What makes up a work of art?
Components to describe and analyze art
Professor Rebekah Scoggins
January 15, 2013
Art Appreciation Section F
Looking and Seeing
“To see is itself a creative operation, requiring
an effort. Everything that we see in our daily
life is more or less distorted by acquired
habits, and this is perhaps more evident in an
age like ours when cinema, posters, and
magazines present us every day with a flood
of ready-made images which are to the eye
what prejudices are to the mind. The effort
needed to see things without distortion takes
something very like courage.”
- Henri Matisse, 1953, aged 84
René Magritte, The Blank Signature,
1965. Oil on Canvas, Painting.
René Magritte, The Human Condition, 1933.
Oil on Canvas, Painting.
Vertical line / Horizontal line
Hard line / Soft line
Diagonal line
Line
Lee Friedlander. Bismarck, North Dakota. 2002. Photograph.
Line, Rhythm, & Pattern
Pieter de Hooch. Interior of a Dutch
House. 1658. Oil on canvas. Painting
Line Study
Mass vs Shape; Space; Representational vs Abstract
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The
Turkish Bath, 1862. Oil on wood. Painting.
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
July 1907. Oil on canvas. Painting.
Time & Motion
Sassetta & Workshop. The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul. c. 1440.
Light & Color
Francisco Goya. The Third of May, 1808. 1814. Oil on Canvas. Painting.
Perspective
Linear vs Atmospheric
a. One-point linear perspective
b. One-point linear perspective. Cubes above
eye level, at eye level, and below eye level
c. Two-point linear perspective
Raphael. The School of Athens. 1508. Stanza della segnatura
(Room of the Signatura). Vatican Palace. Vatican City, Italy.
Raphael. The School of Athens.
Layout of Linear Perspective
Raphael. Study for The School of Athens
Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, Marble, Sculpture.
Asher Brown Durand. Kindred Spirits. 1849. Oil on canvas. Painting
Shen Zhou. Poet on a Mountain Top. From series: Landscape Album: Five
Leaves. Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Ink and Watercolor on Paper. Painting
William Harnett. A Smoke Backstage. 1877. Oil on canvas, Painting.
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29, Oil on Canvas. Painting
Abstraction
Pencil on paper
Tempura, oil, and charcoal on paper
Pencil on paper
Oil on Canvas
Theo van Doesburg, Composition (The Cow), c. 1917
Iconography
Workshop of Diego Quispe Tito. The Virgin of Carmel Saving Souls in
Purgatory. Late 17th Century. Oil on canvas, Painting.
Scale
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Shuttlecocks.
One
of four. 1994. Aluminum, Sculpture.
Copyright ©2011, ©2009 Pearson Prentice Hall Inc.
Proportion
Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà. 1501.
Marble, Sculpture.
Roettgen Pietà. 1300–1325.
Painted Wood, Sculpture.