REFLECT: Avoid the including the features in these non-examples 

Does it have the features of these examples?

Avoid including the features in these non-examples: Non-example 1, Non-example 2

How well did you compose your report?

 


Avoid including the features in these non-examples

Non-Example #1
Report on Exabition (spelling error)  

The first exhibition that I viewed was at the University gallery on October the ninth at about 2:00. It was a fairly small exhibit with about fifteen to twenty pieces. Many pieces were interesting but the piece that I chose I picked merely because I did not particularly understand it. It was >a painting by Francis Alys done in 1996 with no title and shown courtesy of ACME in Santa Monica. It was three buildings with curtains or doors on top of them. It was done with oil and encaustic on canvas but on the left and right sides of it were two similar works of art by Enrique Huerta and Emilio Rivera. The other two portrayed the same characteristics except were done with enamel on sheet metal. The doors on the buildings were the type of things you could put in like a studio apartment to simulate a wall but all the doors were facing different directions (this sentence is unclear). The gray clouds made me feel like the reason the doors or curtain like walls (unclear) were there because the buildings had something to hide. Although the buildings were gray, orange, and green and did not look very official, they could represent some kind of corporate building or other administration that have certain secrets they don't want revealed whether it be to the public or whom ever (grammar error). I'm sure everyone got their own interpretations from the pieces but for a while I did not know what to think of this vividly colorful set of buildings. If a title was included I would have been able to see more of what the artist was thinking or feeling but then again he may have just wanted the viewers to form their own impressions.    

Why is this a non-example?
-The author identified the where and when of the exhibition, but did not describe the purpose of the exhibit. The topic, theme or kind of show it was is not conveyed.
-This single piece of work is not described in terms of its elements, principles, kind, historically, socially, or culturally
-The author did not describe his own perceptions and feelings of the work
-Overall, the author tended to demonstrate what he didn't know about the piece rather than what he did know.


Non-example #2
"San Diego Museum of Photographic Art"  

On October 24th I visited the Museum of Photographic Art. Entitled "under the Dark Cloth" the exhibition concerned the view camera in contemporary photography. A view camera represents a technology developed in the nineteenth century that a number of contemporary photographers use to record those scenes and depictions in a manner termed artistic. To establish that the view camera requires a deep and abiding commitment on the part of the photographer/artist, consider what the exhibition introduction quotes from Robert Adams' The American space: Meaning in 19th century Landscape Photography (1983): "One does not for long wrestle a view camera in the wind and heat and cold just to illustrae a philosophy. The thing that keeps you scramblling over the rocks, risking snakes, and swatting at flies is the view. It is only your enjoyment of and commitment to what you see, not to what you rationally understand, that balances the otherwise absurd investment of labor." (goes off the topic of the exhibition here, this is a digression)  

James Fee (b. 1949) uses a view camera. He states that the past is very much part of his work, even to the point that he employs an old technology to render his scenes. In his series from 1994-96, Fee uses toned gelatin silver prints to record images of bygone industrial America with its cast-off objects and failed systems. Fee aims to present us with various symbols of abandonment and decay.  

In 1995, Fee photographed the ruins of the oldest prison in the US at an abandoned site known as the Eastern State Penitentiary. This prison opened in 1829 and incorporated Jeremy Bentha's panopticon design so effectively criticized by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish. (doesn't show the relationship of criticism to the prison to the art) Fee recorded 8' x 12' cells, each illuminated by a skylight and equipped with a work station to occupy the prisoners. His work evokes the lonely world of each past occupant who one can imagine confined to such a circumscribed space.  

Why is this a non-example?

-The author describes the exhibition well, but digresses to the philosophy behind the tool instead of focusing on the theme of the exhibition
-In the last paragraph, the author appears to begin describing the elements and principles,but refers to a criticism of the prison instead of presenting further information on the work of art.
-There is no information about the author's
personal reaction to the work

   

REFLECT: Avoid the Including the Features Noted in these Non-Examples 

Does it have the features of these examples?

Avoid including the features in these non-examples: Non-example 1, Non-example 2

How well did you compose your report?

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School of Art, Design and Art History | San Diego State University