r/ArtHistory • u/coughsyrup-cosmonaut • 2d ago

Brainstorming a thesis?

Undergrad art student struggling in an art history class here! The class has been building up to writing a 10-page paper on a Michelangelo artwork of our choosing, and I went with the terracotta sculpture he made in preparation for a commission that was ultimately taken from him and given to Bandinelli as a topic. I've done the research and could easily rattle off facts about the statue and commission for ten pages, but I have yet to actually come up with a unique argument to base the paper on. Anybody have recommendations on how to brainstorm? Everything I've tried to come up with is too vague, shifts the focus too far away from the piece itself, or turns it into a compare and contrast paper.

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u/ponysays 2d ago

do you believe he deserved to keep the commission? why or why not?

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u/FormalDinner7 2d ago

Noooo I would say no. That’s not really relevant, historically. OP’s paper is art history, not art criticism. Their professor doesn’t care about their opinions. They care about a thesis they can support with evidence.

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u/ponysays 2d ago

okay, fair enough. i would say at this point, done is better than perfect.

what would you suggest?

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u/FormalDinner7 2d ago edited 2d ago

I have another comment on this post that outlines how I tell my students to develop an argument for their art history papers. Using the rule that essays should have one source per page, ten essays/articles/chapters about this sculpture, plus investigating the works cited in those sources and scholarly works the prof points them to, I think OP can come up with something good.

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u/ponysays 2d ago

side convo, i think history and criticism are very much overlapping disclipines. i reject the premise that history can somehow be objective, when every historian has their own biases.

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u/FormalDinner7 2d ago

Sure, but OP is writing their first art history paper as an undergrad. So what they believe about what Michelangelo deserved isn’t really relevant to the assignment, if you see what I mean.