Art 310
Fall 2011
Art Now
Professor Hoy
ICA Response Paper
Assignment:
Due Thursday, October 13
2 pages, double spaced. 12 pt. Times New Roman, 1 inch margins.
Please attach your ticket stub from your museum visit
Any sources you use for additional information about this painting MUST BE CITED
in proper MLA or Chicago format.
To complete this assignment, please take a trip individually or in a group to the ICA
Boston. Thursday nights from 5 to 9 pm the museum offers free admission to the
public.
Please select one or more works from either of the two exhibitions we will be
touring as a class: Eva Hesse: Studiowork or Swoon: Anthropocene Extinction.
Consder how these works relate to the issues we have been discussing concerning
contemporary art. Some possible questions to contemplate and address in your
paper include: How do these works intersect with or deviate from the modernist
program of painting, as articulated by Greenberg? How do they relate to and or
extend the notion of “painting”? What is their relationship to the notion of space—
how do these works speak to or challenge the way that painting creates a sense of
spatiality? What are these works trying to accomplish—how do they redefine the
notion of the work of art as a unified, discrete object? What kinds of experience do
these works activate?
Before you start writing, use your preliminary answer to these questions, or a set of
questions of your own devising, to formulate a distinct thesis: that is, a claim for
which you must supply evidence and an argument to prove. In other words, your
claim should not be of “the sky is blue” or “Hesse’s work is interesting” variety. The
former is a truism, while the latter is too general and based on unfounded opinion to
be of value to a potential reader. You should point out not only that either Hesse’s or
Swoon’s work is interesting, but engage more specifically with the question of how
these works use specific mechanisms to advance their internal argument(s). Every
artwork is making an implicit argument—it is your job to define and interpret how
and why this argument is being made. What is the piece you have chosen trying to
be “about,” and what devices does it use to telegraph what it is “about” to a viewer?
Compose a 3-4 page essay that clearly states your claim and uses the body of the
paper to prove that claim. The conclusion need not reiterate what you have already
written, but should rather point to further conclusions or new ideas about these
works and its larger social, political or aesthetic implications to which your essay
might lead.