Art History

When preparing to write a research paper assignment the first thing you need to do is choose a topic—but how do you begin to decide on one?

Background research is an essential part of developing a focused topic for your research paper. Conducting background research before you decide on your topic paves the way for more effective and targeted in-depth research.

• Differentiate between background research and in-depth research.
• Locate useful sources for conducting background research.
• Utilize background research to help you refine your paper topic.

Basis of Research

Background research can give you a general understanding of a topic. Your research also may highlight important questions about a subject that can form the basis of research.

Benefits of background research:

• Helps you understand your topic before you dive into heavy research.
• Offers familiarity with the terminology used.
• Gives you an idea of how much literature is available on your topic.
• Prompts ideas for a more specific research question.
• Identifies unresolved issues, controversies, and places where knowledge is incomplete.

In other words, conducting background research will help you identify anything that can lead to interesting questions about the topic that might lead to solid research questions.

Using encyclopedias is a great way to get background information. Here are some suggested databases to find background information on your Art 103 topic: Enter the artist or/or art work

Grove Art Online: 

Credo Reference: 

Gale Virtual Reference: 

You can also use:

Gale World History:

Gale Biography:

For this assignment we will be looking for information to guide us and use as keywords when we start doing in-depth research in the databases.

Find information on your topic for:

1. The style of artwork: (Hellenistic, Early Archaic, Baroque etc.)
2. The time period and where the artwork takes place and/or when the artist created it.
3. Any background on the artist or painting

Also look for background information on:

Subject Matter: what is the subject of the art piece

Content: what is the art trying to communicate?

Context: what cultural, Social, or political issues may have helped influence the work of art?

Biography: How might the artist’s personal history have helped to shape the work?

Then we will pick out keywords from our background research and connect them together to form a search string to use in the databases to find the resources required for your research paper.