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Painting
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Painting is one of the oldest and most studied subjects in the arts, appearing across art history, studio art, humanities, and general education courses. Essays on painting ask students to move beyond casual observation and engage with how visual works are constructed, what they communicate, and how they fit into broader cultural and historical contexts. Works such as Raphael's School of Athens, the Mona Lisa, The Marriage Feast at Cana, and Cimabue's Enthroned Madonna and Child appear frequently as primary subjects because they reward close formal and contextual analysis. Artists including Kandinsky, Peter Paul Rubens, and others represented in student work offer additional angles into how individual style and artistic intention shape meaning.

Student papers on this topic take several distinct approaches. Descriptive and comparative essays examine how painters use light, figure placement, and composition to guide the viewer's eye and establish a scene's mood. Some papers focus on a single work or artist in depth, as with analyses of Kandinsky or Michael Parkes, while others place two paintings side by side to highlight contrasts in technique or subject matter, as seen in comparisons of works like La Grenouillère and Wheat Field with Cypresses. Museum response papers represent another common format, asking students to reflect on direct encounters with original works.

A strong essay on painting anchors its argument in specific formal elements — the treatment of a figure's face, the use of light, the relationship between foreground and background — rather than relying on vague impressions. A focused thesis takes a clear position on what a painting achieves or means. The most common pitfall is summarizing what is visible without explaining why those choices matter to the work's overall effect.

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Paper Undergraduate

19th Century European Art Adelaide Labille Guiard Self-Portrait With Two Students

Laura Auricchio is an art historian teaching at the Parsons School for Design as part of The New School in New York City. In the piece to be critiqued, Auricchio focuses upon techniques, styles, and subject matter of eighteenth century paintings. Auricchio's focus in her article is upon the female painter, Adelaide Labille-Guiard. Though Auricchio examines several of Labille-Guiard's major works, her primary examination is of the painting Self Portrait with Two Students (1785). Auricchio argues that Labille-Guiard makes deliberate politically motivated choices in content and composition in the painting that express and reflect upon European female artistry and experience of the eighteenth century. This paper will briefly describe and critique Auricchio's main ideas and themes in her interpretation of the work and of the artist.

Essay Doctorate

African-Americans and Social Classes in Colonial America

History – Colonial America African Americans in Colonial America experienced the United States differently, depending on whether they lived in the North or South. The American South of the 17th and 18th Centuries was dominated by agricultural life, particularly plantation life, and that set the stage for high black population of slaves who were oppressed in every major area of life. Meanwhile, the more industrial North also had slavery but to a lesser extent and with a high percentage of indentured servants, allowing greater freedoms in basic areas of life and also the possibility of being completely free. The John Catherwood letter indicates many aspects of Colonial life, including but not limited to the status of the two correspondents, immigration and the practice of indentured servitude. Finally, examination of the craftsmen, plantation owners and slaves on a plantation illustrates the three major classes in Colonial America, with craftsmen in the middle class, plantation owners in the gentry class and slaves in the lowest class.

Color and Van Gogh Van

Van Gogh's careful reflection on choosing a palette and especially his focus on contrast define the mood and set the tone in two of his paintings, The Sower and the Night Café. Although there are several human beings in the latter, the main impression in this scene is that of loneliness since even the only couple in the image is meant to take away all hope. The other couple in the former, the working man and the tree appear to be more on the allegorical side in spite of their earthiness. The Night Café is the depiction of an interior where everything seems to take life away from its sources and transform it into something that is of little value, therefore the shades of greenish yellow are dominating the scene. When there are bright colors, such as the yellow glow coming from the hanging lamps, they are meant to hurt the eye, not to cast light upon a subject. At the other end of the spectrum, quite contrary to what the painter meant to illustrate in The Night Café, The Sower strikes as the study of life's sources along with its mystery. The first impression upon viewing it is powerful. The dark tree silhouette crossing the painting from the lower right corner, on a diagonal, up to the farther left corner, along with the dark silhouette of the sower clearly dominate and strike as intriguing at first. Then one notices the earthy tones that creep up the tree's trunk and extend to the sower's otherwise featureless face and hands. This brown, slightly yellow clay color, is strongly and intently coming over through the human flesh and the bark and leaves of the tree and not from the soil itself.

Paper Undergraduate

The politics of ideology in Brecht's Galileo

Louis Althusser (1918-90) was one of the foremost Marxist theorists in the Western world, and advocated an especially orthodox version of Marxism that was always close to the Communist Party line.

Paper High School

James Rarick Western Civilization II

The nineteenth century was filled with turmoil as a result of particular political ideologies receiving significant attention from the public and because imperialism started to be regarded as an effective tool to assist empires in gathering large profits. Even with the fact that trade influenced some powerful players to express interest in imposing a system promoting peaceful attitudes, it was difficult and almost impossible for other nations to refrain from considering war as the best solution to their problems. This century enabled the world as a whole to look at the social order from a different perspective – globalization was underway and more and more conflicts emerged as a result of people having differences in opinion. Conflicts occurring throughout the nineteenth century can practically be considered to have shaped the way the world evolved and to have influenced much of thinking expressed in the contemporary society.The twentieth century was very similar to the nineteenth century when considering the wars and conflicts that occurred throughout the past century. However, the fact that technology experienced significant progress and that the number of people grew rapidly as a consequence also reflected negatively on the numbers of deaths occurring through a conflict. The two World Wars were large enough to involve almost the entire world in a conflict motivated by a series of controversial concepts. To a certain degree, one can safely claim that the conflicts occurring throughout the twentieth century had more of an influence on the social order than any other events happening throughout this time period.

Research Paper Doctorate

Virgin and child imagery in the Italian Renaissance at the Art Institute of Chicago

Art has always been an important tool for understanding various eras and their influence. It has served as a reflection of the times during which it was created and for this reason, art is considered a very sensitive…

Paper Undergraduate

Analysis of a geographical community

Community Analysis: Columbus, Ohio - Hilltop Area/Franklinton

Essay Doctorate

Sociology Trey Parker and Matt Stone\'s Television

This is a five-page paper about a South Park episode, "Fat Butt and Pancake Face." This episode is analyzed in terms of the C.Wright Mills concept of the sociological imagination. The sociological imagination is applied to this episode to discuss ethnic discrimination and stereotyping. Cartman paints an image of Jennifer Lopez on his hand, and in so doing raises questions about political correctness.

Paper Doctorate

Reflection on copyright law violations from downloading media through Vuze

This is a six page paper about copyright law and violation of a university's terms of service on their network. The paper is divided into several sections, in accordance with specific instructions on what to write. The majority of the paper is personal reflection on breaking a university's copyright laws by using file sharing. The file sharing application Vuze is mentioned in the paper, and a progressive stance is taken.

Cultural observation and ethnographic practice

Enhancement Photos Magazines Ads - Artful Ad Inspiring Dishonest & Harmful

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