Guidelines for Analyzing a Work of Art
Once again, the guidelines below are to help your brainstorming process for your final paper essay. Please don’t submit any paper that literally answers to the questions below. It will not be accepted. You have to write a cohesive essay for your final paper. Please see other handouts for further detailed information. Cheers.
This is an addition to the Prompt for the Observation handout:
When you encounter a work of art, there are a number of questions that you might ask to help you to understand the work:
Understanding and Analyzing a Work of Art
1. What are the basic facts about the work?
• What is the title? / Does the title have particular significance?
• Who is the artist?
• When was the work done?
• Where was the work done?
• What medium (material) was sued in making the work?
• What is the work’s size?
2. What is the subject of the work—that is, what is the work about?
3. What is the purpose of the work—why was it done?
4. What is the content of the work (the artist’s message, what the artist has to say?)
5. What period or movement does the work belong to?
6. What choices did the artist make about form—what does the work look like?
–Formal Elements include: line, shape, light and dark, mass and volume, color, space, texture, and time and motion
7. What is your response to the piece? How did the artist’s formal choices affect your response?
8. What do you know about how the work was made?
9. What technique was employed?
10. Is the works symbolic—that is, do objects or colors in the work stand for ideas?
11. What is the significance of the piece?
12. Are the work abstract (non-representational), or stylized, or naturalistic, or idealistic?
Prompts for Observation/Museum Visit -Important!
Take this sheet on your museum visit. Use these questions, in any order, when looking at the object(s) you have chosen for your final paper assignment. Your answers to these questions while carefully looking at the artworks of your choice will form the content of your final paper essay. This is part of a brainstorming process. Please note that your paper is NOT a list of literal answers to the questions below, but has to be a cohesively written essay.
Once you find the artworks you will compare/contrast, stand in front of your object and ask yourself the following questions. Make detailed notes.
• Where is your artwork located within the gallery, and how is it positioned? Where is the viewer meant to stand in relation to the work? Is there one viewpoint or multiple viewing points? Where is this work located? What other works are near it to the right and to the left (I just want the artist, title and date of these works, not a full analysis). Does it relate to its surroundings at all? Is this wok popular?
• What do you think about the ways in which the museum displays your artworks and the light setting? Do you find it effective, and fit for the understanding of the artworks, or not? Give the reasons why you agree or disagree with the Museum’s methods of display, and its lighting.
• Read the label – what can we tell from the label? Artist’s name, media/materials, when and where the piece was made. What does this contextual information tell you about the artwork?
• What do you see in each work? Describe them by breaking them down based on their formal elements, content and context. (refer to the readings on Blackboard and slides we have discussed in the first class)
• What about the composition? Is it balanced, symmetrical, asymmetrical? Why?
• How big is the work? How does size affect your reaction to the work? How does size affect the depiction of the subject?
• How does the artist use line, color, light and shadow? What may have been the intention behind such renderings?
• What is the material like? Why might the artist have used this material?
• Note textures and the quality of the surface of the work. What adjectives could you use throughout your analysis? Eg. shiny, dull, had, soft, rough, smooth. How does this texture and surface treatments affect our understanding of the work?
• Where was it originally meant to have been seen, and how is the current context different? What might it have been like to view it in its original context?
• Identify the subject matter. Be certain to describe all of the components depicted. Is this artwork telling a story? Is it religious or mythological or meant to do something else?
• Is the subject ideal or real? Describe the style. Is this a realistic depiction? Is it abstract? Is the style of this work similar to styles we have studied? What does this tell you about the work and the period in which it was made?
• What was the artist trying to say about his or her subject? Is the artist didactic, critical, endorsing, praising, patriotic, sarcastic, etc. through his/her artwork?
• What may be the artist’s intention/motivation behind all these depictions/expressions of the artwork you have just observed and analyzed? And what may have been the possible reaction/reception of the contemporary spectators vs. us on the artwork?
• Is there further information in the museum you can use to help you find out more about your object? Leaflets, plaques on the wall to find out who sponsored the gallery, museum guards, docents etc?
NOTE:
Make sure that you are able to articulate the difference between mere description and formal analysis. You must use CLAIM + EVIDENCE
• Eg. “This work is very beautiful. The sculpture has two arms, two legs and is covered by a long garment.” NO
• Eg. “The figure/sculpture is wearing a long garment that emphasizes the proportion and length of her body. In keeping with Hellenistic tradition, the effect makes the figure seem life-like, as if the clothing might move if you touched it or if the sculpture could walk. This is contradicted by the fact that the work is actually made from very beautiful, hard and immoveable white marble.” YES