I have chosen this work: José Manuel de la Cerda, Batéa: Turnus Provoked into War by Aeneas, ca. 1764, The MET Museum. I have visited the museum on Friday April 5th 2024
My Professor wanted me to:
You should visit the work and conduct as much primary and secondary research on it as possible. Your in-person studies and research will lay the foundation of an object report (no fewer than 1000 words) and annotated bibliography.
This is not a traditional academic essay in that your first paragraph will, most likely, not culminate in a thesis statement. Instead, given that the focus here is on thinking closely about one work of art and conducting good research, you should think about this report as a preliminary first step to helping envision what a research paper might look like. Thus, your object report should aim to do the following things:
Introduce your object/offer close formal description/analysis: what is the work of art and what are its salient formal, visual, and/or material qualities?
Connect the work to the person who made it: Where does this work fit into the career or practice of the artist who created it?
Situate the work in existing scholarship: What is the current scholarly understanding of the artist and/or this particular work of art? And how does your object connect, perhaps in a more thematic sense, to texts we’ve read for this class?
Address the bigger picture: What larger questions and themes does the work open onto or prompt? Given your preliminary research, what might be avenues for future research or writing? (i.e. if you had to write an essay about this work, what would the focus be?)
In terms of writing up your report, you can either present your findings in the format of a regular typed essay (12-point Times New Roman font, double spaced), or creatively as a work of art or collage of your own making that somehow incorporates or cites the visual form of your work, a short video, or a podcast-style recording. If you choose the “creative” option, it is up to you to figure out a way to incorporate written text that addresses the above categories into the project. All projects must be accompanied by a properly annotated bibliography (Chicago formatting) of at least six sources. The annotations can be brief (2-3 sentences), and should explain what the source is and why it is important.
You will be assessed on the level of detail, rigor, and thought you have put into your report. Here, categories 3 and 4 are especially important: have you conducted thorough research? Have you spent time thinking deeply about what questions and themes your work opens onto? Are these questions and themes specific, rich, and thought-provoking, or are they vague and general?
