Squiggle is the movement of lines of watery polymeric medium or paint that are drawn and painted in a care-free way of divine scribble of twist and curl

Learning how to Write a Scholarly Write-Up in Art and Art History

Writing is derived from a paramount habit of a good reading which supplies information that is involved in the placement of letters, words, sentence, and phrases as clauses for the construction of meaning of sentences as a body of communication. The best writing is the use of simple sentence written with a divine mega pulse; ‘I met him on the way yesterday.’ In view of joining of many simple sentences together it will enhances a good, meaningful and understandable write-up. But writing with long and periodic sentences will and may not give a meaningful idea. Besides, such sentence needs to be written in an adult form of expression like: Can we smell paper tonight? Which simply means are we going to eat anything tonight?

The act of writing needs the concept of careful reading of scholarly written articles or any other form of writing in order to get a good grow for your own writing (Egawan, 2012). In an advanced writing, chapter one normally contains the background which is the embodiment of related literature. If these two things are not properly spelt the writers will not have a good platform to stand in the write-up he is trying to build up.
Writing an Abstract in Art and About Art

This is a matured write-up that tents to summary a literally written paper, because it contains minimum numbers of words which tell nearly all the ideas in the paper. It may be simply call summary writing. In a normal and scholarly write-up, an abstract normally comes after the completion of the whole paper. This means that, it should be written in past tense sentences. Besides, it must be written in an italic form with reduced font that is different from the size of the font used in writing the main body of the paper. Following the ideas of POMF; a formula propounded by profession Egowan O.D in writing a concise article.

POMF means:

P__ The problem of the study

O__ The objective of the study

M__ Method adopted

F__ The findings discovered and recommendation

Abstract

The inability of many Nigerian artists to present themselves and their art works to the best understanding of the people in their milieu through constructive criticism has been drastically reducing the prestige of the works of art and the artist in the areas of marketing and national economic cohesion. This has been regarded as series of foot prints in the Nigerian Contemporary Art Practice without meaningful impact in our national economic sector. It is good to acknowledge the idealistic means of art for national economic cohesion which the front line fathers of art of the then had put into practice for the sanctification of explorations and innovations in art practice, economy and the nation. This will serve as a means of standardizing the ideas and legacy of studio practice in Nigeria. This research paper tried to affirm the position of art in our economic sector in aid of national cohesion. During the research process, literature, knowledge and practice were reviewed under different sub-headings to affirm the essence of individual and group ideas of art in national economy cohesion as a means of meaningful development. The method adopted was carefully conducted under the basis of evaluation and judgment. Conclusion was drawn with relevant recommendations that, standard, unique and meaningful art works with the adoption of good style of studio practice in line with the idea of exploration and innovation should be the target of all artists without neglecting the concept of critique as a vital issue in bringing art to its position in the national economic sector for proper cohesion.
Key words: Economy, Cohesion, Sector, Standard and Unique

(Adopted from Utilizing Art for National Cohesion and Economic Development published by EXISWAC Journal of C_CAV by Sulaiman Dauda Ishola a PhD. Candidate, Delta state university, Abraka Delta state Nigeria, December, 2012)

Choosing a Topic or Title for a Write-up in Art and Art History

Topic tells the subjects matter and the main area of interest in a given research work. While title does not specify a subject matter but defines the broad section of an interested area of determination which will further lead to a divine area of interest in a research work. It is a general filed that is too broad to study. For instance: The Role of Art in Communication (this is a title which has a generic concept of function performed by art in the area of communication). This is regarded as a title because it consists of all aspects of activities of art in communication. In which a research cannot be able to define and explain due to the various constrains against research process. In this case, due is to its widest scope to be taken as a topic but a title. The moment such mistake is taken for an article as a topic, the paper will not scale through because it will have many sub-headings and a lot of unnecessary discussion will be invited to the write-up.

The essence of writing in research is to enable people feel for the theme or content of your writing or research in order to vividly know more about or in art. This can only be met if a meaningful and touching topic is taken for a research work. If the variables in the topic cannot be answered how can you now talk about the psychology of art? But if the variables are answerable then the ideas of psychology of art will now come in. The topic must have a subject matter in terms of a meaningful content. Take for instance: “Sustainability of Visual in Communication” or “Psychology of Neglect” Two broad questions must be asked by a writer in order to know what to write concerning a chosen topic. Such questions are:

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  what background that could be used to present my topic clearly for the audience to understand me clearly?
  
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  what is the position of the society towards the problems I am trying to solve?
  

CHAPTER TEN

CRITIQUE OF ELLIS OYEKOLA ADEYEMO’S PAINTING: A RITUAL PERFORMANCE FOR THE BENEFIT OF TOURISTS IN TOURISM INDUSTRY

Fig. xiv: Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo A Ritual Performance, Acrylic on Dimension; 122’’ x 50’’, Museum of the Institute of African Studies, Thursday, 13^th June, 2013

For an art work to be potentially and scholarly appreciated by the viewers, the concept of visual literacy is highly needed. This concept is a missing fundamental visual principle among the viewers of art works and the artists that produced the work. This idea of evaluation visually examined and documented the essence of visual literacy in the studio practice of Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo as the artist in question and the viewers in order to restructure the perspective notion of people in our society based on the phenomenon of art and its practices. The Painting: A Ritual Perform.
Going by this, can this work be explained on the concept of what we see? The answer depends on whether we regard the work as one spontaneous flow of a given document as an independent entity. However, it is possible to understand the work through visual sensibility and scholarly intelligence in the areas of medium, technique and effective draftsmanship that are rooted from cultural norm of the artist in terms of setting and plot of is people which the acrylic painting work depicts and the artistic personality of the producer.
The inability of many artists to present themselves and their art works to the best understanding of the people in their milieu through effective research that centers on innovation and exploration as a means of experimentation on the concept of lateral thinking and bit of logical ideology has been drastically reducing the prestige of art practice, art works and the artists in our society (Hussein, 2012). This golden deed was meaningfully practiced by the artists of the early period of art development in the world taken African art as a focal point in the earliest era of our greatest grand fathers in which their art works marked the metamorphosis of art practice irrespective of the media, techniques and style used. Africa my Africa, the home of the resourceful thinkers… (Hussein, 2012).
This has been regarded as series of foot prints marked in the African Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) and the world at large. It is good to acknowledge the idealistic means of encouragement which our fore-fathers of art had put into practice for the sanctification of explorations and innovations in art. This will serve as a means of standardizing the ideas and legacy of studio art practice in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large. The means in which painting as an aspect of art has been executed by the different world artists is based on the platform of the art movements of the front linear art practitioners: Raphael, Gioto, Monet and Leonardo Dan Vinci to mention but a few.
The idea of expressionism of painting is basically refers to an art movement early in the 20th century; the artist's subjective expression of inner experience was emphasized; an inner feeling was expressed through a distorted rendition of reality to personal thought, feelings and belief. Being a movement in painting from the mid-twentieth century, whose main characteristic is the spontaneous assertion of the individual through the act of self feelings in painting makes the then artists contributed immensely to the arrival of other forms of art theories and practice in studio and classroom.
There are a variety of styles within this movement that is characterized more by the concepts underlying it that by the homogeneity of styles. As its name implies, of the varieties of styles is the abstract expressionism is a non-figurative art, and usually does not fit the conventional limits of representation. All these thoughts of human feeling and aspirations are embedded in painting as an art practice of Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo. The roots of his Abstract Expressionism in aid of his own style and techniques of studio practice are in the non-divine figurative painting of Nigerian and African ideologies. He widely believes in the deliberately uses the unconscious and the naturalness of his creative activity to define African belief through body embellishments of human feelings through the adoption of all the elements and principles of art in his pleased manner.
His arrival in Nigerian Art and African Art in general, in 1970s till date is content worthy of documentation like that of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall and Yves Tanguy spread the spirit of abstract expressionism among American painters of the 1940 and 1950, who influenced by subjective abstraction of Arshile Gorky, painter who was born in Armenia and immigrated to America in 1920, and Hans Hofmann, German-born painter and professor at American, who emphasized the dynamic interplay of planes colour. The art practice of Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo is centered on the use of all available media in painting. Although the styles covered are as diverse as the artists’ own members, they developed two main trends of the Action Painting (action painting) and the colour planes.
The current gesture painting of expressionism of Ellis took several years of lateral thinking in studio practice from prominent masters to the PhD philosophical realm of art practice so that it becomes a “space of action” and not the mere reproduction of reality. This “space of action” will be eventually being re-expressed to create an endless concept of African belief and concepts with divine embellishments of shapes and forms. His term of painting is different from the one that was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and refers mainly to the work of Jackson Pollock. It is also different with certain limitations, for parts or individual aspects of the works of other artists such as Arshile Gorky, Hans Hofmann and Robert Mother well. Sometimes used incorrectly as a synonym of Abstract Expressionism itself, even though many of the artists belonging to this school ever used this technique.
The Drop-Pico technique of expressionism of Sulaiman has its origins in the habitual creation of the expressionism with constant control of the polymeric movement in order to form a basic element of both abstraction and realism as it shows in his exhibits. However, the real difference between the two movements is not so much the technique as the initial approach: under the influence of Freudian psychology, the impressionists held that art was able to automatically unlock and bring to light the unconscious mind with the use of brush strokes. Consequently, such works attributed to different symbolic elements, and even figurative, that revealed the artist’s psyche. By contrast, the aesthetics of expressionism Painting of Drop-Pico technique of polymeric media put the emphasis on the act of painting itself, irrespective of any expressive or representational aspect that might have. Just reflect for a moment the artist’s life, one of his acts and therefore a unique element of this biography. This expression of the personality of Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo is of a much matured idea and standard draftsmanship in studio art practice.
This study was carried out as a concept based on the current practice on innovation and exploration in art as a style in painting. It is therefore, agreed that many artists irrespective of their areas of specializations had gone out of recognition due to lack of a meaningful and a unique style of expression in any aspect of the art movement in their various aspects of Fine and Applied arts in terms of studio practice. When an idea is represented with a divine personal ideology and the way of its presentation calls for public agreement that makes the artist and his work become a living concept worthy of emulation. (Abdullah, 1999) Then such an act of an artist is a style and quality of production.
Abdullah. (1999) who said that:

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  An artist would not be a person without historical background that moves him or her round the phenomenon of artistic thinking. Every things he or she takes part in, reveals the lives and the ideology of the people he or she sees and knows for a particular way of expressing his feeling.
  
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  Africa is a wide phenomenon of life, homes, foods, clothing, languages, thought, beliefs, song and game as the divine entities of people cultural and historical background, which are developed from the contributions formed by the inhabitants. Man as an artist is the only creature who can build on the past to explain the present in the capture of the future with personal creativity and originality which is the finding bedrock of this technique.
  
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  This is a divine demand from both young and old practicing artists to adopt from their immediate environment of ether local motifs or symbols that would help to re-echo the traditional African values and appreciations through visual ideas and personal representation.
  

It is quiet observed of Dr. Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo “A Ritual Performance” as a patterned class of traditional figures with four elegant sections of human symbolic achievement as a body of different concepts that are peculiar to every man in visual appearance. Besides, the title is immediately apparently tells a story of the art piece been a selected manners in which the Africans do offer sacrifices to their figurative gods the land that represents a known master god in the phenomenon. It is to be said that the painting piece contains thousand figures of both males and females’ human being who appears to be wealthy or successful in enough to offer sacrifice to the societal gods. It is proved that the figures are the communal. The uncertainty about the identity of the figures may be in their spiritual content of useful in a successful godly appearance forming an interpretation of traditional religion achievers in their milieu.

In this piece of painting, the title of the work is agreed to be part of the work due to the selected and combined media: African motifs and content in form African traditional pattern were conventional used for the reality of god of the land. It would be accepted that the piece of painting: “A Ritual Performance” represents one among the ways in which Africans normally present spiritual services to the gods of their land. The visual image of the figures was adapted and adopted from the neighboring villages that make up the black race of Africa as a cogent theme of boarder line perception in the areas.
The “A Ritual Performance” is compartmentalized into four successful sections in the areas of patterns of selected motifs within the African cultural ventilation and distribution of traditional ideologies. The art painting was produced in 2013 mainly with mainly with acrylic on paper of dimension 122 inches by 50 inches. In view of this, the work was produced in a way that has to do with the adoption of Pseudo-realistic Stylization. This style of the painter: Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo deals with the act of using geometric forms and shapes to represent basic forms simple composition of human figures and there communal environment. Effort is made to identify the figures base on the inter-logging of the selected motifs under the stratification of abstract, natural and semi- realistic manner. This is assumed to involve the use of basic tool movement in both smoothness and linear movement.
Besides, the work was basically discussed right from the right hand side of the paper to the top left hand side due to the systematic arrangement of the artistic syntax of traditional African motifs. Each section of the four in whole art work was artistically executed and arranged to the procedures of traditional procession. The first section from the right hand side exhibits a base for the gods of the land with the almighty god at the middle of the other gods of the land. The setting and the plotting of the scenario of the gods visually exhibits the shrine of the gods of African kingdoms in which an artistic format is taking round the ground of the paper used as a support on which the painting was executed. The gods were wrapped with divine and symbolic image of a rhythmic basic shapes of undefined structures were arranged in a clockwise and anti-clockwise forms in order to exhibit the appearance of the chosen god. These were assembled uprightly to create a successful standing of a man in his milieu.
The second section illustrates the arrival of the ritual items for the gods of the land. This section visually repents the abdominal part of a human being’s belief as content of appealing to the gods of the land. In this work, the part was represented with an oblong cylindrical and conical form jointly created with the adoption of linear African motifs and calabash to create abundant richness of Africans to gods. The sign of tallness and height in the appearance of a woman so called the lady priest carrier “obinrin arugba ebo”. At the front part of the abdominal base of the figure is a secluded portion of design that illustrates the unity and the love of gods which is artistically represented with the use of colour white to signify the trend that hold the entire villages of Africa in the areas of the border line. with bush of human heads like structure of African motifs to a uniform pattern of design in painting format and improvised faces like structures to explain the successful nature of a rich men and women in the society. There attached are movable patterns that spring forward and back ward telling on the performance of the ritual activities. The movement of the motifs that constitute the patterns artistically signifies that the god is willing and ready to assist its subjects at all time.
The delay in the forth section of the painting depicts the position of a human activities in a high symbolic manner of traditional setting and plot from the locality which the painter of the work came from. It is realized that the act of asserting a joyous forms and shapes used in the fourth sections of the painting represent the ceremony and the instruments of joy and happiness in order to depict the tendency of success. The section as it is displayed, shows assorted and loaded strips of local dancing instruments and tools bounded round the neck, hands and the entire body of the people on the appraiser of the god in order to explain the border line tendencies among the Africans.
Following the description made above in line with the level of anatomical pattern of the figures in the painting and the artist means of exploration in the creation of a four in one pictorial compositional painting that looks like a scenario of mural painting on wall. It can be interpreted as a visual appearance of traditional worshippers. They are stand successfully on a platform of self esteem in honour of their gods and goddesses. Their giant height and bodily costumed are jointly interpreted as a means of success that is meant for the person who are not lazy in the traditional setting in which they live. In view of the media used in the creation of the work is a set of symbolic meanings which are peculiar to the local dialect of the artist.
In this perspective of human reasoning following all that has been said in the appreciation the painting, it can be admired without failing to understand the statue of the nature of the painting with other of its kind in our society. The work tells us something about its subject matter, of course, Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo established the grace of his local traditional norms and values and his self confidence of a rich semi old man in a successful outstanding of serving the God of the creatures in his milieu. Taken a medium to create a highly credible paper painting of this large and meaningful size of such a giant figures of traditional worshippers and presented it to his milieu is worthy of appreciation. The compartmentalization of the painting tends to deduce from the work as a body of a given set of traditional figures serving the gods of their land in a magnificent manner. My judgment, therefore, in this painting titled “A Ritual Performance” is that the work by Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo is successfully executed and solves an original artistic problem in studio art practice in an African contemporary era of all time of the past, present and future. It possesses a unique formal distinction. Besides, it deals with the ideas that make it more complacent of temporary claim on the imagination of the viewers.
For haven described, analyzed, interpreted and evaluated the piece of painting: “A Ritual Performance” produced by Ellis Oyekola Adeyemo, it is concluded that the work is successfully executed and met the aesthetic values and the functionalities needs of the society which is often expected of any successful art work. This critical study was conducted, both in the literary and the studio documentary and discovered certain findings worthy of recommendation. The following recommendations need to be suggested. All members of our milieu should learn how to read visual art work following the rules of art syntax in aid of visual literacy. The scheme of the work should be re-examined in order to conformity with the main structural outlook of the painting in terms of content, composition, setting and plotting of the incidents in the painting. It is recommended that artists should take it as a point of necessity to get acquainted with knowledge and skills of the past in order to determine their present.
That will promote the greatest witty as well as enact possibilities un-envisaged. It is also recommended that every artist should develop personal and unique technique and style as a means of adaptation from the known art movement. This will enable the practicing artists to be more original in the studio production and to avoid reproducing the ideals of painting and other aspects of fine and applied art which had been in the past, the ways they were done in the era Giotto, Van Gogh to mention but a few. Also, good knowledge of draftsmanship is needed for this or similar research. This is because, well drawn forms either in abstract, semi-abstract or realism helps in a better redefinition of personal ideals and technique of style.
It is recommended that future researchers in Arts, Humanity, Environmental and other professional bodies should treat traditional subjective and objective ideologies in order to place African art especially painting in its proper place. This appraisal had analyzed materials, technique and styles as a dynamic source of expressing certain feelings with emphasis on painting as a yard stick in studio practice. It is recommended that all artists (painters) should find away to upgrade and standardize their means of using available materials in order to avoid wastage the Ellis has meaningfully done. All painters should not forget the historical background of sourcing for materials as a way of embarking on self improvisation of the needed materials in order to meet effective studio practice.
It is also recommended that every painter should develop personal and unique techniques and style. This will enable the practicing artists to be more original in the studio production. This will avoid the reproduction of the ideals of painting and other aspects of fine and applied arts the ways they were produced in the past, such as the way they were done in the era Giotto, Van Gogh to mention but a few. The art works produced by all artists are meant to serve certain aesthetic and functionality values in order to bring certain change to the milieu in which they were been produced for. These values can only be accomplished through potentially and scholarly visual literacy. The visual literacy that is expected to be deduced from the work of art can only be understood through the ideas of the artistic syntax that are peculiar to both the elements and principles of design in studio practice but syntax in grammatical concept, it has to do with words, phrase, clause and sentence in the context of language (Egonwa, 2012).
This context of language usage of syntax has been left behind by many studio practitioners. Therefore, artists and their art works are suffering from communal recognition and appreciation due to lack of effective writing which ought to be the priority of the artists being the actual people who understand the syntax of their works. But revise is the case, the non artists who know nothing about art and the work of art have taken up the mantle of writing about art and art works (Sulaiman, 2011).