This document provides guidance on how to take notes in an art history class. It recommends including the name of the artist, artwork title, date, materials, location, relevant information, and peer comments in your notes. It also discusses techniques for note-taking such as writing your immediate reactions, the artist's intention versus viewer interpretation, appropriation, cultural appropriation versus remixing culture, and includes responses to a museum video.

1. How to take notes in Art History

2. Bring Your Own Object…
Taeron: You can take a very simple object and expand
a whole conversation on it. We can MAKE simple
objects more relevant.
Jon: mad colors ≠ Aesthetically pleasing
Kenny: Different objects no matter how similar they
are can create different responses for people. Each
object carries their own weight.
Tots: Pop culture icons are just ‘slapped’ onto
everything…without any actual correlation to the
thing itself. (superman-hacky sack…sponge bob
anything)

3. Immediate Reactions
Name of Artist
• Artwork title
• Date, materials, location
• Relevant INFO
• Peer Comments

5. www.slideshare.net/kozakartclass

6. Napoleon Leading
the Army over the
Alps
Kehinde Wiley
2005
Oil on Canvas
Brooklyn Museum
USA

7. Napoleon Leading the
Army over the Alps
Kehinde Wiley
2005
Oil on Canvas
Brooklyn Museum
USA
Info: Historically, the role of portraiture has been not only to create a
likeness of a person but also to communicate ideas about the subject's
status, wealth, and power.
During the eighteenth century, for example, major patrons from the
church and the aristocracy commissioned portraits in part to signify
their importance in society. This portrait imitates the posture of the
figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in Jacques-Louis David's painting
Bonaparte Crossing the Alps at Grand-Saint-Bernard.

8. Artist Intention
vs.
Viewer Interpretation.
• Intention: What the artist wants us to take
away.
• Interpretation: The way that we see the work
of art, what we take away from it
• Some work is more ‘open to interpretation’
than others.

9. Napoleon Crossing
the Alps
Jacques-Louis David
1801
Oil on Canvas
Château de
Malmaison,
France

11. Appropriation
• …Taeron: PLAGIARISM
• Ruhith: I was gonna say that!
• Kevin: THEFT! STEALING!
• Myar: Reinvention…it’s not really copying If you
change the intention!!
• Nyasiah: Satirically…! Brian: Parody too!
• Kenny: Compliment…imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery.
• Karf: paying TRIBUTE to the original.
• RASHA: Taking
• TOTS: When you make a few changes to
something and call it your own.
• Michelle: Influence vs copying…
• KEVIN: taking a few ideas….vs. tracing over it.
• Gissell: What happens when we make a replica
and sell it…
P8
Appropriation in art
is the use of pre-
existing objects or
images with little or
no transformation
applied to them.
Artists that often
appropriate other images:
Andy Warhol
Mr. Brainwash
Richard Prince
Jeff Koons

12. Appropriation
• Guzzy: in a way it IS plagiarism, but it’s
putting a new spin on it.
• Alannis: It’s like reinventing, but from a
different VIEW. Using a familiar thing to
make a new message.
• Sof: It’s not necessarily paying tribute,
but it’s making work by recycling other
work.
• Raph: I agree with Taeron.
• Vicky: Musicians
• Jakara: So…um…in Zhan’s Advanced Bio
class she said that you can plagiarize
off your OWN work, but remixing is
when you
P7
Appropriation in art
is the use of pre-
existing objects or
images with little or
no transformation
applied to them.
Artists that often
appropriate other images:
Andy Warhol
Mr. Brainwash
Richard Prince
Jeff Koons

13. Remixing Culture…
Back in April 2015, Wiley had a major show at the Brooklyn
Museum, and his close friend DJ Spooky explained how they both
were deeply interested in “remix culture” and how
appropriation is used and viewed in the 21st century.
“Painting is about
the world that we
live in. Black men
live in the world.
My choice is to
include them. This
is my way of
saying yes to us.”
--Kehinde Wiley
“Art and music
are always in
dialogue. While
Kehinde deals
with figures, I
work with data.”
--DJ Spooky

14. Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation is a
social condition which entails
the adoption or use of
elements of one culture by
members of a different
culture. It is often regarded as
a negative phenomenon.
What’s the difference
between ‘cultural
appropriation’ and ‘remixing
culture?’
When you OWN the message,
YOU create the message.
You’ve gotta understand what
• Myar: It’s exploiting
something for your own
purposes
• Brianna: not respecting the
culture and tradition that it
comes from.
• Taeron: Action Bronson?
• Macklemore? Eminem?
• Brianna: The type of ‘art’ and
what their intention is.
• Myar: Using another culture
as a “costume.” or as a way
to profit.

15. Cultural
Appropriation
Cultural appropriation is a
social condition which
entails the adoption or use
of elements of one culture
by members of a different
culture. It is often regarded
as a negative phenomenon.
What’s the difference
between ‘cultural
appropriation’ and
‘remixing culture?’
A question of
PARTICIPATING or just
USING.
• Vicky: braids and cornrows being
worn in reference to black culture.
• Tina: Reminds me of Selena Gomez
“Come and Get it.”
• Nawal: Establishes double
standards. Example: a white person
wearing a bindi for “fashion”
without the cultural respect.
• Marie: Celebrities wearing African
fabric cause it’s “pretty” without
acknowledging where it’s from.
• GUZZY: “I’m kinda torn on this…it
could be disrrespectful, but are you
saying that we can NEVER ‘borrow’
stuff from other cultures??
• Ms. Jenn: If we don’t share cultural
stuff, how do we learn from each
other??

16. VIDEO!
• P8 Responses:
• Taeron: Seems cool, like you want to “experience” it.
• Myar: Trying to attract younger people through the emphasis on
media
• Rasha: COLORS! So interesting! NEON! Eye catching.
• Jon: The artists’ past experiences is seen throughout the show.
• AppleCinna: Interactive and different and oh dammit I forgot.
Usually when you go to a museum, you have to stand back and not
touch anything, but this you get to PLAY with.
• Nyasiah: Collage! Different types of art…some graffiti, comic
books, cartoons,
• TOTS: The art is the EXPERIENCE of the public being there.
• Gissell: contrast between the Arcade and the Statues.
• Ruhith: BRINGIN IN DA YOUTH. People drift away, and this brings
them back. Art needs to be beneficial to people.
• Len: Art can revolutionize a culture through influencing people.

17. VIDEO!
• Responses:
• Jakara: Lots of color, lots of 1990’s references. Even
though the work seems “old” it is also “youthful”
• Raph: Lots of interaction “installation”
• Ardi: “Abstract” Out of the ordinary.
• Sam AYYY: Chilled, classic, old school vibe. Super
different from uptight MoMA paintings.
• Nyle: Both said that there is “success behind failure”
and “Failure behind success.”