Blog / Art history papers

An art history paper differs from a history paper in that the analysis of art involves what you see. What makes writing an essay on art a challenge is the translation of the visual (the painting) into the verbal (your brilliant essay). This translation requires an understanding of the language of the discipline. Look at your assigned reading to find the art jargon that art historians employ or check out art dictionaries. Online art dictionaries also allow you to load up on vocabulary that convinces people you know what you're talking about. Even more preferable than an art dictionary is picking up on the art jargon that your professor uses in lecture. Using a term or phrase your professor has coined brings bonus points.

Offer description of the painting, but make sure the observations deliver an argument and support a thesis. Professors don't appreciate haphazard checklists of observations (he can see the painting too), even if they include cool art terminology like chiaroscuro and leitmotif. Likewise, professors do not appreciate analytical papers that fail to include specific observations. When you go to the museum to examine the artwork or when you look at a reproduction of it in a textbook, make sure you note specific examples that you can include in your paper.

Unlike history or English papers, art history papers may be structured so that the topic sentence falls at the end of the sentence. The preceding portion of the paragraph should build up an idea by giving observations about the material, color, light, style, or composition.

Avoid the subjective "I" at all costs. This advice applies to all academic writing, but looking at art often invites the student to comment, "I think that..."

Art history professors consider the following words as inappropriate to scholarly art history papers:

• Piece–this word tends to be overused. Professors prefer that you refer to the art according to its medium (painting, sculpture, print).
• Palate–don't make your teacher think you're an idiot by talking about the roof of your mouth. Palette is the correct spelling.
Make sure you tell the reader important dates (i.e., the date of the work's completion).

Categories of Paper Assignments

While most papers will include elements of a couple of the categories, understanding these general groupings will better understand the assignment.

Formal Analysis

This question asks for a detailed description of the formal aspects of art. Your description should include observations of design qualities like composition, color, line, texture, proportion, continuity, balance, size, and contrast. How specific your observations need to be is generally determined by the length of the assignment. Most art history papers combine some elements of formal analysis with the other categories of art history papers.

Style Analysis

This category requires observation of the art's relation to a particular stylistic category. Is the painting impressionistic, modern, early Macedonian, or Renaissance? Professors enjoy assigning essays that ask you to compare and contrast two pieces of art from the same or different styles, since this type of analysis requires you to observe the broader trends of art. Questions like "How does your five-year-old brother's finger painting differ from the finger painting that Picasso designed when he was five?" or "Compare and contrast the impressionism of Monet with that of Morisot" or "Can Caravaggio's work be classified as still life?" require a stylistic analysis.

Iconography

Literally, iconography means "image writing." This paper requires you to examine the symbolism of certain objects. Does the hammer and sickle that Mona Lisa carries reveal anything about Da Vinci's political leanings? (One should note that Mona Lisa's hammer and sickle are, technically, imaginary icons concocted by the authors of this book. Da Vinci's painting dates at 1506, more than three hundred years before communist ideas were contrived.)

Iconology

Literally, this term means "image study." When you write this type of art history paper, you will examine literary and outside texts to interpret the images in the art. This essay might require that you read the ancient Greek myths and explain how symbols in archaic Greek art allude to those myths.

Patronage Study

In this paper, the history of the actual work of art and its patron are researched. Instructors generally expect that such papers comment on political, economic, and social state during the period when the art was designed, purchased, discarded, or renewed.