Formal Analysis: Blog #4

When looking at a true piece of art, the human eye tends to only look at the abstract version of it. In art museums, when asked to describe the artwork, people just simply describe what’s apparent. But, what happens when we look deeper into the artist’s work? This is called formal analysis. With formal analysis, you look at the work of art and try to understand what the artist is trying to convey visually. Along with this attempt at understanding, an individual also provides their own context into the piece of art. You add your life experiences, your emotions, your education, and with this there’s a brand new interpretation. Sure there is no absolute definition of formal analysis, due to the fact that everybody’s interpretation is different. However, there are certain key components that makeup the foundation of formal analysis.

These key components are color, lines, space and mass, scale, composition, and historical context. With color, the basic step to understanding it is to identify what colors were used and how they were used. Are they vibrant or are they dull?

Lines in formal analysis can distinguish the art piece by determining if the strokes are broken up or strong and continous. This can tell you a little bit about what the artist was feeling at that point in time. Was the artist put together and mentally strong (having strong and continous lines) or was his life chaotic and messy (broken up lines)? This may also depend on how you are feeling at that point in time while looking at the work of art.

Space and mass can determine whether or not the image shows a sense of three dimensional space and portrays it as if it had weight or volume. This concept makes the image come to life as if you are looking at it in real time, during that period. With scale, the artist depicts images in smaller or larger forms. For example, an artist would depict gods as larger images while regular humans as tiny specks in comparison. This is a very important key concept when analyzing a piece of art.

The composition and historical context of art tells us what the artist was drawing and what the world was like during the life of the artist. This can really tell a story because by understnding the time period of the artist, we can understand why he/she drew the image the way he/she did. If you drew that same image that the artist drew today, it would definitely represent something different because times are different. Just look at the art placed in the Museum of Modern Art. The art pieces you see there, would have never been drawn or painted a century ago. That is because times were surely different in the 1800’s. Time is a huge concept in formal analysis and truly helps in understanding the art.

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