When you are trying to absorb your readings, it is common for people to find that writing out notes
rather than highlighting on the page is a better memory tool, which will save cramming hours even if it seems like more work at the time.
Drawing: when you are trying to understand and remember how buildings and images are arranged,
it is a great help to trace or sketch objects and make rough placement diagrams, and to draw over xeroxes with labels, composition lines, etc. Some of the takehomes will show you how to experiment with these techniques. And a diagram can be the clearest way to hold and convey information , about causes and relationships in time and space.
1. Images and "memorizing".
You want to learn to recognize, identify and describe the visual core course material, to relate the images and things to this courses’ histories and themes. Every image and its explanation are contained in your textbooks, the web page, and your class notes. Study guides: SEE link to "1998 midterm". The midterm essay questions will be posted far in advance (they will be similar to last year’s; use them, and take-home structures, as study guides and as suggestions for designing paper topics.
*Images: every monument discussed with slides in lecture and recitation will be posted under the Images link, sometimes before but always immediately after the week’s lectures. They include the "required" monuments" [see "monument lists"] and also the slides used in lecture for contexts and comparisons which do not belong to the core memorization set, including the maps and site plans to orient the selections in your books and lectures. Memorize by monument and main views. To help you understand what is said about the monuments, the web sets give many more angles and details (especially of 3-dimensional sculptures, buildings, places and decorated walls), than will come up as an exam ID.
- "Captions" = Image Notes link: most images will have supplementary captions supplied by the professor, to the transposed slide labels which post automatically.
How do I get to know images? As with people - spend time with them. If on an exam you blank on something’s name, but can still tell us about it, you will get credit for thought and analysis. Skim the plates before you read the text in textbooks, riffle the web sets, and try to guess where the discussion of them will go and if it will explain what seems odd. Look at something, and play at asking yourself, have I seen anything else like this?
Make flash-cards or pages as for a language course, and try recognizing them and/or the web images, by yourself and with a partner or a group. The web page alas shows only one image at a time – call up two screens if you can, and use paper-versions, to be able to compare images to one another. Pin things up on the wall, and/or keep them handy in a notebook, where you can stare at them in the odd 10 minutes avoiding calculus homework and consult them when you read notes. Try laying out on the floor the images for a whole lecture, and seeing its shape visually; try re-arranging them to make an argument or a classification of your own (by time-line, by theme (battles, ritual ...), by genre (portraits, temples, landscapes ...), by region, by patron (rulers’ art, female patrons’ art ...).
How do I learn to talk like an art-historian? practice the terms from lecture and books, and riffle Barnet. In section, and in question peridos in lecture, ask about terms new to you. Look at your notes, with an eye to the language used. Take one term/concept, and flip the book and web-sets trying it out on different things. Look at your own thoughts, and see if there are terms in what you’ve read that would help someone else understand what you mean, and see what you see.
2. BEFORE CLASS LOOK&READ: look at the assigned monuments/images, and at the assigned reading, before the lecture on that material. Whether you plan to give this course top priority or try to coast it, be smart & efficient: An hour’s skimming before the week’s lectures is worth 5-10 hours after it, and the lectures and sections will give you exponentially more, if you have exposed yourself to terms and images beforehand.
3. TAKE NOTES. Write down what is shown AND a "map" of details and comparisons. Write down what the speaker says – not just hard data, but also, the line of deduction, display, argument and analysis. If you don’t catch the name of something or are struggling to spell it, fill it in later after class and concentrate on recording the analysis, in whatever diagram form works for you. If you’ve already filled in basic information from your textbooks about the pre-supplied monument list, you will be able to sit back and soak up looking the slides while listening to those portions of lecture.
4. READ AND REREAD YOUR NOTES, from lecture and section, at the end of the day or at the end each week. Best, do this with images to refer to. An hour doing this is worth 10 hours review saved for midterm crunch. Periodically riffle through all the past weeks’ notes. Compare notes with fellow students; different people pick up on different aspects, and have thought of differently useful note-techniques. When your notes and books say, "you can see here that ...", look at the image and try to see that point – that is how you will come to be able to look at images on their own, in exams and doing your paper, and find that you remember old information and see new information for yourself. This may take a while, at the beginning of the course; but if you practice at the start, it will become a fast and pleasurable reflex.
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"What should I know for the exam?", "what is important?" are the most-asked questions, the week before the exam. The answer to what we think is important is in your notes, of what we said was important, and came back to over and over; to know what to do with material, look at your notes on how the teaching staff modelled to you how to explain, deduce and "prove" something.
You will be asked repeatedly by the teaching staff, if there are methods and arguments you would like more explanation for, or more practice at performing. " Why did the professor compare those two things ...? why is this a "dynamic" composition ...? what was that thing with visual program again ...? how do I break down a composition? how do I look at a plan and imagine someone walking in this building?" ... If you’ve looked at your own notes recently, and seen points that make no sense to you "now", you will be able to use us as the real tutors you pay tuition for, instead of praying that you can grab 2 minutes away from everyone else in the one-hour exam prep sessions.
"Tutoring": before
each of the 2 exams, the whole teaching staff will hold an evening review
session for the whole course, to practice describing and analysing with
you. Finding and planning topics, and executing papers, will be coached
in section in space left over from assigned course topic discussions. If
you are planning to show your TA a draft of your paper, we encourage you
to grab the WATU option, and get the credit (looks good on resumes ...)
and the benefit of the WATU leaders and students in the special tutoring
sessions.
[Web Link] ArtH 101: Visual and Formal Analysis: How does one do . . . ?
Questions to ask oneself when looking at art: from Barnet, Writing About Art, pp. 28-29.
1. What is my first response to the object?
2. When and where was the object made?
3. Where would the object have originally been seen?
4. What purpose did the object serve?
5. In what condition has the object survived?
6. Is there a title of the object? Does it in some way illuminate the object?
Terms to keep in mind
1. context - the situation in which the object belonged originally: also the context can refer to the situation/background in which elements of the work are found.
2. pattern - patterns can be formed by any repetitive sequence of lines, shapes, tonal accents, colors, brush-strokes, forms, etc.
3. material/medium - the physical ingredients of a work or object of art
4. texture - the implied or evidenced tactile aspects of an object; rough vs. smooth; how does the work connect our visual and tactile senses?
5. color - shade, treatment (cloudy/lucid, opaque/fuzzy?)
6. composition - the arrangement of parts that make up a whole by line, shape, or color: think about distinct parts of a work and how they react with each other. It often helps top look at something far away or squint to determine the compositional motifs - the composition of a piece should be its simplest parts boiled down without the details.
7. line - a trace left by a moving point; we often tend to follow line in one direction or another, and even continue them past the endpoint. If a line is too complex, we sometimes lose interest. Often motion is created by the line/s within an object. Certain lines are dynamic. Others are static.
8. light - bright or dark, illumination. Light can either be 'on' a surface or 'through' a surface.
9. scale - is one of the most obvious qualities of a painting; should suit the context, subject matter, and purpose of the painting; it is also not only the SIZE of a work, or the elements within a work, but is the relationship of the work to its surroundings and the relationship of elements to one another.
10. space - 'figure' is what we perceive as 'thing'; 'ground' is used to denote what we read as the area surrounding or void. It can be lucid and ordered or confused and cluttered. When talking about space, use directive words such as: up, down, left right, towards, away, and descriptives such as balanced or unbalanced.
11. contour - the boundary of any shape, or the outer limits of a three-dimensional shape as seen from any angle.
12. articulation - the manner in which contiguous shapes or forms join.
13. perspective - any of various techniques for representing three-dimentional objects and depth relationships; the relationship between of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole. Think of recession in space, use of parallel converging lines, vanishing point perspective, and even perspective with more than one vanishing point.
14. shape - developed or definite form; the characteristic surface configuration of a specific thing.
15. volumes - individual masses that make up a form.
16. form - the contour and structure of something
17. movement - the vitality generated by thrusts and counter-thrusts of shapes or lines; the tendency of our eyes to track along and even extend lines; the off-balance dynamism of diagonals; the apparent spatial recession of objects drawn in diminishing scale. Think about possibilities of arrested movement, implied or suggested movement.
18. iconography - the identification of images with symbolic content or meaning.
19. iconology - the interpretation of the image (often through literary, religious, and philosophical texts) for evidence of the cultural attitudes that produced the meaning or content of the work.
20. tone - general quality or atmosphere; color - shade or quality
21. orientation - the directions in which the elements are facing; relationships in space to one another
For additional help on writing formal analyses and for understanding the terms even further, PLEASE take a closer look at Barnet.
For terms and usage, look at David Piper's Looking at Art, Random House, 1984. Both are on reserve at Furness