Category: Blog – Writing Process

Entry 5
On My Final Reflections

This course re-lit my interest in art history, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to let go of that. I loved learning about every detail of these artist’s lives, hearing what other people had to say about them, and connecting it all to try to give definition to society at specific points in history. Throughout this course, I often found myself thinking of the Big Three Mexican mural artists’ attitudes in distinct theories.

  1. Jose Clemente Orozco praised nothing; he painted all parts of the world with a critical eye, from the struggling revolutionary populations in blind chaotic revolt to the oppressor’s grasping opportunistic greed.
  2. David Alfaro Siqueiros praised some things; his fervent support of Communism and his radical beliefs set him on one side of social progress. His art had an extreme modern quality, and his numerous manifestos showed his love of proclaiming the virtues of certain beliefs.
  3. Diego M. Rivera praised everything; he painted the whole world, from the traditional indigenous to the futuristic industrial, with enamored devotion. His infatuation with the world was apparent in his style, as he carried objects past the point of realism to a point of expressionistic fidelity. Technology, nature, wars, music, people, and social systems all came alive in his work, humming with vitality and mechanical functionality. He saw the world, as we all do, in his own way and he loved it all. This personal style was a manifestation of this, and the seeming contradiction of his personal beliefs is simply an authentication of his infatuation with the world.

I think this is where my fascination with Diego Rivera comes from. I think of myself like this, in the way that while I am critical of everything, I love it all. I think that in reality, all 3 of these artists share that quality and “theory”. But to me, Rivera was the one who showed it the most, and never held himself back from his pursuit of the truth.

Entry 4
On the Final Draft of My Research Paper

This term, my writing process was no doubt most difficult between the initial draft of my research paper and the final draft. I’d never written a research paper of this length before, and at the same time as I really wanted to be thorough I also wasn’t quite sure what depth was appropriate. I presented a lot of ideas, because I really enjoyed my research and learned a ton of interesting information that I wanted to bring up. My main challenge was how to make all of these points come together to contribute to a more streamlined idea. I think I tackled this mostly by presenting them in an order that made the most sense to me. This was often chronological, in regards to Rivera’s time in Europe, but it also involved making sure transitions to other less related ideas were smooth. I wanted to bridge the gap between Rivera’s experience with European Cubism and his later mural work in Mexico and the U.S. I’m not sure how effectively I did this, but I tried to do it through a discussion of his aesthetic style that carried over from Europe to his work in the Americas. Finally, I wanted a conclusion that came back to the ideas in my first paragraph but also connected these ideas to a broader significance, which was the idea of the role of an “artist” in society. I argued that an artist’s place is not to choose or present moral judgement, but to express one’s unique view of the world and all its truths. Rivera never really chose a side; he was constantly writing political and social paradoxes with his life. However, I wanted to argue that this was essential to his role as an artist, and that we as viewers of his work shouldn’t focus on his political message. Instead, we should take his work as a vital and colorful exhibition of the thoughts and visions of a man who lived his life in pursuit of constantly seeing more. We should take his scores of experiences as support for his ideas, and his credibility comes from these sometimes contradictory involvement with many people, places, and ideas.

entry 3
On My First Research Paper Draft

I wrote my research paper draft in two sittings.

The first time was at 8:00 am in Novack Café, working from my initial proposal. This was the day that the first two pages were due, so we could discuss our papers in peer groups. I started with my introduction, in which I fleshed out my goals and guiding ideas for the first time. I had a good progression, I thought, from the importance of my topic, to my position on it, to the questions I was trying to find answers to. After my intro, I started summarizing information I’d read in the biography I checked out, and applying it to my topic.

I took notes as I read the biography, which was really helpful. The way I went about this was important. I wrote down quotes that I thought would be useful and that were pertinent to my topic, making sure to record page numbers. I also jotted down important details about Rivera’s life that seemed like they would have influenced his later work. I found his early years so interesting, because they were obviously pretty formative, and his career as an artist started at such a young age. This information has been very helpful as I try to form ideas about the influence of his art in Mexico. However, one of the things I worry about is drawing too heavily from one source. Once I read my other books more thoroughly, I think I’ll be able to provide more of a range of information that can support more balanced ideas.

The second sitting was from about 11:00 am to 1:30 pm on a Saturday, on the upstairs floor of the dining hall. It was remarkably productive. (These morning hours seem to be the best times by far for me to work) I incorporated more of my notes from the biography into the paper, expanding on my previous ideas, and I also analyzed one of the works I included as a source in my initial proposal. I started looking at his cubist works, as I think this will make up an important chunk of my paper, but I didn’t have a ton of time so that will be a big part of what I investigate in the coming days.

entry 2
On Finding Sources

Collecting sources on a topic that involves the visual arts is a bit more complex than I’m used to. I’m beginning to see that original artworks will compose a large part of my bibliography. Especially because I’m analyzing Rivera’s style, these primary sources are important in creating a credible argument. If readers can see exactly what I’m talking about, my points will seem much more relevant.

For my first annotated bibliography, I used two sources that were pieces of art. The first was a cubist painting by Rivera, and the second was part of a later mural of his in Cuernavaca. In finding these sources, I had to first write out my ideas so I’d see what I needed. As I explained my research questions and laid out the information I was interested in finding, the works that I needed to analyze became more clear. I think this happens not just with artworks and primary sources, but with all reference material during the research/writing process. We learn a little bit, and then we ask questions. We form these questions into potential ideas, and then we investigate more deeply. The ideas, though, are what guide our research. So, before I found sources, I had to have an idea of what I might want to say or at least ask.

By the time I finished coming up with my research proposal, I had a good idea of what I wanted to find out. Namely, I wanted to learn more about Rivera’s experience with European modernism, and his cubist period. I went for in-print sources because books seemed the most credible, and were both full of interesting perspectives and a wealth of information. I checked out a biography, “Rivera as Epic Modernist”, and two books on Rivera’s cubist works that were full of images. This was a good starting place to establish and hone my guiding research questions, and to prompt a search for more sources. Reading the biography has put additional questions in my mind, and in the time before my final paper is due I will find a few more sources to answer them. After considering this information, which is to a large extent primary source material, I will look for a scholarly opinions on my topics to broaden my context and bounce my ideas off of established opinions. However, I think it’s important to start with primary sources so that we form our own ideas.

Entry 1
on finding a Research Topic

For most of the term I thought I was going to focus on the political context of art, and then as the research paper approached I started shifting towards the idea of public art versus “private” art. Either way, I was intrigued by how art was seen and used as a social too. However, when I sat down to write an intro/summary of my ideas and research questions, I couldn’t form any questions that I really thought could be answered in a meaningful way. The ideas seemed abstract, and I felt disingenuous trying to find answers to the ways that art was “best” displayed and how it “should” be seen.

For a long time I’ve loved Diego Rivera’s artwork and his persona, and as I became frustrated with my first topic, he was in the back of my mind. During my first term at Dartmouth, I wrote a paper about Rivera’s contradictory identities as a nationalist and a communist, but I struggled with making sense of the paradoxical ideas he put forth in his art and life. I was so confused by the strong tone of Mexican pride that was so often incorporated into American murals depicting capitalist progress. How could he at once be glorifying the chugging capitalist machine and the concept of indigenous mestizo identity?

As I learned more about Rivera this term, my confusion was validated. Yes, his works were confusing and people during his lifetime complained about him as an artist because he couldn’t pick a side. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he didn’t have to pick a side. He was an artist. In fact, that was the point. Artists who put forth one logical idea in their work – who often work for one organization or government – end up just being political tools. Free art is used to question perceptions, break constructs, and open pathways to new ways of thinking. In the early 20th century, this was true more than ever. Modern art, essentially, was the breaking of boundaries and the opening of minds to new arrangements of humanity.

With this in mind, I couldn’t help thinking about the modernists in Europe at the time, who were breaking the world into fragments, examining each piece, and rearranging them on a canvas. Cubism, to me, felt like the essence of this mindset, and of the definition of art as we’ve come to know it today. When I realized how connected Rivera was to the European modernist movement, I’d found my research topic. I wanted to find out what connected the modernist Rivera to the muralist Rivera, in an attempt to help prove that even his highly politicized paintings were still simply art, and did not have an agenda besides expressing the truth in a profound way.