Natasha Ruiz-Gómez
History of Art Department
University
of Pennsylvania
In Paris between the end of the 19th century and the Great War,
sculpture suddenly became “modern.” This
seminar will examine modernism through the lens of sculpture, identifying the
forces that propelled artists at that particular time and place to break with a
millennia-old sculptural tradition. Taking up sculpture during the Second
Empire and mapping the changes in the medium over the following fifty years, we
will focus on writings about both sculpture and modernism, as well as consider
links between sculpture and other media in order to achieve a broader historical
and artistic perspective on modernism. The objective of the course will be to
introduce you to these issues while developing and refining your critical
thinking and writing skills through in-class writing assignments and workshops,
informal “thought” papers, an exploratory journal, and three 3-4 page formal
essays.
This Critical Writing Course is designed to help you:
§
Learn to present your thoughts and impressions
cogently, forcefully, and eloquently.
§
Understand that writing is a process and a mode of
gaining knowledge and understanding and that revision is fundamental to that
process.
§
Be more critical of your own writing through
dialogue, drafts, and reading. This
classroom is a safe place for you to explore different writing styles and to
adopt different voices, with the goals of gaining confidence and learning to
write persuasively. You will also learn
to critique the writing of others—both your peers and the authors we read
throughout the semester.
§
Develop your own voice and hear it emerge in your
writing.
§
Improve the mechanics of your writing so that you
write at the college level in any discipline.
You will also learn the fundamentals of writing a research paper.
§
Learn techniques for battling the blank page or
screen. You will exercise your writing
skills on both paper and a computer, because you may be surprised to find out
that you are more comfortable, imaginative, and/or organized in one than the
other.
§
Enjoy looking at art, along with thinking and
writing about it¾because this would be
the greatest incentive for you to continue doing all three.
Course
Schedule
September – Critical Reading and the
Mechanics of Writing
September 8 – Introduction
September
13 – The Second Empire and
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
§
Focus Assignment
§
Reading: Charles Baudelaire, “Why Sculpture is
Tiresome” [Salon of 1846], Art in Paris,
1845-1862: Salons and Other Exhibitions, trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne
(London: Phaidon, 1970) 111-113.
§
Reading: Anne Middleton Wagner, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the
Second Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) 209-256, 300-308.
§
Thought Paper
§
A
Writer’s Resource Online Diagnostic
§
Thought Paper
§
Reading: Leo Steinberg, “Rodin,” Other Criteria: Confrontations with
Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972) 322-403.
§
Thought Paper
§
Reading: Anne M. Wagner, “Rodin’s Reputation,” Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Lynn
Hunt (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) 191-242.
September
27 – Formal Essay #1 Workshop
§
First Draft of Formal Essay due – Comparison of
Steinberg and Wagner
September 29 –
Formal Essay #1 Workshop
(continued)
§
Peer Review Outlines due
October – Critical Writing and
Developing a Voice
q
Formal
Essay #1 due – Comparison
of Steinberg and Wagner
October 6 – Degas
§
Focus Assignment
§
Reading: Anthea Callen, “Physiognomy and Difference,” The
Spectacular Body: Science, Method and Meaning in the Work of Degas (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 1-35.
October 11 –
Degas (continued) and Gauguin
§
Thought Paper
§
Reading: Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa, trans. O.F. Theis (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994)
58-74.
§
Focus Assignment
§
Reading: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native,” Art in America 77.7 (July 1989):
118-129, 161.
§
Analysis of reviews
§
Reading: Reviews of Brancusi Exhibition (not in
bulk pack)
October 20 – Formal Essay #2
Workshop
§
Draft of Formal Essay #2 due – Defend or refute the statement: “Only
aesthetic considerations should be applied to the study of sculpture.”
October 25 –
No class/Fall Break
§
Peer Review Outlines due
November – Writing
a Research Paper
November 1 – Brancusi (continued)
q
Formal
Essay #2 due – Defend or refute the statement: “Only aesthetic
considerations should be applied to the study of sculpture.”
November
3 – Brancusi
(continued)
§
Thought paper
§
Reading: Anna C. Chave, Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1993) 198-249, 313-319.
November
8 – Picasso
§
Thought Paper
§
Reading: Werner Spies, Picasso: The Sculptures,
ex. cat. (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2000) 66-73 and 84-90.
§
Proposal for research paper due
§
Reading: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1996) 252-257.
§
Reading: Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Co., 1964) 13-26, 115-122, 335-341.
November
15 – Boccioni
§
Thought paper
§
Reading: F.T. Marinetti, “The Foundation and
Manifesto of Futurism” [1908], and Umberto Boccioni, “Technical Manifesto of
Futurist Sculpture” [1912], Theories of
Modern Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968) 284-289 and 298-304.
November
17 – Tatlin
November 22 – Formal
Essay #3 Workshop
§
First Draft of Formal Essay #3 due – Research
Paper
November
29 – Formal
Essay #3 Workshop (continued)
§
Peer Review continued
December 1 – Formal
Essay #3 Workshop (continued)
§
Second Draft of Formal Essay #3 due – Research Paper
q
Formal
Essay #3 due – Research
Paper
§
Thought Paper
§
Reading: Molly Nesbit, “Ready-Made Originals: The
Duchamp Model,” October 37 (Summer
1986): 53-64.
Your final grade will be determined according to the
following criteria:
Class
Participation (15%): I expect you to come to class prepared to analyze
readings, to discuss writing assignments, to participate in writing workshops,
and to critique your own work and that of your peers. In other words, I expect you to be fully
engaged in the course.
Thought
Papers/Writing Assignments (15%): This course has been developed
to help you become comfortable expressing your ideas in writing. Writing assignments will include formal essay
proposals, focus assignments, and peer-review outlines, but will principally
consist of informal “thought papers.” At
the end of each class, you will be given a detailed assignment that addresses
an issue related to writing (authorial voice, writing style, proposed audience,
etc.). These assignments will serve as
the basis for in-class workshops and will build a foundation for your three
formal essays. The assignments will be
evaluated with a check, check plus, or check minus. Please bring two copies of each assignment to
class: one to hand in at the beginning of class and one to work on during
class.
Exploratory
Journal (10%): You will be expected to keep a journal in which
you will write at least twice a week for a minimum of fifteen minutes at a
time. In this journal, you can summarize
the day’s class in your own words, explore a sculpture-related issue on which
you are stuck, write a creative essay centered on a sculpture or a sculptor,
etc. This is an opportunity for you to
process/explore/analyze ideas that we discuss in class, develop questions for
in-class discussion, convey your feelings about a work, and practice creative
writing. In the journal, the quality of
your thinking is more important than the style of your writing; this is not a
place where you need to worry about grammar or spelling, but a place where you
can work on ideas. Buy a notebook that
will be dedicated to this purpose and bring it to every class; you will
periodically write in it during class, and I will occasionally request to see
it. Make sure you date each journal
entry and start each day’s entry at the top of a clean page. At the end of the semester, the journal will
be evaluated with a check, check plus, or check minus.
Three
Formal Essays (each 20%): At the end of each month, you will hand in a
three- to four-page formal paper that builds on the skills that we have been
working on during that month. Writing
assignments and in-class workshops will serve as the foundation for each of
these formal essays; in addition, you will be required to turn in at least one
draft of each essay for review and discussion.
Please
note:
Office
Hours: I am very happy to meet with you for any reason. Office hours are by appointment only; please
contact me at natashar@sas.upenn.edu to set up an appointment.
Readings: The readings are an essential
component of this course, both as a basis for the writing assignments and for
class discussions; for this reason, you should make sure to bring a copy of the
readings to every class. There is no
textbook for this course—readings are drawn from a number of sources. They are available online at the Blackboard
site for this class, for purchase in a bulk pack at Campus Copy (3907 Walnut
Street, 215.386.6410), and individually as “pamphlets” at the Reserve Desk at
the Fisher Fine Arts Library. The only
required text is Elaine Maimon and Janice Peritz’s A Writer’s Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2003), which you will use as a resource both in this course and
throughout your college career. In order
to take advantage of a special arrangement between Penn and the publisher to
use online writing resources and tools, the book must be bought from the Penn
Bookstore, the Penn Book Center, or House of Our Own.
Museum
Visits: You will be responsible for visiting the Philadelphia
Museum of Art during the course of the semester in order to complete certain
assignments.
Late
Papers: Late papers will
be marked down one grade per day. If you
anticipate problems turning in your paper on time, you must contact me at least
one week before the due date; I will grant extensions only in extreme
circumstances.
Attendance: Faithful attendance is required
to pass this class. Only one unexcused
absence is allowed; your participation grade will decrease with each additional
absence. I also expect you to come to
class on time.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism constitutes an
automatic failure for the course and will be reported to the Office of Student
Conduct immediately.