What is formal analysis? In your own words explain what we mean when we say formal analysis and what its components are.

Formal analysis is a way of observing the visual aspects of an art work.  What this basically means is looking at a piece of art and interpreting what the artist is conveying to the viewers through the way it was physically created.  When preforming formal analysis of art, we are looking for three main components.  These three components are, characteristics, subject matter, and the historical context of the art piece.  Some characteristics used when interpreting art are, but not limited too, color, line, scale, space, and mass.  We use these characteristics in order to take apart and dig into the physical picture of the art.  The next component, subject matter, is analyzed as a way to describe the story of the scene going on in the art work.  We look to the subject matter as yet another way of understanding the message that the artist wants to convey to the viewers, or how the scene present creates a message.  As for historical context, this component requires some research to be done around the art piece, which looks into the time period and all the things going on during the time, the history of the artist themselves, etc.  This is done to gain a better understanding for, and see the possible influences that went into creating the art work.