. It is up to you to balance the appropriate types and amount of information for the viewer in this situation, and not simply download a biography of the artist off the internet.