(Parts “A” and “B” are the art of art history. Part “C” is the history, context, interpretation.)

The way you work at “home “ each night affects how much you learn. It’s where you do most of your practice.

We all study and learn differently, but the basic point of homework is the same for everyone—to explore alone what we’ll work through together the next day.

What will I ask you to do in class? To explain each work of art in detail, to tell us what you figured out—not just “report” on what you read at home.

You’re not just memorizing. You need to “analyze” what you see and read—take each artwork apart and find what makes it tick, visually, historically.

At home, the challenge is to weave the images and text together. Reading text is familiar. “Reading” images may not be. So…

A. START with the Image. Before you touch a word of text, look carefully at the work of art, size it up, ask questions—your “First Impressions.” For instance:

1. What does it LOOK like?

What is the “palette”? What is the work “made of”—physically, visually?

Describe the individual elements, such as color (warm vs. cool, light vs. dark), texture (rough vs. smooth), line (rounded vs. jagged), composition (formal vs. informal).


2. HOW does it mean?

What is the unique visual identity of the work of art—the total effect of all the elements together––and how is this effect achieved?

How does the artist combine color, line, texture, etc. to produce a distinctive pattern? How is the visual identity built up?

B. Look-Read-Look. Now, begin to add text—one line at a time. Test each idea against the image. Can you really see the point? Do you agree, disagree?

Be open to what you read, but don’t just accept what the “experts” say. Experience the art for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.

 

C. WHAT does it mean?

The work of art is a wholly visual thing. We understand it by confronting
it directly, engaging it, “listening,” responding.

So why read what other people say about it? First, someone else may
react to the work differently than we do—it’s worth comparing notes.

Also, there are “missing pieces,” things we can’t always detect, even with very new work. The older the work of art, the more that’s missing, the more the “setting” has dropped away.

What was happening socially, intellectually, politically when the work of art was created? It’s not always easy to know, but scholarly detectives—“historians”—can reconstruct the lost context, help us think our way back into other cultures and periods, to see the work through the artist’s eyes, and those of their “audience.”

All this brings the work of art into sharper focus. It suggests how the
artist—and those around them—may have been seeing, feeling, thinking
at the time. We have a better idea what the artist consciously intended to
convey—the symbolism, “message”— or what they may just have
recorded spontaneously about their world.

The fuller meaning of the work begins to emerge.