EXHIBITION REVIEW WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Critical Perspectives EXHIBITION REVIEW WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Write an 800-1000 word exhibition review and bring it to the next Friday Critical Perspectives session for discussion:

Exhibitions:

(1) Goya, Fantasies, Follies, Disasters: Gallery 11 First Floor, Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

(2) Modern Contemporary: Rooms 14-15 &16 (First Floor), Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

(3) New Contemporaries 2009: Galleries 1, 2 & 3, Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH

Visit all exhibitions

Schedule:

10.15am meet for registration at Manchester City Art Gallery

10.30-12.00 visit the first two exhibitions and make your notes; work in groups by all means but have your own notes available for the following week (if you have time take a look at the other exhibits)

12.00-1.00 Lunch

1.10 Meet for registration at the Cornerhouse

1.15 -2.30 visit the Cornerhouse exhibition; again, make notes

3.30 Finish

Brief

Imagine that you are an art critic for a weekly magazine with an educated but non-specialist audience. You have been asked to write a review of one of the above exhibitions. Your task is to inform a would-be audience about an exhibition and to provide some context for it. To achieve this you need both to describe AND critique the exhibit and its rationale. This is NOT a research paper so you do not need to provide any biographical detail on the artists, but you can provide context by bringing in materials from exhibition labelling, catalogues, the media and our own discussions. Critics tend to write from their own backgrounds, so feel free to bring in things you have learned in class or from your own readings. Also feel free to mention when the exhibition confirms something you’ve learned elsewhere and when it challenges it.


Start by considering the exhibition’s arrangement as representing someone’s conscious creation. What are your initial impressions? Be very conscious of your reactions to the display.

Questions to help you get started.

1. What seems to be the premise (reason) for the exhibit arrangement? What aspects seem to matter most to the gallery/museum? How were the works chosen for inclusion in this space? Why these and not others? How does one room relate to its neighbour? What story does this room tell?

2. Special exhibitions involve choice. Does the exhibition borrow works from around the world or are they part of its own collection (in house). What do you think is accomplished by bringing these works together?

3. Does the display make you aware of where these works originally were and the purposes that they served? Is this aspect important to a museum/gallery display?

4. What can you learn about the art of a specific historical period by seeing original works on display in a museum setting? What sorts of works are included? What is their scale? What media and techniques are represented? Do you have a sense of why different media are used for different purposes? About how different media relate to one another?

5. How have the works been installed? Consider why certain works are grouped together. Does the arrangement make sense to you (does it create a narrative)? Notice things like placement, spacing, and lighting. What difference do these make (individually and collectively)? Are some of the works privileged over others by their position? What do you infer from seeming intangibles like framing and lighting?

6. Be conscious of your experience in visiting the rooms. How do you feel in the exhibition? What is the role of your surroundings in your experience?

7. Is learning an important part of the museum experience? How did you learn? How would you evaluate the labels, wall text, gallery guides (if any), or materials available elsewhere in the museum? Do these represent the best way to provide such information? What other alternatives might there be? Would you provide other kinds of materials in other formats?

8. Is there one or more work that you find particularly interesting? If so, feel free to discuss it in some detail, always bearing in mind how it relates to the exhibition as a whole.

Critical Perspectives: Image Analysis Exercises

Critical Perspectives: Image Analysis Exercises

Exercise One
Ready for week 2 of Critical Perspectives, find and print a copy of the image Still Life with Chair and Caning (1912) by Pablo Picasso; in your own words (a minimum of 500 words) write an analysis of this image that includes a consideration of its technique (collage) in relation to the aims of the Cubist movement. Your review should contain 3 elements: Description, Analysis, and Evaluation.

Include:
- the key ideas contained within the chosen piece
- primary research; i.e. a direct reading from the image
- secondary research; to include a bibliography including books, journals (1 is acceptable) and the internet (utilizing 2 academic search engines only)
- different styles of writing
- quotations from and references to your sources used
- a clear, copy of your image correctly labelled

Exercise 2

Ready for week 3 find and print a copy of the image Cut with a Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Era of Weimer Beer-Belly Culture (1919-20) by Hannah Höch; in your own words (about 600 words) write an analysis of this image that includes a consideration of its technique (photomontage) in relation to the aims of Dada in Berlin. Your review should contain 3 elements: Description, Analysis, and Evaluation.

Include:
- the key ideas contained within the chosen piece
- primary research; i.e. a direct reading from the image
- secondary research; to include a bibliography including books, journals (1 is acceptable) and the internet (utilizing 2 academic search engines only)
- different styles of writing
- quotations from and references to your sources used
- a clear, copy of your image correctly labelled

Exercise 3

Ready for week 4 find and print a copy of the image Bathers at Moritzburg (1909-1910) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; in your own words (about 600 words) write an analysis of this image that includes a consideration of its technique (colour and image distortion) in relation to the aims of the Expressionist movement in Europe. Your review should contain 3 elements: Description, Analysis, and Evaluation.


Include:
- the key ideas contained within the chosen piece
- primary research; i.e. a direct reading from the image
- secondary research; to include a bibliography including books, journals (1 is acceptable) and the internet (utilizing 2 academic search engines only)
- different styles of writing
- quotations from and references to your sources used
- a clear, copy of your image correctly labelled
-

Exercise 4

Ready for week 5 find and print a copy of the photograph Girl with Leica (1935) by Aleksandr Rodchenko ; in your own words (about 600 words) write an analysis of this image that includes a consideration of its technique (photography) in relation to the aims of the Russian Constructivist movement and the Bauhaus. Your review should contain 3 elements: Description, Analysis, and Evaluation.


Include:
- the key ideas contained within the chosen piece
- primary research; i.e. a direct reading from the image
- secondary research; to include a bibliography including books, journals (1 is acceptable) and the internet (utilizing 2 academic search engines only)
- different styles of writing
- quotations from and references to your sources used
- a clear, copy of your image correctly labelled
-

Exercise 5

Ready for week 6 find and print a copy of the image Monogram (1955) by Robert Rauschenberg; in your own words (about 600 words) write an analysis of this image that includes a consideration of the image in relation to contemporary (to the image) art and design in America. Your review should contain 3 elements: Description, Analysis, and Evaluation.

Include:
- the key ideas contained within the chosen piece
- primary research; i.e. a direct reading from the image
- secondary research; to include a bibliography including books, journals (1 is acceptable) and the internet (utilizing 2 academic search engines only)
- different styles of writing
- quotations from and references to your sources used
- a clear, copy of your image correctly labelled

Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today

This exhibition at The Liverpool Tate, marks the departure point at which artists would traditionally associate certain hues with different emotions or symbolic meanings. The works illustrate how artists began to perceive colour as a ready-made substance (e.g. Dulux paint colour charts), rather than as scientific or expressive. Artists went to great lengths to remove their own personal choice in the tones they used, employing their own complicated systems or working with 'found colours'.

The exhibition takes something that we take for granted and think we know about and strips it down. The ideas presented are simple yet complex at the same time. It serves as a good reminder of some of the content of Basic Design. The most interesting exhibits where the displays of swatch books and sketchbooks dedicated to the subject that I wanted to turn the pages of.

The exhibition runs until the 13th September 2009

BEN SHAHN

Illustrator Ian Whadcock switched me on to Shahns book 'The Shape of Content' that has influenced my approach to teaching as well as the subject enormously. Shahn was an artist who spoke to the world. A man of uncompromising beliefs, he became the most popular artist of his age – his work was on the cover of Time as well as in the Museum of Modern Art.
Shahn came to prominence in the 1930s with "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti," a politically pointed series about the Italian anarchists who many believed were framed for murder. He went on to paint murals and take photographs for the government during the New Deal, and to become a successful painter and commercial artist.

Check out a good site that gives context and overviwe to his oevre.

www.njn.net/artsculture/shahn

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
Saturday 26 September 2009 - Sunday 10 January 2010
Tickets: £6 (concessions £4) Under 18s free.
Our major new exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see outstanding works by women artists including Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller from public and private collections

Copy of Induction Exercise

The purpose of these sessions is quite straightforward. It is to learn how to look, speak and write about images and objects in both a reflective and critical way.

As part of this process of discovery we need to find out how images and objects communicate with their audience. This process of communication requires two basic elements: a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver.’ To put this as a question to be answered:

How is meaning provided by the ‘image’ (the sender), and how is that meaning understood by its audience (the receiver)?

Over the years these kinds of questions have been answered by various frameworks or methods (methodologies), and we will consider some of those methods as we go along. But for now, let’s just look and consider how meaning is provided and understood.

So I want you to look at these objects and environments and begin interpretive discussions within your groups; one person can be elected to give the feedback.

Here is some basic information to start you off. They were made by the sculptor Elisabeth Frink and then cast in bronze, each figure is life-size, and they are displayed in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Try to answer the following question: Who are these bronze men? Why are they naked; why are the faces painted; why are they in a group; why have they been cast in bronze? Can they tell you anything about the artist?

What’s obvious about them, what kind of ideas to they bring to your mind, what do they remind you of, what do they signify or ‘connote’ to you?

Just begin looking and writing.

Now try a similar technique with this image:

Can you make any productive comparisons between these images?

Hello, and welcome to the Critical Perspectives blog!

Critical Perspectives: BA HONS DESIGN AND VISUAL ARTS

http://criticalperspectivesbadva.blogspot.com/

Hello, and welcome to the Critical Perspectives blog!

My name is Peter Muir, and I’m the moderator for this forum, as well as being one of your tutors for Critical Perspectives.

The Course Discussion forum is open to all Level 1 students, Pathway Tutors and the Critical Perspectives course team. It is intended to provide you with a place where you can ‘meet’ other students from this and other Levels, to discuss the course with them and support each other throughout the year. Do use it straight away to post a brief introductory message, letting other students know your previous academic and artistic experience and interests, and your thoughts about the coming year’s work. This will be a good way of getting to know each other and also getting used to the blog.

As you get into your work, we will also use this forum as a place to discuss the course materials you’re studying. If necessary, I will initially post some points to get the discussion going, but do feel free to raise issues and questions and introduce topics of your own as they crop up during your engagement with ideas and materials. What we hope is that this blog will provide a place for lively and interesting debate by all students. I hope you'll also use this forum to let us all know about current or forthcoming exhibitions and other events that might be of general interest, useful websites you've found, interesting books and articles you’ve read, and so on.

With very best wishes for a good year’s study,

Peter

Some general guidelines:

1 Discussion of themes and topics generated by study of the course material is encouraged. However, material which could be incorporated directly into a formal assignment brief is not permitted, and will be deleted from the blog.

3. Please keep subject headers brief and relevant to the thread of discussion.

4. All use of third-party material should be acknowledged, whatever the source. Messages should not be forwarded without the originator’s permission. This includes material provided by your tutors.

5. Messages should be relevant to Critical Perspectives and of potential interest to the majority of participants in the forum. Messages intended primarily for an individual should be sent to his or her mailbox.