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ArH 319u Modern Japanese Painting Paper Guidelines. Spring 2021.
Plagiarism is not allowed (plagiarized paper will receive F for the paper and report to the Dean of
the Students). Please refer to the Universities rules about plagiarism.
First consult the books on reserve, and go find articles and books and dig the original research
materials. All the information should be footnoted. For footnotes format, you have to choose one
style and be consistent. Usually art history papers use the Chicago manual. See
http://chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide, but because of pandemic I will not insist on
this format.
Paper Requirements:
- The topic must be on one modern or contemporary Japanese or Chinese, or Korean artist.
- 5-10 pages double spaced not including image or bibliography or cover page.
If you plan to submit for art history scholarship competition, you can write to 10 pages.
- Title page should be included but is not considered part of the paper. Please include your name,
class, teacher’s name, and date.
- At least 5 different references (2 scholarly sources and 3 can be from internet) in Chicago (foot/
end note) formatting; MLA format or other format are required. A separate bibliography is
required. Footnotes/endnotes require specific page number. (Bibliography of a book does not
require page numbers. Bibliography of the articles require page numbers of the entire article).
Also include the website sources with accession date.
- for Modern Japanese painting paper, references should be from legitimate sources such as
academic journals, books, or textbooks. Artstor, Jstor, and other such sites can be found on the
PSU Library Website. Using Wikipedia is allowed but you cite in the endnotes and bibliography.
Otherwise you will be charged with plagiarism. Personal websites, artist’s websites, blogs, can
be used. Even contacting the artist to get the answer are allowed. Online lecture notes is not
considered a legitimate source. But you can use these information for the contemporary artists.
You have to dig original materials from any sources.
-For Contemporary (the artist is alive) Japanese painting paper, you can use the websites of the
artist in the footnotes and images.
- Pages must be numbered either at the end or at the top of the page. I encourage you to include
your last name.
- At least one reference image is required and can be drawn, photocopied, or downloaded. Images
must also be cited and you will lose points if you do not do so. Please attach image to the end of
your paper. You can include as many images since you also need to make powerpoint files for an
oral presentation within a week.
- Proper Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are expected at this academic level.
- Exclude personal words such as “very” or “you”. Please distinguish “ it’s” and “its” correctly.
- I encourage you to take paper to the English center to get your paper reviewed
- Do not write a paper on the graphic design or comics or animation.
Starting your research:
The term paper is an original research paper covering, in depth, works of art by one artist
of Japan or Korea in Modern (from Meiji period) or Contemporary period (for the living artist).
Papers could address an issue or problem of a piece of work.
Your own analysis in your own writing should be at least 50% of the paper.
This guideline will help you to look at the objects, in addition to the analysis you learned in the
class. Papers should reflect your own thinking, rather than copying the descriptions and ideas of
others. I will not accept papers constructed as strings of direct quotes or close paraphrases.
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Your primary research source should be books and articles in print, not in the web sites.
First consult the books on reserve, go find articles and books and find the original research
materials.
For painting and prints, analyze the material (yoga with oil or watercolor, or
Nihonga with ink and color on silk or paper, or woodblock prints or other prints), subject
matter, composition, space, chiaroscuro (light and dark contrast), line (brush stroke),
color, texture, technique, and expressive function (your feeling about the piece) and other
things of your own observation such as how the artist approached the subject matter.
Then briefly relate them to the historical context by referring to the similar work
discussed in the class or in the text book.
Endnotes/Footnotes: Generally the format of the footnotes are ‘Author’s personal name,
last name, ‘title of the article,’ title of the journal or book (publisher’s city: publisher’s name,
date), page numbers. The same format is used in the endnotes of most of the art history books.
For the bibliography, list the entry alphabetally the last name of the author and then alphabetical
order of the title of the article and the book.
At the end of the paper, attach illustrations of each work of art you discuss. Then work
with the bibliography found in your textbook and recommended books, and the books on reserve,
and then you need to do in-depth research on your own.
If you are not familiar with the terms, read the catalogue entries of books on similar
objects or glossary in the back.
How to write a paper:
It is made of three parts: style, subject matter, and context.
Start with the identification and description of the object. Give artist, title, date and the
location (museum or collection, or site). You have to analyze the biography of the artist,
stylistic evolution, turning point, major influences and cultural and social context. You
have to analyze the expression of the works or discuss the works by the themes and show
your approach and methodology. You also need to put the artist in major movements and
relate them to modern western and Japanese or Korean art.
You have to include some of the following aspects of the visual analysis, describing the
object accurately, intelligently but passionately, seeing it as a work of art. Try to put yourself in
the position of the potter, sculptor, or painter.
Then relate them to the historical context by referring to the similar work discussed in the
class or in the text book. And then background research on context: political, social and religious
or cultural context including patron.
This assignment is not group project.
There are examples of good papers by students in the paper assignment folder on d2l.
A. In the libraries,
-. The Grove Dictionary of Art, ed. by Diana Turner, published by McMillan in London
has a good coverage of Asian art, by the subject, country, and also by individual
artists. This is available on line in the library database as Oxford Art on Line on the
library database.
-. Encyclopedia of World Art, Ref: N 31 #533 v. 1-17 may also be helpful. Also available
on line at PSU website.
-Enclopedia Britannica.
-.During the pandemic time, you can use yahoo Japan or Wikipedia on the artist, but you
have to include the endnotes and bibliography.
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There are articles in major journals in the database of PSU library, such as Art Journals,
Art Bulletin, Art in America, Artibus Asiae, Orientations, Oriental Arts, Arts of Asia,
Archives of Asian Art, Ars Orientalis, Asian Art. These articles are also available in
Academia Premier, “jstor” database of thePSU library. The images can be found and
downloaded at “artsor “in PSU library database, wikipeia, yahoo Japan, and Japanese diet
website or museum websites (click translate to English in the case of Japanese websites).
Kyushu University Journal is available, http://www2.lit.kyushuu.ac.jp/en/impjh/jahq/index.html. pdf of all the published volumes available.
Find these journals and go through them in the beginning of the quarter and see what kind
of topic you want to write about.
d. You can find the information about the contemporary Japanese or Japanese-American
artists I listed above in www.google.com, click images for the pictures, and also
www.google.co.jp and www.yahoo.co.jp. If you want any help researching the
bibliography, please consult PSU fine arts librarian Elsa Loftis or bibliography in the
websites. If you start early, PSU interlibrary loan get you journal articles, but not the
books during the pandemic. You can search for the bibliography in Worldcat (on line at
PSU) http://www.google.com and the University of Hawaii websites on Art and East
Asia, or www.yahoo.com or http://www.yahoo.co.jp/. Also in Japanese museum
websites show many entries on these artists. Internet articles or entries can be translated
by google.
You may need to get an interlibrary loans, if necessary, or write a letter or e-mail
to the contemporary artist. If you read Japanese, there are many information in
yahoo.com.
Think of an issue, issues or problems regarding the work and write a critical
analysis paper.
Your own analysis in your own writing is worth 50% of the paper.
Start with the description and analysis of the object.
Then work with the bibliography found in your textbook and recommended books, and the
books on reserve, and then you need to do in-depth research on your own.
If you want any help including bibliography, please contact the librarian.
If you have questions about what or how to footnote, please contact librarian and writing
center.
If you are not familiar with the terms, read the catalogue entries of books on similar objects
or glossary in the back of catalogues.
The class presentation: You will have to present the summary of your paper to the
class. The time allotted for each student to present will be about 9 minutes. You need to
submit the PowerPoint file to me in a pdf file and give presentation.
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Visual analysis
You have to include some of the following aspects of the visual analysis, describing
the object accurately, intelligently but passionately, seeing it as a work of art. Try to put
yourself in the position of the potter, sculptor, or painter.
For your papers consider the following:
Name of subject
Date work created
Place of the work in the artist’s/architect’s career
Condition of the work
Patrons and significance of patron if known
Original location & significance of original location & present location if different
Style & relation to the period style
Historical & cultural context
Materials & dimensions
Content & significance of content
Use of symbols or special decoration or ornament
Relation of work to other similar works
Special significance
For an analysis of a PAINTING or video consider the following:
Materials: kind of paint and nature of surface receiving the paint, technique
i.e. fresco, tempera, oil, watercolor, wall painting
Texture: character of surface on painting: rough or smooth
Character of brushstroke: smooth, fine or painterly
Light: descriptive (even distribution on sharp contrast) symbolic, expressive
Light source: present, implied or not a factor
Color: descriptive, harmonious or discordant, decorative, symbolic
Opaque, semi-transparent,
Setting or background: architecture, landscape, decoration, plain
Space: forms flat against the background
forms overlap
forms are in composite or twisted perspective
forms step back parallel to the picture plane
spatial ambiguity: suggestion of space in one part, denied in another
use of perspective with receding diagonals: forms are foreshortened
jump from large forms in foreground to small forms in distance
In Asian painting the western sense of linear perspective does not work
Some may have isometric perspective
Definition of forms:
Forms are defined by a contour line: subtle or bold
Within the contour the colors are flat or modeled with light and shade
Forms are defined by play of light and shadow: chiaroscuro
Design, composition:
The arrangement of forms so
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that they are lined up across the picture plane
they can be enclosed in a stable geometric form or an unstable form
they are connected by vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or curving lines
Anatomy: knowledgeable, realistic, naturalistic, simplified, or summary
Idealized according to a canon or stylistic convention
distorted for expressive or decorative convention
i.e. elongated or “spiritualized”
influenced by an earlier style or pose
For an analysis of a work of SCULPTURE, installation, and happening consider the
following:
analyze the iconography, material, technique, proportion, modeling, carving, treatment of
the significant stylistic details such as the crown, facial features, neck, torso and arms,
necklace, waist, hips, legs and the treatment of the drapery, and the treatment of the body
underneath the drapery, feet, pedestal, treatment of the back, whether relief or figure in
the round, and the approach to the subject matter, and religious context.
Analysis of the material, dimensions, texture, proportion, etc.
Work in the round: freestanding: in the open, against a background, or in a niche
In a group or by itself
Relation so space: compact, closed form, solid or with reserve space,
Or open form (projects into space)
Stable or unstable forms
Work in relief: high or low relief (for works in relief consider relevant elements
In analysis of painting such as space and composition)
Materials, color, and texture of surface
Static or implied movement
For ceramic or bronze vessel, analyze some of the following things: the name of the
object, function of the piece (water, wine or food, ritual, everyday, funerary, etc),
technique, observe whether it is thick or thin, durability, porous quality, whether it was
hand-built or built on a wheel, the shape from the top to the bottom, proportion, texture,
color, and motifs, glaze if there is any, relief or incised patterns, quality of line,
composition, high relief or low relief of decoration, and your feeling about the piece and
other things of your own observation. Determine whether it is an earthenware, stoneware
or porcelain, or bronze vessel.
For ARCHITECTURE, you need to narrow it down and focus on a specific ideas or
areas. You should discuss the patron if known, size, material, use of space, plan,
elevation, proportion, function, decoration, approach to the subject matter and your
reaction.
Site: landscape, urban setting, sanctuary, other; orientation to the compass
Structural & aesthetic properties of materials
Structure
Organization of plan (ie. Symmetrical or not, longitudinal, centralized or other)
Organization of the exterior elevation
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Organization of the interior elevation
Nature of the interior space
Style or ornament
Structure and ornamental form of brackets
Grading policy for the paper.
A: excellent-----excellent visual analysis, argument, and information; good research; and
excellent writing, grammar and organization skill; whether or not followed this instruction
well and fulfilling all the requirements of the paper.
B: good—good visual analysis and correct information; good research; good writing skills,
grammar and organization skill; whether or not followed this instruction well and fulfilling
all the basic requirements of the paper.
C:, fair—fair visual analysis, with some incorrect information, fair research, fair writing
skills, grammar and organization skill, whether or not followed this instruction well and
fulfilling all the requirements (endnotes, illustrations, page numbers and good grammar).
D: bad—did not follow this instruction, some requirements are missing, poor writing skills
resulting to be an incomprehensible paper, illogical argument, many incorrect information,
poor research, illustration missing, research consists of only the internet sources. Missing
one of the basic requirements or numerous incorrect information.
F: failing—included plagiarized sentences, No footnotes. Writing on topic that is not
designated.
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