Research papers on art are your instructor’s opportunity to assess your comprehension of art concepts and terminology. Your topic for a research paper on art will necessarily reflect your professor’s specific assignment.
 
However, as with any paper, you can often shape the topic to match your interests and past exposure to art, making your job much more pleasant. The following article provides some examples.
 
Often, in research papers on art you will be asked to examine, research and/or respond to:

• An individual work of art
• Two or more works, somehow related (in the professor’s opinion)
• The total oeuvre of one artist
• The work of one school/movement in art
• Art trends in one time period (Millennium, Century, Decade)
• Art of one geographic region
• One genre (Painting, Sculpture, Infinitely variable other media)

These are, of course, not exhaustive lists.
 
Within each of these possibilities, you can find some wiggle room to personalize your topic.
 
Consider an example from the 18th century, Neoclassical painter David, The Death of Marat (1793).You can examine this powerful work in several ways, for example:

• Composition: The compression of depth in the picture
• References to revolution – is it a feasible subject for art?
• Classical allusions
• Is it realistic? (check outreal dead bodies)
• Accuracy or abstraction as a portrait? (compare to other pictures of Marat)
• Impact of the absence of the murderess, Charlotte Corday? (Picture Charlotte Corday and http://www.jstor.org/)

You can apply the same sorts of analysis to many other works of representational art. Alternatively, consider aradically modern sculpture, Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks(1969-1974). Many questions about the work and its context would be applicable to many other abstract modern pieces:

• The response of Yale University administration and students, where it was installed The Malignant Object: Thoughts on Public Sculpture
• Its replacement in a sturdier medium: does that change the message?
• Anti-war, anti-commercial, ant-sexist symbolism of the work
• Relationship to other Oldenburgs: http://www.moma.org/, http://www.saylor.org/
• Monumentality
• Visual punning/joking
• Political message
• Any beauty of form
• Comparison with other works from the 1960s
• Its place in the Pop Art movement

An art research paper on a single work or many can address any of dozens of aspects of the piece(s), for example: Form, Color, Line, Content, Medium, Texture, Volume, Meaning/message, Impact. Be sure to cite properly – including artworks!