Understanding Art Criticism
Art criticism is studying, understanding, and judging works of art.
Henri Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908, Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Solving art mysteries is one of the jobs that art critics set out to
accomplish.
•What if you don’t know what an artwork is
communicating?
•How can you figure it out?
Following the steps of art criticism can help you discover lots of
clues to really understand and appreciate a work of art.
The Steps of Art Criticism
In each step of art criticism, you are answering a different
question. The four steps of art criticism are:
1. Description: What do I see?
2. Analysis: How is the work organized?
3. Interpretation: What is the artist trying to communicate?
4. Judgment: Is this a successful work of art?
Description
Look at the work of art here:
What do you see?
Red room
Wall paper
Chairs, wooden, cane seat
Table, table cloth
Woman
Fruit & wine
Cut flowers in vase
Window
Landscape
Trees, bushes, flowers, building
Colors- red, blue,green, yellow,
white, black
Analysis
Look again at the painting by Henri Matisse
How is the work
arranged?
Break down the
painting into its
composition, or the
way the art principles
are used to organize
the art elements.
ELEMENTS OF
ART/DESIGN
•Color=
•Line=
•Shape=
•Form=
•Space=
•Texture=
ELEMENTS OF ART/DESIGN
•Color=red- jarring color blue,
yellow, green, black,
white
•Line=straight-outline table,
chairs / curvy- flower
pattern
•Shape=geometric / organic
•Form= flattened
•Space=crowded space,
flattened plane
•Texture=patterns
PRINCIPLES OF
ART/DESIGN
•Unity=
•Balance=
•Contrast=
•Emphasis=
•Movement=
•Rhythm=
•Proportion=
PRINCIPLES OF ART/DESIGN
•Unity= color, shape & line
•Balance= woman-chair, roomwindow
•Contrast= red-green, black-white
pattern-solid, curve-straight
•Emphasis= woman arranging fruit
•Movement= diagional bottom right
to top left, curved lines of
pattern & trees
•Rhythm= repeated- curved pattern
(wall paper, cloth, trees),
dots of color (lemons/flowers)
•Proportion= large with small
square
Interpretation
What do you think Matisse is trying to communicate?
Give your opinion based
on the clues you have
collected.
What ideas, moods,
emotions, and stories do
you think the artwork
communicates?
In Matisse's Harmony in Red
(Red Room) 1908-9, red is
the predominant color in the
painting.
How does the predominant
redness make you feel?
The color red usually makes one feel warmth because it is
associated with the sun and fire, but also because the color red has a
physiological affect that excites and stimulates.
More energy is reflected from warm colors than from the cooler
ones. "Warm" colors - red, yellow and orange - traditionally are
thought to evoke feelings of heat, whether psychological or real.
Artists understand the power of color in affecting the viewer's
feelings. Throughout art history, artists have used color to
convey and heighten the emotional content of a painting. In
the early twentieth century, artists began to focus on color
as a direct translation of their feelings, and to use color as an
emotional force.
This group of artists was called the Fauves (or the wild beasts
in French) and they included Henri Matisse (1869-1954),
Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958), and Andre Derain (18801954.)
Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived
and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose
works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the
representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.
While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued
beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years,
1905–1907, and had three exhibitions.
How would you feel about the painting if it
was mostly green? Or overwhelmingly blue
instead of red?
This painting went through three successive
stages. First it was green, then blue, after it
hung at the Salond'Automne in 1908. It was
finally delivered in scarlet to the Russian
collector Shchukin to decorate his dining
room.
Did you know that the color red in many restaurants is there only to
make customers hungry, and to encourage them to order more
than they normally would. Red walls and décor also cause
people to eat faster, since the color increases our normal
levels of energy.
What affect did the final location for the painting
(Shchukin dining room) have on Matisse’s color
and subject choice?
Matisse also limits his perspective in this work. He makes
breaks in the line around the table, frames the chair,
the window, and the little house in an innovative
manner by cutting them off, and encloses two of the
planes, the green and the blue in a window.
Judgment
Do you think this work is successful? Why or why not?
What reasons can you
give for your idea of
why this is a good or
bad artwork?
The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a painting by French artist Henri
Matisse, from 1908. It is considered by some critics to be Matisse's
masterpiece. It is an example of Impressionism's lack of a central
focal point.
The painting was ordered as "Harmony in Blue," but Matisse was
dissatisfied with the result, and so he painted it over with his
preferred red.
Now look at the painting by Marc Chagall called Paris Through
the Window and answer each of the art criticism questions on
your own:
Description: What do I see?
Analysis: How are elements and principles of art used?
Interpretation: What is the artist trying to communicate?
Judgment: Is this a successful work of art?
Description: What do I see?
Analysis:
How are elements and principles of art used?
Interpretation:
What is the artist trying to communicate?
Judgment: Is this a successful work of art?
TEST YOUR UNDERSTANDING!
Look at the painting by Marc Chagall called Paris Through the
Window, 1913 and choose the Art Criticism step that each
statement belongs in.
1. This painting was
painted with oil paints
on canvas.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
2. This seems like a very
happy time for the
artist.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
3. The artist uses the element of color to add
visual interest to the painting.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
4. The artist is depicting his vision of Paris.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
5. The artist uses many colors.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
6. The artist successfully uses surrealistic imagery.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
7. The cat represents the artist looking out at Paris.
a. description
b. analysis
c. interpretation
d. judgment
•After Marc Chagall moved to Paris from Russia in 1910, his paintings
quickly came to reflect the latest avant-garde styles.
•In Paris Through the Window, Chagall’s Cubism is semitransparent
overlapping planes of vivid color in the sky above the city.
•The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the cityscape
•Maybe a metaphor for Paris and perhaps modernity itself.
•Chagall’s parachutist might also refer to contemporary experience,
since the first successful jump occurred in 1912.
•Other motifs suggest the artist’s native Vitebsk.
•This painting is an enlarged version of a window view in a selfportrait painted one year earlier, in which the artist contrasted his
birthplace with Paris.
• The figure in Paris Through the Window has been read as the artist
looking at once westward to his new home in France and eastward to
Russia. Chagall, however, refused literal interpretations of his
paintings.
1913
20 August - 700 feet above Buc, parachutist Adolphe Pegond jumps
from an airplane and lands safel
y.
1914
3 August - Germany declares war on Russia's ally France.
9 August - Battle of Mulhouse begins, the opening attack of
World War I by the French army against Germany.