Category: Art

Baroque art emerged in Europe in the late 16th century and flourished until the mid-18th century. It was a period marked by grandeur, drama, and emotional intensity in art, architecture, and music. Here’s a detailed explanation of Baroque art along with some examples:
Emotionalism and Dramatic Effects: Baroque art aimed to evoke strong emotions and create a sense of drama. Artists used dynamic compositions, exaggerated gestures, and intense contrasts of light and shadow (known as chiaroscuro) to achieve this effect. This theatricality is evident in works such as Caravaggio’s “The Calling of St. Matthew,” where dramatic lighting enhances the scene’s emotional impact.
Naturalism and Realism: Baroque artists focused on depicting subjects with a high degree of naturalism and realism. This involved careful attention to detail, anatomy, and the use of realistic colors. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture “Apollo and Daphne” exemplifies this with its lifelike portrayal of the mythological figures caught in a moment of transformation.
Movement and Energy: Baroque art often conveys a sense of movement and dynamic energy. This can be seen in Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Death of Decius Mus,” where the swirling composition and dynamic poses of the figures create a sense of action and movement.
Complexity and Ornamentation: Baroque art is characterized by its ornate and decorative style. Artists and architects often incorporated intricate details, elaborate ornamentation, and rich textures into their works. The Palace of Versailles, designed by architect Louis Le Vau, is a prime example of Baroque architecture with its lavish decorations, grand scale, and symmetrical layout.
Religious and Mythological Themes: Baroque art frequently explored religious and mythological themes, often with a sense of awe and grandeur. Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes” is a powerful example of Baroque painting that combines biblical subject matter with intense emotional expression.
Illusionism and Trompe-l’œil: Baroque artists excelled in creating illusions of depth and space, often using techniques like foreshortening and trompe-l’œil (fool the eye) to create realistic effects. Andrea Pozzo’s ceiling fresco in the Church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome is a masterful example of Baroque illusionism, where architectural elements appear to extend into the sky.
Overall, Baroque art is characterized by its dynamic and emotional style, emphasis on naturalism, dramatic effects, ornate details, and exploration of religious and mythological themes. It was a period of artistic innovation and creativity that left a lasting impact on European art and culture.

Choose one of the themes below and discuss how it has affected popular music from the 1950s through the 1990s. You will need to provide multiple examples related to your chosen theme from each decade.
1- Critical Listening – Focus on stylistic elements of popular music genres and how these musical elements have evolved over time. How have musical genres borrowed different elements from each other? How have song forms, instrumentation, melodies/rhythms, timbre, and the lyrical content of popular music evolved throughout our course? You should cite and compare multiple audio examples from each unit to address this topic.
2- Music and Identity – How has popular music been shaped by individual and group identity throughout our course? How does music in turn reflect these ideas surrounding identity? Issues such as race, social structure, age, gender, fashion/trends, and politics should be addressed. How does music shape your personal identity?
3- Music and Technology – How has technology affected our popular music evolution? You may consider both the technology of creating/performing music as well as the technology for distributing, receiving, and consuming music.
4- The Music Business– What role has the music business played in affecting our popular music development? How has it changed, how has it stayed the same, what are some of the issues it has struggled with. Some ideas to consider are music genre creation, marketing, cross-promotion, copyright/licensing laws, and racial segregation.
5- Centers and Peripheries – This topic refers to the relationship between “mainstream” culture and its tendency to absorb cultural practices and styles that originate in minority communities. What are the primary centers of music production and why? Why do musical styles shift from the peripheries of society to the center or “mainstream” and what happens to the music when they do?
Your paper should be 7 pages (double-spaced, standard tabs) and include clearly organized paragraphs of content that move the reader chronologically through the decades with regards to your chosen thematic topic. You should only need to refer to the content from this course, but if you use any outside sources, please cite those sources at the end of your paper.

You are required to write a 7-page (double-spaced, standard tabs) research paper about a musical culture NOT covered in this course. Areas covered in this course include India, Indonesia, Japan, Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, so you can choose any part of the world OTHER than these. Some areas to consider are: Native America, Polynesia, Australia, China, Korea, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Arctic Circle…. wherever, as long as it’s not covered in our course.
For this assignment, please use Nettl’s 3-part model, addressed in “Unit 1: Introduction” and Chapter 1 in our textbook. Focus on the Sounds, Behaviors and Ideas or Conceptions that govern the sounds and behaviors of the musical genre/activity you choose. It’s best if you stick to a specific genre or ensemble from whatever region you choose for this research paper. For example, if you wanted to write about music from Spain, don’t try to summarize all Spanish music (too broad, too big) but pick a specific genre or activity to focus on, such as Flamenco. Want to research Hawaiian music? Stick to hula or string bands. The point is, focus on one genre or activity from a region and give in-depth details, not just a broad, surface cultural overview.
Sound:
What sounds are you hearing? Talk about the instruments (and voices) of the musical genre/activity. What are they made of and what do they sound like? Are there any rules or restrictions surrounding these instruments, like who can play or when one can play? Can you comment on the texture and form of the music? Texture refers to layers of activity. How many musicians are present and how do they relate to one another? Form refers to how the music is organized and presented,. How long does a performance last and how are the melodies and rhythms arranged. Lastly, what does the music sound like to you, the outsider?
Behaviors:
What activities are associated with this musical genre/activity? What are people doing while this musical activity is happening? Is there a specific purpose or function surrounding this music, or is it just for enjoyment/entertainment? Does this musical activity have any behavioral restrictions regarding religion, age or gender? Is everyone participating communally or are the musicians/singers/dancers presenting music to an audience…. why? Lastly, can you draw any connections to musical behaviors in your life or culture?
Ideas/Conceptions:
What ideas or conceptions govern the sounds and behaviors of your chosen musical genre/activity? Why are people creating this music and why are people participating? Address ideas surrounding history, culture and musical evolution. Most musical genres throughout the world express indigenous and foreign, or outsider aspects. What traits are uniquely regional, or indigenous, and what traits are coming from an outside influence and why? Again, almost all music has a combination of both! How have politics, religion or human migration affected this musical genre/activity? Lastly, can you relate what you learned to your own life experiences?

Three things have characterized this term and our class: (1) we have been looking broadly at Italian Renaissance art and the visual culture early modern Italy; (2) we have regularly talked about current events, their importance in our lives, and their connections—from specific to general— to an understanding and interpretation of art and its history in that particular period; and (3) you have composed written reflections on topics of your choosing inspired by course materials and discussions. The thread that links all three of these is the idea that art, even of the Renaissance past, is a connecting reality in the human experience and that all interpretations of art are not universal and timeless but context-specific and conditioned by current realities, events, attitudes, and perspectives. Your final examination builds these three features of our course
Your assignment is to compose an essay around a theme or argument of your own choosing that introduces and is structured around a single work of Italian Renaissance art and invites the reader to consider and deepen understanding of that work in relation to a contemporary issue, development, controversy, event, reality, theory, or perspective (contemporary, that meaning contemporary to 2024). This assignment must have a primary focus on the work of art and include a visual description and the basic facts of the work: fundamentally the who, what, where, when, and how of its making and initial historical appearance. Much as characterized your written reflections, your final exam essay should have a discernible subject/definite theme (in this case, your chosen work of art and the specific point or thesis you are developing about it), and it should have an introductory paragraph, developing paragraphs, and a conclusion. Most importantly, your essay needs to read as something well beyond simply a dry assemblage of facts about a work of art—in other words, not a purely factual report—, but it should impress the reader as an essay that is about a work of art as seen and understood through the interpretive, informing perspective of an idea that you have about that work or a way of seeing that work in an innovative, eye-opening way in relation to, again, current realities, events, attitudes, and perspectives.
I would suggest that you approach this essay in one of two ways: Either (1) choose a work of Italian Renaissance art that intrigues you and you’d like to deepen that intrigue by connecting it to a current reality, event, attitude, or perspective; or (2) identify a current reality, event, attitude, or perspective that interests, animates, perplexes, or even angers you and select an Italian work based on that intrigue. Pick the approach that suites you best and gives you a novel way—that really interests and excites you!—for introducing, developing, and driving home a point about your work.
I’d like you to think of your final exam essay in this way: On the one hand, you want to be really invested in an idea and your creative connecting of that idea to a work of art to the extent that your reader comes away from your essay saying something like “Wow, that was really interesting; I never would have thought about that work of Renaissance art in that particular and interesting way!”; On the other hand, in 10, 20, 50, or 70 years from now, think about looking back to your final essay for this course as an interesting, telling artifact of the fact that you took this course in 2022 and that a particular subject was deeply on your mind at that time. Have creative, intellectual fun with this. Your essay can take a form that ranges anywhere from the serious to the comedic; the important thing is that you guide your reader into both seeing visually and understanding intellectually, in a novel way, the work of art you have chosen.
Specific Requirements
Your essay should:
be submitted to the class Isidore site by the end of our official examination period, May 1 by 12:00 p.m.
have a title, followed by a one-sentence summary that indicates the work of art you are writing about, the theme you are addressing, and the point you are making.
contain an image of your work of art that immediately follows your title and the aforementioned one-sentence summary.
after its title and summary sentence, start with an introduction, followed by a set of body paragraphs and a conclusion.Note: a good conclusion should be more than merely a summary of what you have just written; it should move the topic you have been discussing to another level, or point of consideration or importance. In other words, give your reader something really to ponder in your conclusion, not just a dry, uninformative re-stated return to what you have already written.
be written not to me, as your professor, or in the first person; rather, it should be written in a style much like you would read in a magazine or journal for a general audience unknown to the reader; absolutely do not spend your introduction going over your journey of thought toward your subject. That just wastes valuable time, space, and your reader’s attention. Your journey to the topic is not what is interesting or important; what you have to say, both directly and evocatively, about your subject is what really matters to a reader who is going to interested in (a) your subject; and (b) what your particular idea is about your subject.
be 2-4 pages in length.
Include, at the end of your essay, a a brief annotated bibliography of 2-4 references.This annotated bibliography, for each reference, should be a 1-3 sentence statement in which you note the relevance of the reference to your topic and its importance in the development of your thesis about your chosen work of art.
Note: You do not need to quote from your references in your paper (though you might if that is fitting and relevant to your argument); in other words, only quote your sources if that advances your argument, with the idea here being that references—again like those you used for your written reflections—simply helped you get more informed, sophisticated, and subtle in your thoughts about your work of art and the idea that you have about it.
well-written and carefully-edited.

We have looked at three Davids: Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo. Compare and contrast two of them. How are they similar and how are they different? You’re welcome to look ahead to the next chapters to include the Bernini. Tell me about them – don’t just provide a few sentences, fluff, or give me a history of the Renaissance. Tell me about the sculptures, use vocab, compare and contrast – what are they wearing, what is the moment the artist chose to depict, what are the approximate ages, the poses, the sizes, etc.?
Written response: this will be a regular journal assignment responding to the prompt. There should be specific examples. Don’t just tell me “in the Lamentation,” but WHERE specifically, “the emotion is seen on Mary’s face within the Lamentation scene.” I cannot stress this enough. Two to three paragraphs of good information that answers the question – no fluff, not giving me background on the artist, the movement, elaborating on the Biblical story, etc. Only relevant facts that pertain to the question
Write in your own words!!

We have looked at three Davids: Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo. Compare and contrast two of them. How are they similar and how are they different? You’re welcome to look ahead to the next chapters to include the Bernini. Tell me about them – don’t just provide a few sentences, fluff, or give me a history of the Renaissance. Tell me about the sculptures, use vocab, compare and contrast – what are they wearing, what is the moment the artist chose to depict, what are the approximate ages, the poses, the sizes, etc.?
Written response: this will be a regular journal assignment responding to the prompt. There should be specific examples. Don’t just tell me “in the Lamentation,” but WHERE specifically, “the emotion is seen on Mary’s face within the Lamentation scene.” I cannot stress this enough. Two to three paragraphs of good information that answers the question – no fluff, not giving me background on the artist, the movement, elaborating on the Biblical story, etc. Only relevant facts that pertain to the question
Write in your own words!!

1st PERSONAL REFLECTION DISCUSSION – ART 100
Feb 16 at 10:12am
9898 unread replies.108108 replies.
DISCUSSION PARAMETERS
No links or attachments in discussion. Not ever.
READ THE PARAMETERS FIRST BEFORE YOU POST A DISCUSSION. Invariably, a few students gloss the parameters, get it wrong, and then become very upset when the essay is rejected or downgraded for a failure to meet project requirements.
Need help? Or just want to discuss the subject of your posting before you commit to it? Write to my inbox! That’s what I’m here for!
Strict 400 WORD LIMIT on the initial post. Anything beyond that will not be graded. So edit. Be concise.
OK kids, what do you think? That’s what I’ll be asking you every few weeks or so. Your job for this discussion, and for all the rest, is pretty open-ended, within the stated parameters. I’ll be doing this same assignment right along with you, since I never quit being a student of the subject. Please treat my postings as you would any other.
1. Select ANY IMAGE from the first 7 lessons of this class that has some PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE for you. Personal significance, that is strong emotional or critical reaction to the image you choose is the entire point of this discussion. Choose from the modules. You may also discuss a related Image that is not in the modules, but ask the professor first. Avoid the big, famous post-card stuff like “Leonardo’s last Supper” because it’s low-hanging fruit and previous students have done it to death. Show me that you’ve done a deeper dive into the material. By the same token, If you select an image not relevant to the parameters, it will be deleted for being OFF-TOPIC. Off-TOPIC posts just confuse the discussion.
2. Do some research about the image and the artist and know a little bit about them. This need not be more than a few introductory words. Statements like ” I don’t know what that guy with the beard is holding but it looks like a stick maybe” just make you look foolish. Do a little work and find out who the guy is, what he’s doing and so on.
3. Write a PERSONAL REFLECTION about what the image means to YOU, how it informs YOUR your life or YOUR experience. This is the most critical item. DO NOT just give the class a few dull, Generic facts cribbed out of wikipedia or worse, padded with AI generated rhetoric. That’s a rip-off, and it’s not what this assignment is about. Write with your own voice. Nobody in this class is a robot. Don’t sound like one.Don’t try to sound like an Art critic or a travelogue reporter either. Proof read for sense and spelling by all means but never undermine your own voice.
Traditional testing tells me which facts about the course content you have have acquired, but discussions tell me how you’re applying that knowledge. Both are vital, and weigh equally in your grade assessment. In fact, no student may pass this course without the ability to put thoughts into written English. Make no mistake, literacy is a big deal. It’s also a project requirement. A few Students have tried to pass this course without doing any written assignments.
The end was sad, so please, don’t go there.
4. Post the image you selected along with a personal reflection essay of 250 -400 words. ALWAYS post in the discussion window. Links will not be graded. If I see a link in your discussion it tells me that you didn’t read the parameters.
5. You’re NOT done my friend. You need to RESPOND to at least TWO other student posts with thoughtful and considered replies that bring OTHER IDEAS to the discussion. Responses are fully half of your grade, so don’t blow ’em off. A perfunctory “Yeah, I totally agree with like you said, gotta go now…” won’t cut it, You may even enhance your response with other images that can be from any place or time by way of comparison. This is what makes the assignment into a discussion as opposed to a monolog.
Initial essays WITH NO IMAGE VISIBLE WILL NOT BE GRADED
Again, PLEASE DO NOT POST LINKS OR ATTACHMENTS, NOT EVER. They just get in the way of grading and responding,
100 points possible

Choose one of the themes below and discuss how it has affected popular music from the 1950s through the 1990s. You will need to provide multiple examples related to your chosen theme from each decade.
1- Critical Listening – Focus on stylistic elements of popular music genres and how these musical elements have evolved over time. How have musical genres borrowed different elements from each other? How have song forms, instrumentation, melodies/rhythms, timbre, and the lyrical content of popular music evolved throughout our course? You should cite and compare multiple audio examples from each unit to address this topic.
2- Music and Identity – How has popular music been shaped by individual and group identity throughout our course? How does music in turn reflect these ideas surrounding identity? Issues such as race, social structure, age, gender, fashion/trends, and politics should be addressed. How does music shape your personal identity?
3- Music and Technology – How has technology affected our popular music evolution? You may consider both the technology of creating/performing music as well as the technology for distributing, receiving, and consuming music.
4- The Music Business– What role has the music business played in affecting our popular music development? How has it changed, how has it stayed the same, what are some of the issues it has struggled with. Some ideas to consider are music genre creation, marketing, cross-promotion, copyright/licensing laws, and racial segregation.
5- Centers and Peripheries – This topic refers to the relationship between “mainstream” culture and its tendency to absorb cultural practices and styles that originate in minority communities. What are the primary centers of music production and why? Why do musical styles shift from the peripheries of society to the center or “mainstream” and what happens to the music when they do?
Your paper should be 7 pages (double-spaced, standard tabs) and include clearly organized paragraphs of content that move the reader chronologically through the decades with regards to your chosen thematic topic. You should only need to refer to the content from this course, but if you use any outside sources, please cite those sources at the end of your paper.