Help me with my English assignment please?

Question

i know its long, but please just read it.

"All art is autobiographical. It is the record of an artist's psychic experience, his attempt to explain something to himself: and in the process of explaining it to himself, he explains it to others. When a work of art pleases us it is often because it recounts for us an experience close to our own, something we can recognize. And so we "like" the artist, because he is so human.

But there are works of art that explain nothing, that dispel order and sanity; works of art that contradict our experience and are therefore deeply offensive to us; works of art that refuse to make sense, that are perhaps dangerous because they are unforgettable. Picasso tells us that "Art is a lie that leads to the truth," and we understand by this paradox that a lie can make us see the truth, a lie can illuminate the truth for us, a lie—especially an extravagant, gorgeous lie—can make us sympathize with a part of the truth we had always successfully avoided. Instinctively, we want either lies that we can know as lies, or truth that we can know as truth. A newspaper in the mid-South declares bluntly: "We Print Only the Truth—No Fiction." But the two are hopelessly mixed together, mysteriously confused. Nothing human is simple."

I must find a piece of visual art (sculpture, painting, architecture..whatever) that i can connect to the quote, examine its meaning, and describe it in detail.

Answer 1

Go with something by Escher.  Lies we know as lies, etc.

Answer 2

In my office I have a print of a painting showing three men working. It is meaningful because I can see that they have a lot to do and how they have divided up the work and how they have some ways of judging their progress. There is a bottle of wine off to the side, opened, but not yet drunk, there shirts are off...a lot of details that tell me about the experience of work, what it is like for them to be there doing it and I can start imagining how they feel about it and connect those feelings to my own experience of work, even though what I do is so different in some senses.

If you can find some art that brings you in, makes you think about the subject matter or the experience of the artist, you can work with that. What was the artist interested in? What are the details that seem to be essential to what the artist was explaining to himself? How does the art please you or does it contradict your experience?

This isn't about getting it "right," it is about letting yourself go, opening yourself up and reacting to what you see. Do not be cautious, just say whatever you think and pursue any line of thought wherever it takes you. An English teacher who gives you an assignment like this is someone who wants you to "go crazy" with it...as long as you base your response on the specific details of what you see and show how they produce your reaction.