Instruction
Step One:
For this assignment, you will be expected to visit the website of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Step Two:
You will pick a favorite work (any medium, any time period, any culture) and critique that work based upon its physical properties, expressive elements, iconography, and cultural context.
Step Three:
You will take your notes and observations and write a 3-page paper (typed and double spaced. FONT: Times New Roman (not bold), FONT SIZE: 12pt., Double spaced, Default margins) focusing on the elements described in brief above. When citing sources please use the MLA style.
Tips To Approaching and Writing this Paper:
Physical Properties: DESCRIBE what you see. Look to the Introduction of your textbook for further ideas.
What objects and/or shapes do you see?
How are they organized?
What is the focal point and how do you know?
What types of lines are used?
Colors? Why might those colors be chosen?
Space?
Materials? Technique? Condition?
Expressive Elements: IDENTIFY what you see.
Is there an identifiable subject? Or is it purely abstract/non-objective?
What is the subject?
Is there any Iconography used? Signs? Symbols? Which provide more meaning?
Attributes? Personifications?
What is the artist trying to tell the viewer? Are they trying to make you think about something? Feel something?
How do they do this?
Cultural Context: ANALYZE what you see.
Who made it?
Where they part of an art-historical group or movement? Can those characteristics be seen in the work through subject and style?
Who paid for it? Was their a patron? Did they have any impact on the work?
Does the subject depict a specific historical person, place or thing?
Does the style refer to a specific historical person, place, or movement?
How is this artist or movement connected/impacted by their time period and culture?
How is that reflected in the painting you have chosen?