ART HISTORY: GUIDE TO ESSAY WRITING

Present your essays professionally. On the cover page give the title and number of the essay
question you have chosen, the name and number of the course, and your name, student number,
and tutorial time. An assignment cover sheet is available for you to use. Please type your essay.
Excellent computer facilities are provided in the Student Information Commons to assist you.
Use one side of the paper and leave wide margins. Number the pages and write your name on
each page. Keep a copy for your own reference while the essay is marked, and as a safeguard
against loss. Also keep your marked essay once it has been returned until your final grade
has been published.

Allow plenty of time for both preparatory research and for writing. Be sure to write a first draft
for careful reading and editing and leave time for more than one draft before final submission.
The aim of formal essay writing is to engage your critical reading and writing skills to craft an
articulate and polished essay. It provides an opportunity to consider a topic in depth, combining
the synthesis of source materials with your own conclusions based on those materials. It
follows that students are expected to show independent thinking and not simply re-hash the
opinions of scholars. However, an essay should not be based on your opinions alone. Back up
your ideas with the rigorous analysis of course materials, texts and articles. An essay is your
dialogue with the scholarly community.

Begin by considering the question and the issues it raises. Plan your essay to present a coherent
discussion that sticks to the point, and works towards a compelling conclusion. Be sure to take
note of the required project length. In structuring your essay, begin with an introduction that
draws the reader into the arguments of the essay and includes a clear statement of what you
plan to do (but avoids just repeating the question). This should be followed by the development
of this proposal through sustained analysis of specific ideas. Always support your ideas with
the analysis of artworks. End with a conclusion that pulls the threads together, not just with a
bland summary.

The style of your writing is as important for communicating your meaning as the style of a
painting is for communicating an artist’s intentions. Originality can lie in the way you write
about your topic, as well as in the ideas you develop. Use quotations sparingly: do not simply
string together quotations or paraphrase other writers. When you do use the ideas of others, it is
essential that you acknowledge them, even if you are not quoting them exactly. So be sure to
reference other writers that you are drawing upon, whether verbatim or in précised form (see
details on how to do so below). Plagiarism is tantamount to theft in an academic context and
will be severely penalised.

Write complete sentences in good, clear English, using standard grammar. Organise material
into paragraphs that group related points together and indicate to your reader when you are
moving on to a new idea. Be sure to check your grammar and spelling, and proof read your
final essay at least once. Use the computer’s Spell Check function but remember that it picks up
letter groups that do not match real words, but will not find errors in sense that result from
typographical mistakes (e.g. it would not pick up “but well not fund errors on cents than result
form topographical miss steaks”). Consult a dictionary if you are unsure of spelling. Look out
for common errors like misuse of the apostrophe. Its main function is to indicate possession,
differentiating singular and plural, as in “one boy’s toys” or “two boys’ toys”. The apostrophe
also indicates elision as in “can’t” in place of “cannot”, though such informality is rare in
academic writing. A tricky example is “it’s” which means “it is”. In this case the possessive has
no apostrophe and is written “its”. (e.g. It’s common for a tree to lose its leaves in winter.)
REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC STYLE
 
Your coursework and research must show you have found appropriate resources, evaluated
them critically and used them to develop your arguments. When you quote a phrase, copy
all or part of something you have read, or even paraphrase or summarise, you must
acknowledge your source. However, you do not need to give a source for uncontested
‘common knowledge’, such as the dates of World War I or the birth of Picasso.
 
The most common style of referencing for Art History at the University of Auckland is the
Chicago system with footnotes, but the MLA (Modern Language Association) system is
also acceptable. You can find the essentials of providing referencing for these systems and
APA at AU Student Learning Centre site www.cite.auckland.ac.nz Whatever you choose,
be sure to be consistent – that is more important than the style itself.
For individual answers to particular queries go to http://www.cite.auckland.ac.nz/quick.php

Referencing works of art

It is standard practice to cite the title of a work of art in italics (or underlined if you don’t
have a facility for italics). The work should also be identified with other information, as
many works have the same title. Always give the location of the work in a city, building or
museum. You should also try to give a date, the medium and the size of the work.

Raphael, Madonna Foligno (oil on panel, 320 x 194 cm) c.1511-12, Vatican
Pinacoteca.

Particularly if you are referring to works that are not well known, it is very useful to your
reader if you include images of works. The information as cited above forms the caption for
each illustration. For a longer piece of work, it should also be given in your list of
illustrations, where you should include the source of your illustration – from a book, from a
gallery, taken by a photographer, whatever. (Copyright permission is not required as this is
not a publication.) If you refer in your text to any work that you do not illustrate (and it’s
not a good idea to do this too often), give a reference for where the image can be found.

Millais, Sir John Everett. Christ in the House of his Parents. Tate Gallery, London.
In Julian Treuherz, Victorian Painting (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 81.
 
Think carefully about how you are going to number your illustrations and the sequence in
which you want to include them. This is particularly important for a longer piece of work
such as a research essay or dissertation. It is customary for illustrations to follow the order
in which they are discussed in the text but, if they are discussed in various places, you
might prefer a different, internally logical order, such as a chronological arrangement, as
long as you are sure always to give the figure number when you discuss the work. 

Quotations
 
If you quote from another publication, you should indicate this by enclosing short
quotations in double quotation marks “like this”.

A longer quotation (of three lines or more) is presented as an indented paragraph

without quotation marks, and a space before and after it in the text like this. Some
publications use a different typeface but this is overkill, as the indentation already
makes it clear. That it is a quotation is also indicated by a reference (see below).
 
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Any addition to a quotation is indicated with square brackets [thus], and an omission is
indicated with three stops … If there is an obvious error such as a misspelling in a
quotation, it is customary to insert (sic) so that the reader knows that it is not your error.
Quotes already inside quotation marks are indicated with single quotation marks for clarity.
“They would then look ‘like this’ in your text.”

REFERENCES/CITATIONS

MLA favours an abbreviated style of in-text citation which avoids footnotes. Simply the
name of the author and the page number is given. So if you were citing
Bassett, Don. Fix: the art and life of Felix Kelly. Auckland: Darrow Press, 2007.
you would refer to it like this (Bassett 54). If you had already mentioned the author by
name in the sentence, you would only give the page number, like this (54). If more than one
work by the same author is cited, a short title is used to distinguish them (Bassett, Fix 54).
MLA style is found on www.cite.auckland.ac.nz, which gives multiple examples of
different forms. APA also uses in text citations but adds dates for identification.

References/citations in footnotes and endnotes

 
Many scholars still prefer to present their references as footnotes at the bottom of each
page, now made easy by computer software, or occasionally endnotes at the end of an
essay. This is the form preferred by the Chicago system. The references should be
numbered consecutively throughout the essay, and indicated in the text by a number in
superscript, as also in the notes. Note that reference numbers follow punctuation, like this,1
or ‘this’2 not this3. The reference number comes at the end of a quotation or, in the case of a
sentence paraphrasing ideas, at the end of the sentence or occasionally directly after the
author’s name. Occasionally numbers in parenthesis are used if computer software is not
available, like this. (1)

These references have four main divisions: the author’s name (surname second), title,
publication data in parentheses, and page reference, with commas used as dividers. Some
examples of different types of references follow, and more can be found under Chicago
style at www.cite.auckland.ac.nz. Note that italics are used for the titles of published
works.

BOOKS (for references)

 
• A book by a single author
M. Jacobs, The Painted Voyage: Art Travel and Exploration 1564-1875. (London:
British Museum, 1995), 47.
 
• A book with multiple authors
Hugh Honour and John Fleming, A World History of Art, 5th ed. (London: Laurence
King, 1995), 67.

• An anthology or compilation
Brian Wallis, ed. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (New York: The
New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), 86.
 
•An exhibition catalogue (without author)
Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections (Auckland: Auckland City Art
Gallery, 1986), 26.

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 •A paper in a collection or a chapter in a book
James A. Boon, “Why museums make me sad,” in Exhibiting Cultures: the Poetics
and Politics of Museum Display, eds. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine.
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 271.
 
• Unpublished work, such as theses, photocopied conference papers, and other documents.
Italics are not used for the title, as they would indicate published material. The title is
instead placed in quotation marks, and information added thereafter, as in this example
Edward Hanfling, “Great Scott! Issues of Art Historical Value from the Works of
Recent New Zealand Artists, particularly from those of Ian Scott.” (PhD,
University of Auckland, 2005), 37.
 
ARTICLES (for references)

For bound serials, give volume and page numbers only. There is no need to include the
issue number if pagination runs through the entire volume. For serials in which each issue
has its own separate page numbers give the volume and issue number as well as the pages.
 
• An article in a serial with pagination running through the whole volume
David Mannings, “Reynolds in Venice,” The Burlington Magazine 148 (2006):
754.
 
• An article in a serial with separate page numbering for each issue
Blake Eskin, “Building the bioluminescent bunny,” ARTnews 100 no. 11 (2001):
119.
 
• An article, cartoon, letter, or advertisement in a newspaper or other periodical without
volume numbers follows the pattern of author, title, source and date.
Peter Simpson, “Purangiaho: seeing clearly,” Sunday Star Times, 7 October 2001,
15.

ELECTRONIC SOURCES (for references)

In the case of a reference from an electronic publication, you should give the same details
of author and title, followed by the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and, because
websites are changed regularly, the date on which you consulted the site. Remember that
websites are not all subject to painstaking checking like print publications, so are often not
reliable. Beware particularly of sites without an individual or institutional author. It is not
acceptable to use websites alone for your sources.
British Museum: Grayson Perry: Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, 2011-12.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry.aspx
Consulted 23 January 2012

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Subsequent references
 
If you have already given the complete reference, such as:
Leonard Bell, Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 1840-1914
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1992), 136.
In subsequent notes use a shortened reference, giving the author’s last name, a short title
and page number or numbers
Bell, Colonial Constructs, 34. 
If two references to the same work follow immediately on each other, use Ibid. Only add
the page reference if it is different from the first.
Ibid., 48.

Secondary references
 
If you cite a quotation by an author that you found in the work of another author, you must
give both the full original reference and the source in which you found it, thus
 
K. Andrews, The Nazarenes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) 25, quoted in [or,
cited by] H. Honour, Romanticism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), 348.
 
It is very dangerous practice to omit a double reference and pretend that you have consulted
the primary text, as you will not have seen the reference in its original context and will not
be aware of any misquotations or idiosyncratic interpretations – which will then be
assumed to be attributable to yourself! It follows that only works that you actually
consulted should appear in your bibliography.

Content footnotes
 
Footnotes may also be used to supplement the content of your essay, as with additional
supportive data, fuller evidence or further examples that you feel would clutter up your
argument unnecessarily. They might also be used to acknowledge an alternative point of
view, to show that you are aware of other interpretations even if you have not chosen to use
them. Footnotes can be a very useful way of inserting relevant information that is not
essential to your argument and would interrupt the flow. But do avoid excessive footnotes.
If the material in the footnote is really important, ask yourself whether it should not be in
the body of the essay. And if it is not important, do you need it at all? (Content footnotes
may still be used in addition to in-text citations if you have preferred the MLA or APA
styles of referencing.)

COMPILING A BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
As well as providing references which give the source of information you quote within the
text of an essay or thesis, you must include a reading list of the books and articles consulted
in writing the essay, and which you feel were significant for your work, even if they are not
directly cited in footnotes. A bibliography for a thesis must list all the materials consulted.
It is important for verification of your arguments and for future researchers in the area. It
also enables the reader to assess the range and depth of your reading.

A bibliographic entry has three main divisions: the author’s name, reversed with the
surname listed first for alphabetising, the title, and the publication data. For electronic
resources include publication medium and date of access. The examples below are based
on Chicago. MLA is similar, but APA gives date of publication after author’s name.
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A single bibliography should be sufficient for an essay. For a thesis the simplest approach,
both to construct and to use, is a single bibliography for the bulk of the material,
differentiating only primary and secondary sources (or unpublished and published
material). But if your bibliography is very large you may like to break the bibliography
into different sections. Some writers do this according to the kind of material, such as:
Books; Chapters in books; Theses; Exhibition Catalogues; Articles; Electronic Resources;
Illustrations. Within each section authors will be arranged in alphabetical order. Or some
create separate sections related to different chapters. However, the fewer the sections the
easier it is for the reader to find titles, so a single list remains a good option.

BOOKS (for Bibliographies)

• A book by a single author:

Woodward, Robin. Cultivating Paradise: aspects of Napier’s botanical history.
Napier: Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust, 2002.
 
• Two or more books by the same author:
When citing two or more books by the same author, give the name in the first entry only.
For subsequent entry or entries replace the name with a long dash and list titles in
alphabetical order.
Bell, Leonard. Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 1840-1914.
Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1992.
––. Maori in European Art: a Survey of the Representation of the Maori by
European Artists from the Time of Captain Cook to the Present Day. Wellington:
Reed, 1980.
 
• An anthology or compilation:
Begin the entry with the name of the editor(s) or compiler(s), followed by a comma and the
abbreviation ed. or comp.
Brown, Deidre and Ngarino Ellis, eds. Te Puna. Maori Art from Te Tai Tokerau
Northland. Auckland: Reed, 2007.

• A book by two or more authors:

Give their names in the same order as on the title page, not necessarily in alphabetical
order. Reverse the name of the first author, add a comma and give the other name or names
in normal form.
Buchanan, Iain, Michael Dunn, and Elizabeth Eastmond. Frances Hodgkins:
Paintings and Drawings. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001.
If there are more than three authors (and occasionally this form is used for only three), it
is customary to cite the first author and follow with ‘et al’.
Karp, Ivan, et al, eds. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

• An exhibition catalogue without author:

Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Maori Art from New Zealand. Wellington: Te Waka
Toi/Council for Maori and South Pacific Art, 1992.

If the entire catalogue is single author, it may be listed by name as for a book. But in the
case of a catalogue essay the usual practice is to add the name of the author:
Fale Sa: an installation by John Ioane. Auckland City Art Gallery, 1999.
Catalogue essay by Caroline Vercoe.
 

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• An article in a reference book:
If the article is signed, give the author first; if unsigned, the title. If the encyclopedia or
dictionary arranges articles alphabetically, you may omit volume and page numbers. When
citing familiar reference books, especially those that frequently appear in new editions, list
only edition and year of publication. When citing less familiar reference books, especially
those that have appeared in only one edition, give full publication information.
“Tempera.” Dorling Kindersley Ultimate Visual Dictionary. London: Dorling
Kindersley Limited, 1994.
 
• A chapter in a book:

If you refer to chapters in different books by the same author, arrange them in alphabetical
order of the titles of the articles (ignoring ‘a’ and ‘the’).
Rankin, Elizabeth. “Between Modernism and Memory: the art of the !Xu and Khwe.”
In Identities: Contemporary Political and Social Challenges, eds. P. Ahluwalia and
A. Zegeye, 28-41. African. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Rankin, Elizabeth. “Facing difference: Casts as document and display.” In
Fiona Pardington: The Pressure of Sunlight Falling, eds. K. Baker and E.
Rankin, 93-101. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2011.

ARTICLES (for Bibliographies)

• An article in a journal:
Griffey, Erin. “Pro-Creativity: Art, Love and Conjugal Virtue in 17 th-century Dutch
Artists’ Self Portraits.” Dutch Crossing 28 (2004): 27-66.

THESES (for Bibliographies)

• An unpublished thesis or dissertation

Shand, Peter Neil. “Adrift on an Ocean of Affinities: Modernist Primitivism and the
Pacific: 1891-1984.” PhD. University of Auckland, 1997.

ELECTRONIC SOURCES (for Bibliographies)

• A website
Auckland Art Gallery, Portrait exhibition ‘Likeness and Character’
http://www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/exhibitions/0710likenessandcharacter.asp
Consulted 4 January 2008
 
RefWorks
RefWorks is a type of reference management software that enables you to store and
manage references so that they can be reproduced in the form of footnotes, reference lists
or bibliographies. It imports records (bibliographic information about books or articles) into
a ‘library’, or personal bibliographic database. The records are transferred electronically
from electronic catalogues and databases or created manually. They are likely to be more
accurate than your own compilations, and can be converted into footnotes or varied formats
for bibliographies. RefWorks training is provided by the University of Auckland Library
and Student Learning Centre.