Art history

arthistory

I'm seriously freaking out about art history. How much should you write per question? Anyone reccommend what to learn? I've done pre christian ireland and a bit of impressionism but that's it. Helpppp!!!!!

PurpleFistMixer

Hmm.. how much? Well, let's see... you've got what, 2.5 hours? To do 3 questions. So that's 50 minutes each. So looking at 4-5 pages, including sketches, I suppose. Of course no point writing 5 pages of complete waffle, but you know yourself.

Learn... more than 2 topics. This is what I learned/covered:
For European:
Renaissance/High Renaissance (Giotto to Michelangelo, those guys)
Baroque sorta yokey.. basically just Caravaggio to be honest.. we did someone else but I can't even remember their name so I obviously didn't learn them too well
Impressionism (Monet, Renoir mostly)
Expressionism/Post Impressionism/moderny thingies (Cezanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, blah blah)

For Irish:
Newgrange
High Crosses
Yeats
Georgian Architecture
Some modern Irish artists... Anne Madden, Louis le Brocquy, etc.

And for art appreciation it's mostly just... you make it up as you go along.


And I did not have enough to answer 3 questions in the exam!

In Irish art:
Newgrange came up.. with a b part on other prechristian stone carvings which we hadn't done, so I could only answer half the question.
Georgian Architecture, which I was intending on answering on, also came up, with a specific question on a house I had NEVER seen before

European art wasn't AS bad, there was a question on Picasso, which I could almost answer... and then I wrote an entire answer on JB Yeats despite him being an Irish painter (it was "write about a painter who depicts horses"), so then ended up writing an EXTRA essay about Monet, because I'd learned impressionism and bloody well wanted to get that in.

Art appreciation was grand, don't even remember what I answered on tbh. Gallery visit probably. Btw, VISIT A GALLERY. We visited a bunch of places, but I answered on a tiny exhibition of stuff by this Irish artist whose name I have now forgotten (something Maguire, deadly guy anyway), which was handy because having studied him I could get a bit of that into my answer too.


Obviously you can't learn the whole course. That's just mad. What you can do is look at papers and see if there are things that come up often (for example: Newgrange for Irish, renaissance for European) and learn them, if you want to take chances. Also there's usually a question which is sort of... they give you a painting and you talk about it. Admittedly you may be asked a b part about other works similar to it or something, but if you're completely stuck and can speak intelligently about paintings, it could be a handy one.

Drodan

You should be looking to write a minimum of 6-7 pages including good size illistrations of decent enough quality.

It's actually one of these easiest exams you can do. Sadly enough when people say just learn the four turtles, theyre right. Have three/four paintings/ sculptures for each.

Chances are La Tene is going to come up this year, if memory serves. If your able to recognise the designs and markings on a piece of metalwork you can pretty much get a good grad on any piece they throw at you.

But most importantly
GO TO A MUSEUM!!

It's a deffenate 50marker. ONe you can have your teacher correct and then perfect.

It's not as bad as you think so don't be worrying over it. Just practise your sketchs and you'll be fine.

PurpleFistMixer

Drodan wrote: »

You should be looking to write a minimum of 6-7 pages including good size illistrations of decent enough quality.

MINIMUM 6-7? Jesus. No wonder I didn't get an A1...

degausserxo

6-7 pages? Not a chance. 5, 6 maybe, including pictures. You'd run outta stuff to write by the time page 7 comes around!

xOxSinéadxOx

I'm totally freaking out about this, we barely ever do it and I just can't learn it cos it's sooo boring, well the high crosses and newgrange and all that is. I dunno, I'm ****ed

degausserxo

All we've done that past year and a bit is pre-Christian Ireland, Impressionism and Francis Bacon, and a 3x2 foot canvas painting. >_<

daggy

hmmm..
See when I did it last year, my teacher was so ****e and had us so underprepared that she never even once looked at the appreciation question , and we only wrote ONE up at the end of May.

I wrote about 4 pages per essay. some chancing my arm.. and then i actually checked my script out of curiosity and i got 100% in it! That's nuts.

I accepted happily of course!

Thing is with Art history, they can smell bull crap and waffle miles away. The more you write thats not actual concrete info , the more marks you're throwing away. Somebody once gave me great advice for the Art history exam. They said it was more a test of english and how well you could express yourself verbally. Have an opinion and know why you have it!

yera.

Saruwatari

Goddamn, I bet I failed my Art History Pre-Mock... I just wrote a load of crap on Francis Bacon and the National Gallery. :P

arthistory

Thanks so much everyone. :)Next question...how big should sketches be...i'm hoping you're gonna say about half a page because that's the only way i'm going to be able to fill five pages!:eek:

Any tips on what headings to write under in the european section? Visited 2 museums last year and going to them again this year so at least thats sorted. My art teacher just kinda skims over the history and never really gives a straight answer on exactly what kinda stuff you should be writing. All that seems to be in the art book is the artist's background and life but in the examiners report, it says that students emphasised too much on their background. Does anyone know where I could find some sample essays that got good grades.

PurpleFistMixer

Hmm, lemme see if I can remember what sort of stuff I wrote...

Say you get a question on Impressionism. It's probably going to be something like "Talk about an impressionist painting" or "Talk about Monet and the Impressionist movement, and one other painter" or something...
So say you're talking about Monet and Renoir. Stuff you'd want to talk about would be; background to the impressionist movement (Salon des Beaux Arts or whatever, that stuff), backgrounds to the painters (ie Monet was from x place and was always interested in painting y and capturing z), features of the impressionist style in terms of the painters (ie "Unusually enough Renoir used quite a lot of the colour black in his work, a shade that was almost always avoided by the impressionists... To create dark areas and shadows the impressionists combined complementary colours, blah blah blah"). Then talking about individual paintings you'll talk about really basic things, ie "Le Promenade depicts a woman standng on a hill with a parasol", talk about the colour choice, composition, once again style in light of the impressionist movement, then your own personal opinion on the painting... And if you're talking about more than one painting you could do a comparison or something.

Sketches... hmm well, the bigger it is the more detail you probably need. I kept mine reasonably small and diagram-like, mostly for illustrating composition etc., (plan for newgrange and stuff). Reasonably small though as in, half the width of the page and 1/3 the height for a portrait painting... I'd leave a nice clean area around it though.

KeyLimePie

Less Stress More Success - Art History
a total life saver

xOxSinéadxOx

^ I have that I still haven't a clue what's going on

arthistory

Thanks again, Purplefistmixer, I'll make a start on some essays now.

boobookitty

Common sense but make sure and label your diagrams/sketches properly with features so the examiner knows what you're talking about.

Loved the paper last year, Degas (European - Impressionism) was my favourite artist and a specific question came up on him and then it asked to compare to another artist. I had only learned 2 artists (Degas and Renoir) so I was lucky.

Trick in Art Appreciation is the use of adjectives. The more descriptive it is, the better. "It was round and It looked really nice" sounds pretty lame, right? Give your opinions and your own interpretation on pieces and what they mean to you.

I think you can structure an Art Appreciation as:

- Gallery background, info (introduction)
- sketches on layout of gallery
- introduce artists (general), exhibition title etc)
- first artist info (brief bio and style of art)
- piece on sculpture/painting #1
- sketches of piece 1 with labeling
- second artist info
- piece on sculpture/painting #2
- sketches of piece 2 with labeling
- conclusion

Be careful on how the question is phrased also.

That's what I do and it's been working really well for me.

arthistory

Thanks Boobookitty! You guys are life savers!! There is absolutely nothing about how to go about these essays in the book. I got the less stress, it's a million times better than the actual book!!:D

-ME-

Drodan wrote: »

You should be looking to write a minimum of 6-7 pages including good size illistrations of decent enough quality.

6-7 pages overall and not per question I assume?! God, I hope so.

Oh anyone know how many sketches you should do per essay? I usually only do one but I have a feeling I should be doing more.

xOxSinéadxOx

I think drodan means 6-7 per essay and you should definitely be doing more than one sketch!

-ME-

:eek: My art teacher is pretty experienced and he always says not to write more than 2 or 2 +1/2 pages per essay! Whenever I write more he says it's far too long for the exam. Although, 2- 3 pages of writing does seem reasonable seeing as you are also expected to include drawings which take a fair bit of time.

In relation to the illustrations here's a Q from the 2008 paper

"Caravaggio (1573-1610) was an important artist of the Baroque Period and a major innovator in
the history of painting. Discuss this statement with reference to The Supper at Emmaus,
illustrated on the accompanying sheet.
and
Name and briefly discuss one other work by Caravaggio.
Illustrate your answer."

I assume this question only requires one illustration as you are only asked about one other work by Caravaggio? No?