Download A Short Guide to Writing about Art (7th Edition) fb2

I've read my fair share of 'how to write about art' books and this ranks as one of my favorites. I used it as a PhD student and now I recommend it to my juniors and seniors. It's clear, concise, well sectioned and you can dip in and out of it.

This work is decades of expertise from a culmination of effort by several field specialists. A Short Guide to Writing About Art is a comprehensive work that covers several angels of writing applicable to not only art, but a world of topics. Believe this is a classroom essential for a variety of liberal arts, writing, and presentation/speaker fields. Each and every page offers useful in-the-field practical applications... just pick a page, ANY page, for useful information. Considerations highlighted by the author, editors, and publication teams that have put this together through the decades are timeless, universal, and constructive. A breath of fresh air in a morass of contemporary cryptic electronic communication blips.

This was a good source during my time studying art history in college. I referred to it often but find I have no use for it now that I'm done with school. If this book is required for a class at your school, I would try renting it rather than purchasing it. It may come in handy for the short term but probably not for the long term.

I found " A short guide to Writing about Art" by Sylvan Barnet to be very informative and the subject matter well organized.The book is easy to read and I really enjoyed reading it. It is well written and useful for anyone writing about art- It may be writing an essay about art or writing a review of an exhibition. It also has useful information on how to look at art.

This book really helped me write art analysis papers. There are example papers, questions to ask yourself when looking at art, etc. I'm glad I chose to pick up this suggested title--it wasn't mandatory for the class, but maybe it should've been.

So honest! By whose standard do we deem the value of a piece of art work? Makes great analytical observations that I had not realized before. Gives exact details on how to write a thesis statement. How to write an abstract and bibliography. Gives excellent examples and demonstrates differences between Turabian, Chicago and MLA formatting styles of writing. Well defined. Witty. Easy to understand. Think I'll keep this in my personal library, for future reference. Thought-provoking.

A very helpful book for the art history student who has been told they must produce a final paper for the term. Barnet points out what to pay attention to, not to leave out, and advice on how to put it all together so that you will impress your professor with your scholarship and sincerity. He presents different subjects and types of papers and shows actual examples students have done when writing their papers.

Barnet's _Short Guide_ is an essential tool for pedagogy, useful to any high school teacher or professor teaching an introductory Art History course to students with little or no experience writing about art. As a teacher, it's been so long since I began writing about art that I don't remember the things that I struggled with, and what exactly put me on course to proper art historical writing. So, I purchased the latest edition of Barnet's guide, which I remembered was particularly helpful to me in high school (AP Art History), and rereading it has been like reaquainting myself with a long lost friend who I didn't realize was so brilliant and articulate!

If you are in doubt, simply read the 'Sample Critical Essay' and its analysis on pgs. 14-21. The sample essay is written around high school or junior college level, and provides numerous opportunities to point out successes in the argumentation and revisions that may be made. The explications of what an evaluation, analysis, and thesis statement are, which follow, are clear and concise - full of quotable phrases explaining the sometimes-difficult concepts to students in an approachable manner. At the end of the section to which I refer, there is 'a note on outlining', giving students guidance on how to lay out an outline before writing, and failing that, how to outline their essays after they have written them. The guidance given will facilitate students composition of strong topic sentences and rearrangement of paragraphs as necessary to construct a sound argument.

I haven't had a chance to reread any of the other sections in the text, but the book has already merited its price. It's a soft-back of high-common printing quality (slightly glossy pages) that should prove durable enough (if the teacher doesn't opt instead to remove the binding in order to facilitate photocopying passages as I have done with Stokstad's text, another superior work surveying the history of art).

Sylvan Barnet's _Short Guide_ is an essential reference, and can prove a worthwhile supplementary book to require high school students to purchase, despite the over-pricing. For college students, possessing the manual is a must, and it will prove useful for the professor to require readings from sections of the text to be discussed in class.

I'll be working with my students on writing with Barnet's aid next week, and you'd highly benefit from securing this book as well!