Artist Investigation Assignment

Artist Investigation Project
College of Mount St. Joseph
Kurt Nicaise/ Instructor

Purpose: This project is designed to expand your awareness of drawing as an artistic expression and your knowledge of contemporary artists.

Important!
To complete the assignment you must make one post and you must respond to the posts of classmates at least six times throughout the semester.

Your post will be your Artist Investigations consisting of 5 parts:
1. Artworks - you should research and select 6-10 quality images of your chosen artist and post these to the blog. These images should be drawings (or works where drawing is involved). Works should be labeled with the title, medium and year.

2. Biography - you should research the artist’s lives and include a short biographical synopsis. In addition you should identify 5 aspects of their life story that interests or intrigues you and list these in a bulleted format.

3. Theme and Style - you should find information that identifies the artist’s predominant theme and style. Style refers to the constant, recurring, or coherent traits present in the artist’s body of work. For example, Chuck Close is known as a photorealist. This is his style.

4. Analyze - you should select one of your chosen works and analyze it based on the elements of art and principles of design. Why is this work impressive? How does the composition contribute to its success? You may also choose to comment on material and media use in the artwork.

5. Personal Response - you should write a 250 - 300 word personal response to the artists work. This is mostly made up of statements about what you think. Use your critical thinking skills. Don’t be overly superlative or disingenuous with your comments. Don’t reiterate observations or biographical findings; tell us how they impacted your thoughts. What did you find interesting about them or their works? Why? What emotional response did it elicit in you? Were there aspects of their lives that you found interesting? Why?

Possible Artist to Investigate for Figure Drawing:
Eric Fischl
Lucien Freud
Frida Kahlo
Jenny Saville
Jim Dine
Edvard Munch
William DeKooning
Chalres White
Paul Cadmus
Kathe Koolwitz
Alice Neel
Andrew Wyeth
Rico Lebrun
Alberto Giacometti
Richard Diebenkorn
William Beckman
John Currin
Philip Pearlstein

Our Blog Posting schedule:
Please find your name and post your Artist Investigation by that date.

February 8th: Sherri Barry, Adrian Vance
February 22nd: Neale Druffel, Tyler Ehrnschwender
March 8th: Ashlee Griffith, Travis Mikolay, Kevnin Coconaugher
March 22nd: Patty Queener, Sandy Shockley
April 5th: Erin Sprague, Micheller Thoman