Art 103 Ferreira: Thinking about your research

Personal and professional websites can be rich sources of information about an artist.  These might include biographical information, artist's statements, bibliographies of additional sources about the artist, links to CVs, and links to social media.  Remember that this information is all from the artist's perspective and will, by its nature, biased.

Look for these for living artists, especially less-well-known artists.  These will be helpful for getting accurate attribution.

Find these using Google, Wikipedia.

Biographical and descriptive or contextual information is sometimes available from a gallery website, if the artist is represented by a gallery. This is a good source of information, although will always put the artist in a positive light.

Biographies and encyclopedia articles are likely available for most well-known and, especially, well-known and deceased artists.  Look for these using specialized library databases and the library catalog.

Academic, popular, and trade magazines and journals will also have articles profiling artists and/or interviewing living artists.  Look for these using library databases and Google/Wikipedia.

Remember to look for art criticism about your new media artist's work.  This is usually academic writing (findable using library databases) and focuses on the artist's work rather than their biography.

Something to think about is how to put the artist and artists' work in context. Consider researching the artist's historical context.  When thinking about historical context some questions you might consider are:

• What major events were happening in the world at the time when the artist was creating their work?
• What social issues were important at the time?
• Were there things that your artists explicitly mentioned being influence/impacted by?