This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.
1. Writing About Art
2. Writing About Art: The Big Picture
3. Formal Analysis and Style
4. Analytic Thinking
5. Writing a Comparison
6. Writing an Entry in an Exhibition Catalog
7. Writing a Review of an Exhibition
8. How to write an Effective Essay
9. Style in Writing
10. Art-Historical Research
11. Some Critical Approaches
12. Writing aa Research Paper
13. Manuscript Form
14. Writing Essay Examinations
I saw the things which have been brought to the King from the new golden land: a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and ka moon all of silver of the same size, also two rooms full of the armour of the people there, and all manner of wondrous weapons of theirs, harness and darts, wonderful shields, strange clothing, bedspreads, and all kinds of wonderful objects of various uses, much more beautiful to behold than prodigies. These things were all so precious that they have been valued at one hundred thousand gold florins. All the days of my life I have seen nothing that has gladdened my heart so much as these things, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle talents of men in foreign lands. Indeed, I cnannot express all that I thought there.
-- Albrecht Durer, in a journal entry of 27 August 1520,
writing about Aztec treasures sent by Motecuhzoma
to Cortes in 1519, and forwarded by
Cortes to Charles V
Painting cannot equal nature for the marvels of mountains and water, but nature cannot equal painting for the marvels of brush and ink.
--Dong Qichang (1555-1636)
What you see is what you see.
-- Frank Stella, in an interview, 1964, published 1966
The surface bootlessness of talking about art seems matched by a depth necessity to talk about it endlessly.
-- Clifford Geertz, 1976