Instructions: There are four essay questions below; select just TWO of them to answer. This
Submissions by e-mail will not be accepted, and papers
handed in after the 9th will be considered receive a late penalty, as spelled out in the syllabus.
For the questions you select, write your answer in the form of a short essay. Be sure to address
each of the things I asked about, and include all of the relevant facts. (You can address them in
any order, as long as you deal with everything I’ve asked about.) Include as much detail as you
can; doing a thorough job will help you get a better grade. Your answer should be in the form of
an essay, and not just a list of bullet points. The answers must be typed, and not handwritten.
All of the information you need to answer these questions is in the book, but you will also have
to do a little thinking and analysis on your own. You can use additional information from my
lectures if you want to, but you don’t have to. In some cases, the information you need may be in
two or more places in the book, or on two or more pages of a specific chapter. Some of the
questions may also ask for you to state an opinion on a certain topic and then back it up with
facts from the book.
When you prepare your answers, restate information from the textbook in your own words. If
you quote any text directly from the book, be sure to indicate this with quotation marks and a
page citation. Failure to do so counts as plagiarism, and you might receive no points for that
question. Don’t rely on quotes too much, though; as much as possible, your answer should be
presented in your own words. It’s also a good idea to give me a page number whenever you
mention a historical fact that is not common knowledge. (For example, it’s common knowledge
that Duchamp invented the readymade, so you don’t have to cite that, but Andre Breton’s
definition of the readymade is not as well known, so it would be a good idea to include a page
number if you mention it, even if you’re just paraphrasing his definition instead of quoting it
directly.)
I am not providing a suggested length for your answers; make them as long as you think they
need to be to answer all of the questions I’ve asked. If you’re uncertain about whether to mention
something that the book says about an artist or artwork you’ve chosen to write about, it won’t
hurt to include it if you think it’s relevant. Since you only have to answer two questions, I will
take the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your answers into account when I grade them. If an
answer doesn’t discuss things that I asked about or gets any important facts wrong, you will get a
lower grade. Be sure that you look closely at what the book says about the questions you’ve
chosen, and that you consider all of the facts carefully when you prepare your answers. If you
just do the bare minimum to get by on this exam, you may get a lower grade, especially if other
people in the class do a more thorough job in their essays.
Here are the questions:
1) One of Marcel Duchamp’s most important innovations was the invention of the readymade.
Write an essay about this, considering the following questions:
a) Exactly what is a readymade? According to Duchamp, what is anaesthesia, and how did
it influence the creation of readymades? What is an assisted readymade? What did some
of the readymades that he created look like, and/or what were they made of?
b) What was so revolutionary about the readymade, in terms of its definition of what art is
and what an artist does?
c) Why did Duchamp limit the number of readymades he created each year?
d) What did Duchamp say about the relationship between paintings and assisted
readymades? What do you think he meant when he said that? Was it just a joke?
e) Describe Duchamp’s sculpture Fountain and the role it played in the 1917 exhibition of
the New York Society of Independent Artists. What was “The Richard Mutt Case,” and
how did it relate to this?
f) Finally, what do you think of readymades? Was their effect on modern art generally
positive, or generally negative? Why do you think so? (There is no right or wrong answer
to this question; I want to see what you think, and the kind of facts and arguments you
use to support your opinion.)
2) What was the November Group in post-WWI Germany, and how (and why) did the separate
New Objectivity movement arise out of it?
a) How were the artistic and political goals of the two groups different, and what changes
within the German government led to the rise of New Objectivity?
b) Which Expressionist artist does the book discuss for the November Group, and what was
her art like? (i.e., what techniques did she use, how did the resulting artworks look, and
what moods and ideas did it tend to express in her art?)
c) Name at least two of the New Objectivity artists discussed by the book, and discuss what
their work was like, describing the styles and mediums they used, and what their work
was about (for example, the messages it was supposed to convey).
d) Compare New Objectivity to German Dada. How do you think they were similar, and
how were they different? (Cite specific facts and/or artworks to back up your answer.)
e) In your opinion, what is the effect of using art for such blatantly political purposes? Can
such art actually change the world? What kind of effect does it have on the art world, and
was that a good or bad thing? (There is no right or wrong answer to this; I want to see
what you think, and the kind of facts and arguments you use to support your opinion.)
3) What happened to Modernist painting in France after World War I?
a) How did painters respond to earlier Modernism and to the rest of art history after the
war? What caused this reaction? In what ways was French postwar art very Modern and
experimental, and in what ways was it backward-looking or conservative?
b) Who were Les Maudits? What does the name mean, and what does it refer to?
c) What are the major cultural and art-historical influences on the style of Amadeo
Modigliani’s early head sculptures?
d) How do Modigliani’s paintings of nude women relate to earlier art history in terms of
style, subject matter, and emotional impact?
e) How does the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt van Rijn show up in the
paintings of Chaim Soutine? How do Soutine’s paintings differ from those of van Gogh
and Rembrandt?
f) Do you think there was anything historically significant or influential about the works of
Les Maudits, or are they relatively unimportant to the evolution of modern art history? If
you think they’re important, then what makes them so? If you think that they’re not, then
why are they in the book at all? (This is another opinion question with no right or wrong
answer, but I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this, and the facts or
arguments you use to support what you say.)
4) Discuss the stylistic evolution of Piet Mondrian’s paintings through the early 1930s, and
what this evolution meant for the ongoing development of abstract painting. Your answer
should discuss the following things (but does not have to be limited to just these subtopics):
a) What were Mondrian’s early paintings like, and what types of older Modernist painting
was he basing them on?
b) What was Mondrian’s theory of “plasticism” (sometimes also called “Neo-plasticism”),
and how does the phrase “new reality” relate to it?
c) In what way are things like illusionistic space and traditional subject matter opposed to
Neo-plasticism? Why were things like eliminating a sense of depth and emphasizing the
flatness of the painted surface so important to Mondrian?
d) What did he do to try to make his images look flat? To explain this, discuss how the
paintings Composition in Color A and Composition 1921/Tableau No. II differ in terms of
their apparent visual depth.
e) What were Mondrian’s ideas or theories on color? Did they have a spiritual aspect?
f) On page 288 and elsewhere, terms like “divine”, “universal”, and “mystical unity” keep
appearing in relation to Mondrian’s abstraction. Why is this, and how are Mondrian’s
paintings supposed to express these sorts of concepts?
