What is formal analysis?

Formal analysis is the way how viewers interpret the art, and not how the artist wants us to see it through their point of view. During the 17th century, a French academician named Roger de Piles wrote a book called The Principles of Painting and was basically a how art is broken down into different compositions such as drawing, color, and expression.

A famous art critic named Roger Fry also broke down the compositions in a more detailed way. He broke down colors with lines, dark and light, shadows, and volumes, which gives art more depth. Fry believed the greater the work, the less it can be explained by writing.

Formal Analysis

Formal Analysis is how people contextualize the ideas, themes, and purpose of The given art.  In formal analysis we study and compare color, line work,  space and mass, and scale to break down the piece to get a basic idea of what the art wants to portray. Color attributes to how different hues, shades and the saturation of a piece. This works with the composition with space, mass and lines; different spots are highlighted to focus an object or and action creating a contrast. Lines give a better silhouette playing with the light and dark. Scale maintains the proportion and visually presents the most dominance.

Contextual analysis is to define the meaning of the art by inspecting the surrounding history of it, the reason it was made. Since formal analysis and contextual analysis are inseparable we must study both to interpret the full meaning to the art. People usually try to contextualize it themselves and due to different bias can come to different conclusions.

Blog Post 4: Formal analysis

Formal analysis is basically to look at a work of art and trying to understand what the artist wishes to convey visually. And even after analyzing it, it will most likely not what the artist wants to convey because the viewer would interpret it based on who they are. As a person living in a certain place and time with their own experiences. Formal analysis looks at certain basic traits in an artwork. They are color, line, space, mass and scale.

To analyze color, you first look at the particular colors of the piece. You also look at the characteristics of each color used, like the saturation or the shade. Maybe the specific colors are referring to a event, action, or concept. Some examples are if a piece is predominantly white, it can stand for purity, or it could also mean the blinding light of a rising sun. When looking at lines, we are looking for how a the lines are formed. Are they emphasizing light and dark, is the line contour strong and continuous, fuzzy and soft. Are they broken up into many pieces to give you a lack of shape? How complex or simple is the silhouette?

Space indicates whether an image conveys a sense of three dimensional space. Is the artwork create a sense of depth it’s landscape or setting, like you can walk inside of it? Or is it lacking in depth, like a brick wall? Mass is the space created by the artwork. Meaning the artwork conveys a sense of weight or volume. For example, the work may be showing an extreme close up of an eye, making it seem like an giant is looking right through. Scale is also important. You consider the presentation of size portrayed in the work or in relation to the viewer. Does the size mean anything. Some examples are large statues representation their importance, or a large paintings to make it feel like you are in the work. The term composition is how an artist puts all of these elements together in their piece.

You may never understand what the artist wants to convey fully, and you may have the completely wrong idea even after formal analysis. But it help you understand that an art piece is deeper than it really looks and it is beyond just a thing someone made. And one of arts main purpose is for you to interpret and ponder what the art is really trying to get at.

What is Formal Analysis?

Formal Analysis is a method of evaluating a piece of work. The work can be literally anything. The formal analysis of an art piece for example can be a way to evaluate the piece’s central theme or focus. Through formal analysis of an art piece, we can describe multiple characteristics of the art work such as the colors used, the type of canvas used, contrast, the historical context of the art work, and also the scale and size of the art piece. Another important feature of formal analysis is that we are supposed to ask ourselves important questions. For example, “what was the artist going through at time of painting this piece?” Another question might be: “Is this painting for another person at the time or was it painted by the artist to convey a certain message or theme?” You can also dive deep into the historical context of the painting and learn about the politics, culture, religion, or the economics during the time of the artist’s life. The Formal Properties of art work as discusses in class and the text include the lines used in work. The motive behind the size and scale of the work. The type of material of the canvas as mentioned before is another formal property. Other formal properties can be the illusions used (Mimesis). And lastly, the historical overview of the piece of work as mentioned before. For example, the formal properties of the featured art work, “The Starry Night,” by Vincent van Gogh would involve: Colors are mostly blue, black, and yellow, it is an oil on canvas, the time of drawing is 1889 which inspired him to pursue a post-Impressionism-type painting.

Formal Analysis

 

 

 

Formal Analysis is when you look and think about a painting or artwork carefully and consist of different ideas and perspective. Trying to understand what the artist is drawing or painting. Why did the artist draw or paint this way? There are certain basic elements of work of art that can be the focus in formal analysis. Therefore, it can be color, line, space and mass, and scale. Which is called the composition of how an artist put together all these elements.

The color is the first step where people take to look at and identify the different hues such as pink, purple, red soon. However, we can determine it by the primary colors and secondary colors. Next, a line can be determined by a three dimensional or a two dimensional. To show how thick or thin, horizontal, vertical, digital, or curved.

Space can indicate whether an image conveys a certain dimensional space. While mass describes its height, weight, and volume. We can say how tall or how heavy something is. How much space will it take up? Last, you want to look at the scale or size for a certain painting or drawing. Not just art has composition but also sculpture or architecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is Formal Analysis?

Formal analysis is a visual structure the artist decides to use in order to get their painting to convey what they would like.  This includes lines, shapes, space, color,  texture, and value.  The artists choses where to place their main subject and with formal analysis they place the color that would contrast to help get their message across.  Formal analysis can be used in both two dimension and three dimension art by choosing specific material in order to create a specific texture in an art piece.

We can use principles of designs and elements of design to describe and understand a painting.  For example the artist creates a negative space and a positive space, with it his focus turns a specific are of the art work.  They also use balance, where they can make the art symmetrical and the “weight” can be the same on both sides.  Lastly for texture, they can visualize with paint and lines.  With the help of formal analysis we can understand a piece of art better by knowing why the artist used a specific structure in their art work.

Blog 4 : Formal Analysis

Formal analysis is basically explaining a form of art from your personal interpretation, or the creators point of view, it can be analyzing a piece of art for a different meaning than it was intending to be. It can either be different features of the art or the significance of the art piece in correlation to the time period it was made. From the size, shapes, colors and lines, you can analyze an art by looking at what makes it special and what meanings does it have.

Formal Analysis

In our day-to-day lives we see various images that we glance at and rarely think about ever again. However, these images and other pieces of art that we come across usually have something specific that they are trying to convey. To maintain a better understanding of an art-piece, people often use a technique referred to as formal analysis. This method is used to analyze only what the artist provides the audience with visually in their piece rather than also referring to outside information or historical context. Instead of simply describing what can be seen, formal analysis requires interpreting an artist’s choice of colors, lines, space, scale, modeling, etc. These things and the various ways they can be used let the audience know what the artist wants to get across. These things can help us see what the artist is emphasizing, what the mood of the piece is, and what kind of emotions they wanted to evoke. In a way, using formal analysis can help a person to really think about and appreciate something they normally may not.

Blog Post 4: Formal Analysis

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 an approach to interpret any work of art. Through Formal analysis the audience becomes aware of both visual and physical conditions of the piece. The use of this method helps enhances the audiences understanding of the piece through color, line, space and mass, and scale. When looking at color one must look at the different hues being used and the value (lightness) of the color. One must also interpret lines by noticing how continuos or broken they are, soft or hard, and where they may be directing towards. Analyzing the space created within a painting and the illusion of any weight inside the painting or the actual weight of a sculpture gives a sense of space and mass. It is also essential to analyze the artist use of scale as they may use the element in different ways by using a larger canvas or make a larger sculpture to emphasize the importance of the subject more specifically in cases where the subject may be political figures, gods, portraits of important individuals, or mythical figures. when an artist incorporates all the elements into a piece it creates a composition and well rounded painting/ sculpture. Adding on to the elements of formal analysis, contextual analysis also plays an important role because it may give a historical background to the piece.

Formal Analysis

Formal Analysis is a visual description of a work of art. To formally analyze a work art means that we are looking at the structure of the piece and analyzing the decisions that the artist made in his/her painting. When we are formally analyzing art we are evaluating it, asking questions, looking for the meaning, and looking at the central focus. We are looking for what art is showing us not telling us. In order to give a piece of art a formal analysis we need to describe it, find the formal properties, subject matter, and the historical context. To find the formal properties we need to look at the scale (the size of the painiting), medium (the type of painting it is), composition (placement of the visual elements), illusion of depth (the space that is created), chiaroscuro (light/dark), and forshortening (how close and how far away objects or people seem to be). Subject matter would be when we are looking at what the artist has decided to create. Finding the historical context would be like finding the main idea in a book. It is to find out what story or what scenario is being depicted to us. Historical context can be found through the subject matter. When we are looking at the historical context we are finding the circumstances in which the artwork was created. By comprehending the place where the piece comes from we are able to fully grasp the message and the story that is unfolding in front of us.

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