Essay Instructions: Description: Analysis Paper(salvador dali's "persistence of memory" painting
(http://www.moma.org/collection/depts/paint_sculpt/blowups/paint_sculpt_016.html)site to the painting
According to David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen in the second edition of Writing Analytically, "to analyze something is to ask what that something means. It is to ask how something does what it does or why it is as it is.? As we have discussed, analysis involves breaking a subject into its various parts, looking at relationships among the parts, and finding connections between those parts and the whole.
Please write a 7-10 page paper in which you analyze the painting you have chosen. Your paper should have a thesis that you support during your discussion. What positions are you talking about the work of art? Please use MLA format and cite any information that is not common knowledge. The MLA sections in LWC and DA show you how to do it.
Be sure to indicate the subject: Portrait? Landscape? Still life? Figure painting? Abstract? Also indicate the medium: Oil Painting? Watercolor? Pastel? Etc
At some point in your paper, you will want to help your reader know why you chose this particular painting and what it means to you personally. Thus, it is fine to write your paper in the first person. However, be sure to keep your main focus on the painting itself.
Since painting, like writing, is a social act, you will need to do a little research about the artist and his work as well as about the time period in which is the painted so that you can set your discussion in a social context. What is the relationship between that social context and the particular painting you have chosen to examine? You are not expected to do a lot of research, just enough to set the stage and be able to comment on the matter.
Assume that your audience is not familiar with the painting and wants to learn more, wants to hear how you have interpreted it. Your job is to inquire into your painting, to explore it, so as to give your audience insight. First, you will need to describe the painting in detail so your audience can really picture it. Just describe without interpretation. Then, as you begin presenting claims, you can refer to those concrete details as a way of giving specific examples to illustrate what you are saying. What you say always needs to be backed up by evidence. Consider too the artist?s purpose. Why did he or she paint it?
As you analyze, you will certainly want to look for patterns of organization:
To what is your eye first drawn in the painting? Why has the artist caused your gaze to go there first and how has he or she achieved that emphasis? Where does your eye go next? What is the artist doing as he or she guidelines your gaze around the painting? As well as noticing what is explicit in the painting, look for what is more subtle and less obvious (implicit) and address the implications. What do you infer about what is going on? What is the painter trying to communicate in a less direct way? Why?
What kind of contrasts do you notice? (colors? Shapes? Lines? Sizes? Upper and lower parts of the painting? Left and right? Attitudes or poses?) do some of these contrasts seem contradictory or paradoxical? What do you make of them? When you refer to lines, be specific: horizontal, vertical. Diagonal, circular, etc. shapes can be round, square, oblong, etc. artists usually have reasons for making such choices as they create patterns. You want to try and understand those reasons.
In addition to contrasts, it is often useful to notice similarities. How, for instance, is the painter using repetition? Do certain colors, shapes, lines, subjects occur several times in order to emphasize something
Rosenwasser and Stephen also suggest the importance of looking for anomalies, things that don?t fit the pattern, that stand out as being a bit perplexing and that make you wonder what they are doing in the painting. When you spot an anomaly, question why the painter has included it.
As you examine these issues, always be inquiring how they help to bring out what the artist is trying to communicate. How do they contribute to the ?meaning? of the painting? What are the implications? What do you infer? You want to help your audience understand the significance of your observations.
Of course, you can?t do everything in your paper! You will be making choices. Analysis lends itself to many issues. What kind of person does the artist seem to be? What does he or she seem to value? What makes you trust him or her? Why? How does the artist appeal to your emotions and why? Does everything make sense and seem logical in the work, or does the artist deliberately choose to subvert logical expectations? Why and how?
You may want to address some social issues. What is going on among the people in the painting? What relationships among people do you see, and how do you interpret them? Who is dominant? Who is marginal? Where those relationships taken for granted by the painter, or was the artist deliberately calling them into question? Is there humor? Irony? Tragedy? In other words you will be asking about the painter?s assumptions.
Other possibilities: is the artist making a statement about the relationship between civilization and nature? About the meaning of war? About the beauty or terror of nature? About love? About family life? About loneliness? About religious faith? About hope or despair? About wealth or poverty? About leisure or work? Endless possibilities exist! If your painting lends itself to such a discussion, it would be extremely interesting to comment on how a viewer today might see the painting as opposed to how those in the original time period might have viewed it.
There are faxes for this order.
