discuss Hannah Höch’s “Da-Dandy” and Liubov Popova’s “Clothes for Actor No. 6” as linked or contrasted through criteria of your choice using one or more of the critical theory approaches listed below, minimum 1000 words. Follow MLA conventions in setting up your paper and in citing sources. Use a minimum of 3–5 sources.
Design history covers everyday human creativity from 30,000 BCE to the present. In order to understand the stories and significance of design, we can look at it through a variety of lenses. Each brings a slightly different perspective that can help to expand our understanding of its social and economic context, and any power relationships at play. Use the same common approaches for this assignment as your previous paper:
Critical theory
We are using critical theory, or ‘social critical theory’ as a broad umbrella term for a variety of methodologies that attempt to understand artwork by considering the societal structures and pressures that might have influenced it. Critical theory for our purposes includes Marxist theory, feminist and queer theory, and post-colonialism.
Marxism
While named after the famous philosopher and economist Karl Marx, Marxist art history more broadly examines art based on the economic and social conditions that informed the artist and the work. Through the Marxist lens, artwork is examined in relation to class, mass-production, and/or society, in its depiction or fabrication. Marxist criticism looks at social and power relationships and economic issues. It is concerned the impact of oppressive systems, including the social injustices of class systems.
Feminism and Queer theory
In the 1970s, during the developing feminist movement, feminist art criticism emerged as a way to examine both visual representations of women in art and art produced by women. For generations, women have been under-represented in the art world, and the feminist lens in art history has been pivotal in dismantling underlying assumptions around gender and artistic ability. Just as Feminist theory works to broaden art theory past the male-centric viewpoint, Queer theorists challenge the discourse regarding heteronormativity, expanding the artistic dialog to include queer artists and artwork, and to re-evaluate art history to include historically marginalized sexualities. Like Marxism, feminist and queer theory are based on the philosophy that history is never neutral. Here it is often concerned with issues around gender. This approach looks at designed objects as acts that bring categories of social structures into being—for example, a painting of a women who has committed adultery and is abandoned by her lover might bring the category of the fallen woman into being. Discourses like design regulate attitudes less by denying them than enabling them, for instance in depicting the rewards of socially sanctioned behavior that present heteronormative values, or representations of power as a normalized, legitimate viewpoint.
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism examines the impact of colonialism and imperialism in art, with an eye to the control and exploitation of native peoples, the politics of knowledge, and the constructions of political power that sustain it. Postcolonialism maintains that universal claims about a work are mistaken because they assume a white, Western identity or position as a template for all people. Postcolonial theory considers the view from a lens outside the mainstream—like the voice of the colonized instead of the colonizer. It deals with the interaction between imperial and indigenous cultures, most notably between Western imperial nations and their colonies (but not exclusively). It looks at what happens to cultures when they meet, what the material effects of colonization are, how the process changes the way people think, act, write, paint, and so on. It is also concerned with the ways in which the colonized change the colonizer’s culture. Some theorists think of this through the lens of hybridity—to emphasize that cultures are not single, pure formations, but are mixtures of different ethnic and cultural components and traditions. Cultures interact and shape each other through exchange. This last point should be approached with caution, as it can ignore the problems of history and the real harms that continue from colonialist practices.
PROCESS: PREPARATION
Your research question is the question about the topic that the paper will answer. The question should be posed in such a way that the answer will not be obvious to most people.
Researching and taking notes: You need to collect sources and take notes. Use post-its or print and highlight facts or quotes you think are important. Index cards can be useful because you can shuffle them to create structure.
Forming a thesis:
Your thesis answers the research question. It is one complete sentence about the work. It is precise enough to limit the material. It is general enough to need support. It is defensible. It isn’t too obvious.
Proof questions:
After you have found a thesis, you need to support or prove it. Turn your thesis statement into a question that begins with How or Why. Answers to this question will support or prove your thesis. For this paper, you should limit your proof questions to three to five. You can develop an outline from these questions.
Introduction:
You might write the body of the paper before the introduction to be more certain what it should say, but some people like to write it first. Your introduction should:
Identify the work and the maker or group of makers and/or funder or power center likely to have commissioned it if known. Tell who, what, when, and where. The why comes later.
State your thesis and list your points of proof in paragraph form. End with the final point of proof and without a summary statement.
PROCESS: WRITING
Body of the paper:
Group your evidence and give it a logical organization from which to construct paragraphs. In each paragraph, use a topic sentence that makes a general claim that will be supported by the evidence. You can re-state your assertion in a concluding sentence if you think that will help the reader. A smooth transition from one idea to the next can be helped by expressions like, for example, nevertheless, or however. Some useful transitions:
Additional idea: and, also, in addition, too
Alternative idea: more importantly, furthermore, moreover, or
Comparison: similarly, likewise
Contrast: but, yet, however, on the other hand, conversely
Numbered ideas: first, second, third, finally
Result: so, hence, therefore, consequently, thus, then
Exemplification: for example, for instance, in fact
Summary: in short, on the whole, to sum up, in other words
Conclusion:
Conclusions need a controlling idea. They shouldn’t repeat what the reader has already read. Some ideas to help:
Return to an illustration or anecdote alluded to in the introduction with new meaning
Use a quote
Predict the future of a situation or issue
Tell the current status of the issue
Discuss the broader implications of the object
Call your readers to action
Cite sources:
Use MLA to cite sources. Reference the guide provided.
Write a title
Give your paper its own title, not the title of the work it discusses. Use title case, which means that prepositions and articles are lowercase and everything else is capitalized (first letter only, not all caps). All proper, not descriptive titles of works should be in italic, including any in the title.
