Artefact Analysis: Migrant Mother, a 1936 Photo by Dorothea Lange

Assignment #3: Artefact Analysis
Due: Oct 20
Length: 2000 words excluding footnotes and full bibliography [included at the end of the report]
Context: As noted in your syllabus, this assignment is not a part of the gradual building of material towards your final research paper. Rather, an artefact analysis asks you to produce an extended, critical text on an art object of your choice, seen in person at a gallery or museum. Though formatted in report-like fashion, the intention here is to employ what you have learned about the methodologies of art criticism thus far to describe, analyze, interpret, and evaluate works of art. This method should, by now, be recognizable as the Feldman Method [see Lecture 4 assigned readings and class notes for reference]. N.B. An excellent resource for this assignment is OCAD U’s “Writing Art Reviews” document, attached in PDF form to Module 5.
Artefact Analysis Report: This report involves a comprehensive study of an object already in a museum/gallery collection, detailing its historical significance [including its future historical significance if it was made recently], and making a case for its contemporary critical relevance and potential. [Consider this a more detailed exhibition review, with research and physical artwork details].
Assignment:
Description: You should provide artwork details in the format of a “tombstone”. According to Harvard Art Museum’s definition, “This macabre moniker is the traditional term used to refer to a bare-bones [ahem] label for identification. The tombstone simply lists the object’s name and artist’s name [if applicable], the creation date [and occasionally the place], medium [material], and a line summarizing when and how the museums came to possess the object.”[1] Please refer to the tombstone example, including illustration of the work and description of work, in Module 5.
In addition to the tombstone, please include a full description of the work. This constitutes a description of the visual qualities of the work. It should include a full description of subject-matter/iconography [where appropriate]; media, materials, techniques; compositional devices, design signatures. [400 words]
Analysis: This concise section uses detailed description and comparative analysis of a limited number of closely related examples [including written criticism applied to each] to evaluate the particular or significant features of your chosen work. This section builds on primary research conducted in the Identification stage and will introduce issues, cultural and contextual, that you will investigate in more depth in the Interpretation stage. It relies upon brief, but exact formal analysis of the comparisons made, but also raises points that may have broader significance in global contemporary visual culture. [500 words]
Interpretation: This section largely involves deciding and describing what problems the work of art is trying to solve/address/provoke, how this is being done conceptually, symbolically[iconographically], or ideologically, and how its original meaning registers now. Certain assumptions can easily be made about the artist’s intention in making the work and many might argue that it is impossible to evaluate the work outside of the artist’s own value system, but your task here is to use cultural context and an understanding of discourse being conducted today to apply an interpretation unique to your informed perspective. [600 words]
Evaluation: Feldman’s description of evaluation is, as we will discuss, outmoded compared with contemporary ideologies and approaches to art criticism. Your goal is not to rank art in comparison to others, nor should this section be confused with the comparative work conduct in the Analysis stage. Further, your evaluation is not about proving that you are right and other critics are wrong. To quote Frank O’Hara, supposedly quoting Franz Kline: “To be right is the most terrific personal state that nobody is interested in.” It is a good idea to seek out and contemplate other writing about your chosen artwork, but ultimately your evaluation should be a combination of critically rigorous thought, commentary on the social and historical forces that influenced the artist to make the piece in the first place, and why [or why not] the artwork is successful in imparting its message today. [500 words]
Length: Tombstone + Description — 400 words; Analysis — 500 words; Interpretation — 600 words; Evaluation — 500 words.
[1] “Writing on the Wall” In Index Magazine, Cambridge: Harvard Art Museum, May 5, 2015