Paper Format: Paper for one work of art
Introduction: What work of art are you talking about?
What is some general information about the work? (Factual information such as
date, artistic period, artist. Most of this information can be found next to the work in the museum.)
Thesis Statement: This work _______ is important for _____ , _______ and
______ reasons. (Basically you are stating what you are writing about, state all key points of the following paragraphs.)
Body: Point 1: Here you make your first statement about the work of art, or just
describe it in detail.
What is the subject depicted in the work of art?
What are the materials?
What are the compositional elements? (light, color, pose, use what you can of
your artistic language to bull shit about how great the work is for such and
such reasons)
Points 2 - ?: Here you want to make some statement as to why this work is
important.
If there is more than one reason, just talk about one here and then answer the next reason in the next point, and keep stretching out your answers as much as possible (writing several paragraphs about small details, in other words bull shit)
What is important about the work?
Why is it important?
How does this work fit into the history of art?
Does this work have any influences from previous works of art?
Does this work influence any later works of art?
Is the artist important in any way? Why?
What is important about the subject matter?
Was the artwork used for any purpose? What was that purpose?
Was the artwork used to commemorate and event or person? Tell about the event.
Are there many works similar to this work of art? Why?
(I hope you get the point... there are probably more things that you can ask
yourself about the work of art, but just answering most of these questions will get you a long enough paper, be sure to go to the library to help you answer these questions... quotes always make the paper longer because you can explain what the person you are quoting is talking about. A four page paper should have at least 2 books, but the more books, the longer the paper can be.)
Conclusion: Here you want to sum up major points.
Briefly state again why this work is important to the history of art (don’t be to
sentimental, keep the first person out of your paper, the teacher or person reading doesn’t care what you think... so “I think this” and “I think that” = bad.
Leave the paper with a one-sentence statement that brings up an important question... an example from one of my high school papers about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings:
The point that Tolkien leaves his novels with a fairly happy ending is another reason for his success. Not many people like books which have a sad ending, and many want everyone in the story to gain happiness in some way or another. It would be best to leave off with the ending to The Hobbit and yet another view in which Tolkien had about himself to the world,
"...You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"
"Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar (The Hobbit 303).