Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted the dancers of Paris and Art Kane photographed the
jazz musicians of Harlem, but what about…? The first major assignment of the semester is both
a research project and a creative exercise, in which you must describe how a specific artist would
paint or photograph a specific live art performance. What would it look like? What would be
the subject? How would they render a living, three-dimensional artwork such as dance or opera
into a two-dimensional form? What would the viewer learn from looking at it?
Choose one of contemporary artists below and analyze the specific art work listed.
Describe how they would paint, sculpt, or photograph one of the performances listed here. You
will need to familiarize yourself with the style of the artist through this specific work and also
watch the opera or ballet. You must work with these specific performances
and not others.
Note that you must focus on the artworks themselves! Do not provide background or
biographical information about the artists! Focus on their style of composition!
The paper should be four pages long (1000 words).
Contemporary Artist
Lisa Alvarado “Vibratory Cartography”
Tony Cokes “HS LST WRDZ”
Matt Connors “Body Forth”
Alia Farid “Palm Orchard”
Ivy Kwan Arce and Julie Tolentino “Echo
Position”
Andrew Roberts “CARGO: A Certain
Doom”
Guadalupe Rosales “Winter
Solstice/Hazards”
Denyse Thomasos “Displaced Burial/Burial
at Gorée”
Performance
La Bohème—opera by G. Puccini
La Traviata—opera by G.
Verdi
Salome—opera by R. Strauss
Romeo and Juliet—ballet by S. Prokofiev
Jewels—ballet by G. Balanchine
Four Choreographies—ballet by A. Ailey
