This is the powerpoint from Tuesday's live class session, covering "experiencing art" and the beginnings of formal analysis.

1. Class 6
Formal Analysis
A R T 1 0 0
U n d e r s t a n d i n g V i s u a l C u l t u r e

2. You’re allowed to—
supposed to!—
respond personally
to artwork.
The artist wants you to have an experience—an
emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, moral (some
combination of these or all of them) experience of the
work.

3. So, how do we
experience art
to the fullest?

4. experiencing art
• Experience, with your eyes, mind, feelings, memories,
body. What does this piece do to me?
• Examples: Does it make me happy? Uncomfortable? Sad?
Upset? Does it turn my stomach? Does it make me shiver?
Worry? Sweat?

5. experiencing the effects
• 1. Experience comes first. What do you SEE and how does it
make you FEEL in your bones.
• At this point, it doesn’t matter who made it, when, or why. The
point is to try to figure out, as completely as possible, the effect
the work is having on you.
• So let’s sum this up as “experiencing the effects” of the work.
This process can take a while. It is not necessarily simple. In
fact, one definition of art could be work that takes the viewer
some time and trouble to experience.

6. One way we try to experience art more fully is by
understanding how it creates the effects it has on us.
experiencing art

7. accounting for the effects
Now that you have a handle on what you’ve experienced, you
want to know how the piece made you feel that way. Cf. driving a
car to learning how it actually works.
This is where formal analysis can be helpful.
How did this piece make me feel (x, y, and z) way? How is it
structured to achieve those specific effects?
This is where purely personal, idiosyncratic responses can be
weeded out if you are writing to share with an audience.

8. Effects 1
Bruce Nauman
Hanging Heads #2, 1989, wax and wire
two heads, the first is 10 3/4 x 9 1/2 x 7 ¾, the second is slightly
smaller, both suspended approx 6' above the floor

9. Wayne THIEBAUD, Cakes, 1963, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches

10. What will happen in this
movie?
How do you know?
http://prezi.com/sazemrm
sx16b/what-is-a-genre/

11. Advertisers work hard to create visual messages that
can be decoded in a rapid glance. They also use
genres to help audiences understand quickly what
a particular story will be about.
“This is
a
romantic
comedy
with two
young
stars.”

12. Edgar Degas
Edmondo & Thérèse Morbilli
circa 1867
Oil on canvas
45 7/8 x 34 ¾ inches
What is going to happen
to these two people?
What is their relationship like?

13. Art images usually have a much higher degree of
ambiguity than pop cultures images do. Art, however,
also has genres, such as:
•portraiture
•landscape
•history painting
•still life

14. • Even given the ambiguity of art, learning to read its formal,
visual language will help us to understand it much better.
• This is the purpose of today's class.

15. To help us, we can make a
distinction between subject
matter and form.
Arnold Genthe, Portrait of Helen
Cooke in a Field of Poppies, 1907

16. Paula Modersohn-Becker
Old Woman with Poppies
1906

17. Paula Modersohn-Becker
Old Woman with Poppies
1906

18. Georgia O’Keeffe, Oriental Poppies, 1928

19. Claude Monet
Fields of Oats and Poppies, 1890
Oil on canvas, 25 x 36 inches

20. Stuart Franklin
(Magnum photo)
Peter Melchett’s organic farm in
Ringstead, with poppies and
cornflowers growing alongside
organic wheat
2008

22. What is Formal Analysis?
Breaking a work down into component parts for
purposes of systematic observation and
understanding.
When the parts are put back together, you do so
with a richer understanding of each part and
how they fit together.

23. Step 1
• Identify the genre of the work, if possible.
• Examples:
• still life
• portrait
• landscape
• history painting

24. Paul CÉZANNE
The Peppermint Bottle
1893/5
oil on canvas
25.9 × 32.3 in

25. Thomas RUFF
Porträt (T. Ruff)
1991
Chromogenic
print face-
mounted on
Diasec
73 1/4 x 71 1/4
inches (186.1 x
181 cm)
Edition of 5

26. Step 2
• Identify the medium of the work. This is often,
but not always, given in the caption or label.

27. 2 & 3-DIMENSIONAL MEDIA
• Two-dimensional=flat
• Three-dimensional=existing in space
• Sculpture
• Relief (bas-relief or low-relief)
• Sculpture in the round
• Installation
• Architecture and landscape architecture
• Dimension of time is added
• Film
• Video

28. Drawings
Paintings
Photographs
Prints

29. 1. What is the medium of the work? Is it 2-dimensional?
drawing—charcoal on paper
painting—pigment on a prepared surface
print—lithograph, silkscreen, etching
photograph

30. Rembrandt van Rijn, A Bend in the Amstel at Kostverloren, undated drawing
drawing

31. PAUL NOBLE
Volume 6, 2007
Pencil on paper
39 3/8 x 27 5/8 inches
drawing

32. Rackstraw Downes, Under the Off-Ramp from the George Washington
Bridge, 2009. Graphite on light blue paper with blue threads, 17 x 36 3/4
in.
drawing

33. David SHRIGLEY
Untitled
ink on paper
14 5/8 by 10 3/8 inches
2010
drawing

34. Carlo Crivelli
Madonna with Child
Tempera on panel
c. 1470
painting

35. Gustave Courbet Woman with a Parrot, 1866, Oil on canvas, 51 x 77 inches
painting

36. Karen Kilimnik
A Madonna from an
Italian church on the Lost
Island
2008
water soluble oil on
canvas
11 x 14 inches
painting

37. Robert Ryman
Untitled
1964
painting

38. Robert Adams
Colorado
Springs,
Colorado
1968
Gelatin-silver
print
14 x 14 inches
photography

39. BILL BRANDT
Hands on the beach, 1959
Gelatin silver print, 9 x 7¾ in.
photography

40. photography