Research Guides: Research in the Art LIbrary: Research Basics

Writing for Art & Art History

A Short Guide to Writing about Art by Sylvan Barnet
This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.

The following guides to art research and writing can help you develop your visual analysis skills and writing style.

Writing about Art by Henry M. Sayre
This straightforward guide prepares students to describe, interpret, and write about works of art in meaningful and lasting terms. This efficient book features a step-by-step approach to writing-from choosing a work to write about, to essay organization, to research techniques, to footnote form, to preparing the final essay.
Writing Art History by Margaret Iversen; Stephen W. Melville
In Writing Art History, Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville explore assumptions at Art History's foundation. Their project is to excavate the lost continuities between philosophical aesthetics, contemporary theory, and art history. The authors propose what kind of writing might help the discipline to better imagine its actual practices and its potential futures.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk; E. B. White
The Elements of Style–the most widely read and employed English style manual–is used extensively by individual writers as well as college students of writing, it has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers.

The Writing Process

Getting Started:

You may choose to focus on an artist, a work of art, an art movement, or consider a larger theme that encompasses multiple artists, works, or periods, based on your course assignment. Whatever your topic, be sure to formulate an engaging thesis statement to grab your reader. Placed in the introduction, your thesis should clarify exactly what you wish to argue or demonstrate throughout the rest of the paper.

Conducting Research:

When you have chosen a topic, begin gathering relevant resources from the library's collections of books and journals. Use Database Finder for online access to journal articles and digital image collections. Once you have a good sense of your research begin outlining your argument.

Citing your Sources:

It is extremely important to cite the resources used in your research, both in the text and in the bibliography page at the end of your paper. Generally, footnotes or endnotes, rather than parenthetical (in-text) citations, are used for art research papers. The ARt History and ARchaeology program uses the Chicago Style to format footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and the table of contents. Check out this guide to general citation practices, and our guide to art history citations. Using a bibliographic citation manager as you begin your work is extremely useful and makes citations simple.

Writing:

Writing for art and art history is usually formal in style and analytical in content. Following the guidelines provided by your professor, you will likely need to devote a significant portion of your paper to visually analyzing one or more works of art. The guides to writing about art in the left-hand column of this page will help you hone your visual analysis and writing skills.

Editing:

This final step before submitting your paper is one of the most important. The editing process can turn a mediocre paper into an engaging and professional one. The first step is to read through it several times on your own, both silently and aloud. Reading aloud will make any awkward constructions or run-on sentences apparent. If you can, have a friend read your paper to catch the mistakes you missed. You can also take your paper to the English Department's Writing Center where a trained student will help you edit your paper for free!

Formatting your Paper:

Consult the guidelines provided by your professor for this particular course. Your syllabus should indicate which style manual you should use. In general, your paper should include an introduction, a body of several or many paragraphs to develop your thesis statement, a conclusion, and a bibliography. You will likely need to include an appendix of images discussed in your paper.

Methods & Historiography

The Art of Art History by Donald Preziosi
A masterful selection of the most influential and innovative writing on art history of the past two centuries. The book includes over thirty pieces by seminal thinkers and writers. Subjects include aesthetics and anthropology, postmodern automatons, semiotics and iconography, performative acts, the museum as ritual, digital art, and many others. Each of the book's eight thematic sections offers an introduction providing background information, further reading, and critical commentary on the issues at stake.

What is art history? How do scholars conduct research and write about art history today? How did they do so in the past? These are the types of questions answered in the following texts on art historical methodologies and historiographies. Essentially, these texts present the history of art history and the methods of writing used in the past and present. You may write a paper with an eye toward the social history of art, adhere to iconographic analysis in the tradition of Erwin Panofsky, or use a combination of methods -- the choice is yours, unless specified by your professor.

Art History by Michael Hatt; Charlotte Klonk
This book provides a lively and stimulating introduction to methodological debates within art history. Offering a lucid account of approaches from Hegel to post-colonialism, the book provides a sense of art history's own history as a discipline from its emergence in the late-eighteenth century to contemporary debates.
Critical Terms for Art History by Robert S. Nelson (Editor); Richard Shiff (Editor)
"Art" has always been contested terrain, whether the object in question is a medieval tapestry or Duchamp's Fountain. But questions about the categories of "art" and "art history" acquired increased urgency during the 1970s, when new developments in critical theory and other intellectual projects dramatically transformed the discipline. Consists of essays that cover a wide variety of "loaded" terms in the history of art, from sign to meaning, ritual to commodity. Each essay explains and comments on a single term, discussing the issues the term raises and putting the term into practice as an interpretive framework for a specific work of art.
Art History and Its Methods by Eric Fernie
Approaches to the history of art are probably more varied and more debated than in any other branch of history, and a study of different historical approaches has become an increasingly important component of many student courses. This critical anthology brings together the work of 27 influential art historians and writers from the Renaissance to the present day; key texts have been chosen in which the authors reflect on the nature of their subject and on their own methods of inquiry.

Basic Library Skills

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources

The following guides to information resources address a variety of basic questions about the research process: