"What Might Have Been...A Critical Study in Art History"

by W. Douglas Waterfield, Assistant Professor of Art

Background: In an attempt to make art history more than simply a lecture class, I decided to take advantage of the fact that all of my Art History III students were also art majors, and therefore had artistic abilities.

Goals

• University Goal: Students will communicate effectively to inform, understand, analyze and persuade.
• Classroom Goal: To understand how artistic trends continue both through the history of art as a whole as well as through the career of a particular artist

Assignment

• The student will select a deceased artist of their choice from the time period covered by this class (1840 - Current). After selecting the artist, the student will examine in detail the life and career of that artist, focusing particularly on the last decade or so of their artistic output. After sufficient examination, the student will create a work of art in the style of that artist, had the artist lived an additional five years. They are to consider elements affecting the artist's work, such as late trends in style and subject matter, environement, personal life and their mental and physical states. The work of art will also be accompanied by a brief (7 page) paper defending their hypothesis on why they feel this artist would have done what they did.

Scoring

• The paper was graded according to guidelines put forth by the MLA, as well as for content, accuracy and meeting the critieria of the assignment as stated on the website.
• The art project was graded according to technical skill, meeting criteria of assignment, presentation (they hung in the gallery for a week as a show,) accuracy of subject matter, accuracy of style, accuracy of media and overall impression
• The students also had to produce written evaluations of each other's projects as well as a brief explanatory paragraph to be posted next to the work explaining their thoughts and reasoning.
• Paper = 100 points, Art project =100 points

Feedback to Teacher

• I saw this assignment as an overall success. It required them to not only learn the facts about art, but begin to see how influences affect artists and movements and subsequent artists and movements. I was impressed with the majority of the products. They were well thought out and well-defended in their papers. There were a few that were late and incomplete. As a whole, the students were also very pleased with themselves and, though it was "homework," they enjoyed doing it. I was disappointed in the quality of the writing for the most part (grammatical errors, misspellings, etc.) Even with that, I would definitely give this assignment again. I would specify that the works needed to be ready for exhibition - most of these were not. I assumed that since I told them they would be exhibited that they would make appropriate preparations.

Examples of Previous Projects