Common Conventions Used When Writing about Art

Check out that caption.Name: Henry van de Velde, not Willem van de Velde, the younger, who made work that looked like this: (see picture of ship). The title of the work Society Dress for Gertrud Osthaus is italicized and capitalized (in thissince this is a real dress, you coulddo without capitalization). The date of the work is 1902. When you write a paper or essay for an art history class, you are asked to follow certain conventions.When first mentioning an artwork, you are expected to give the artist's name, indicate the title of the work with italics, and provide the date the work was made. You might ask your art history instructor why you are supposed to provide the full name of the artist. They would first note that many artworks have the same title (i.e. Christ Crucified, Dogs Playing Poker, Sad Clown), so indicating the name of the artist will help determine to which artwork you refer. They could explain how historically, there were many families that shared workshops and that many sons followed their fathers and by providing the full name, you determine which" Smith" made the work. You could ask the instructor, "Why, oh why instructor, must I italicize the title" and they could drone on about this is a generally accepted way of indicating that those words are the title of an artwork. That separating out those words with italics makes it obvious to the reader that you are discussing a specific artwork. For instance, if you start writing about Edwin Landseer's falcon, how is one to know whether you are discussing a pet bird or a painting? If you write Edwin Landseer's Falcon, though, we realize that there is something unusual about the use of the word Falcon and if you've read any art history at all, you can figure out that Falcon refers to a title of an artwork. Then you could ask, why bother including the date? Your instructor will probably sigh and then mention that many artists repeated subject matter and thus there works share titles. How is one to tell to which painting of a falcon that Landseer painted you are referring, the one with the falcon sitting peacefully on its perch or the one in which it is bathed in the blood of its prey. (Okay, he didn't actually paint that second one. This fiction is only used to demonstrate the point.)

Have you noticed this is a long and boring series of explanations? Don't you think your instructor would be sighing and making you feel like a pest at this point? Wouldn't it just be easer to read a bit of art history and notice these things? That's what you should be doing! Whenever you plan on writing for a specialized field, be it art history, physics, police reports, you should look at good examples. Note the grammar conventions, what information is always included, how personal or impersonal the style of writing is, etc. Chances are, the more specialized literature you read, the better you will be able to write for that field. That's one of the points of this website--if you read the art history while reading the writing primer, you should better understand how to write art history.

An example of how the Artistic Dress website and the Writing Primer work together appears below where I use the text from the Artistic Dress home page to show you how to refer to arwork (see above), reference centuries (see the big yellow box below), and what B.C., A.D., B.C.E., C.E., (again, see the big yellow box below) and c. (see the little yellow box below) mean.

Artistic Dress

Josef Hoffmann, Dress, 1910van de Velde gown made for Gertrud OsthausNumbering CenturiesArtistic Dress is something far more specific that clothing designed or worn by artists. The term as it was used in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries relates specifically to clothing that was produced for everyday use, designed in accordance with contemporary art principles, intended to challenge fashion, and considered a work of art in and of itself.  Josef Hoffmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, and Henry van de Velde are only the best-known names among the hundreds of designers of the clothing called "Artistic Dress."

Their clothing designs were an attempt to counteract the force of the fashion industry and make contemporary women’s dress reflect the aesthetics of contemporary art movements.  Unlike previous artists who dabbled in clothing design, these artists considered the garments they produced to be works of art, worthy of exhibitions, public lectures, essays, and books. Their work in the field was widely known and often appeared in the popular press.

Despite extensive press coverage of Artistic Dress between 1900 and 1912, between 1914 and 1975 the phenomenon was forgotten, ignored, or dismissed by scholars.  Since the 1980s, a few scholars have turned their attention to this topic, but it remains unfamiliar both to the general public and most art historians.  I hope this website will generate more interest in and scholarship on Artistic Dress.

Klimt, Summer Dress, 1907Macdonald in black silk dressCirca means around

One other thing you should know:

When referring to artists, you almost always use their last name.  There are a few exceptions. Really famous artists like Michelangelo (last name Buonarroti), Leonardo (da Vinci), and Raphael (Stanzi...) are better known by their first names. Some artists share their last names, rather than saying Delaunay, one refers to either Robert Delaunay or Sonya Delaunay (after that initial identifying reference, you can go back to Delaunay unless you continue to discuss both artists.) If you are referencing a work for which the artist is not known, you skip that part and go straight to the title, i.e. Stonehenge, 2800-1500 B.C.