Bagley Summary

In the article First Paper Assignment, Robert Bagley questions the rationality of Professor X’s assignment “just look carefully and describe what you see” (Bagley, 49) for college freshmen. He believes that an artwork is unable to generate meanings by itself, and therefore, the description of an artwork could only be supported by putting it in some sort of context. Such context can be gained by multiple ways, including but not limited to, comparing with similar artworks, analyzing the effect played by different features consciously, thinking of its cultural and historical context, and comparing across culture. Bagley’s comparison of two painted potteries both with running spirals from Majiayao culture suggests how a potter comes up with an innovative design, which depends on the mental collision between a deeply known repertoire of spiral designs and the shape of that particular pot (Bagley, 54). In addition, by comparing a seemingly moving Egyptian figure from the 3rd dynasty with an artwork, including a similar figure and some men with harpoons on a boat, from the 5th dynasty, we can easily understand that the figure is not actually meant to be moving from any direction since Egyptian artists would show the difference between
Bagley refers to Taylor’s analysis of a painting, a crucifixion by Perugino and finds out Taylor has been actually comparing this painting with a more gruesome one by Crivelli unconsciously in explaining the prior painting’s serenity. Bagley points out that the color blue is neither independent nor having a fixed meaning, and our perception of serenity comes from the expressions and body language of the three figures. An awareness to take multiple features into account is essential when a person writes art history