When a regular person wanders through a museum, they glance at art, get drawn to paintings with memorizing colors & after thinks it was a nice experience & call it a day but when someone who knows a bit about art & how it’s critiqued, they use Formal Analysis to look & understand art. This procedure helps someone describe a painting in detail through different steps & ideas. First off you look at the content of the picture (which most people do). Then you would look at it’s formal properties, including how it’s lines are drawn, what colors are in the painting, the composition of the art, how items are placed in the picture, in what way are the people modeling, how big it is through it’s scale and mass, how it is designed, as an oil painting, sculpture, cinema, or others. Also, you would look at it’s historical context because where it was made can explain many things like a theme that would be unknown if it’s time of creation is unknown as well the technique used in a painting or sculpture could be unknown if there were two places which used similar art techniques but with two different outcomes, there could be a mix up. Without the knowledge of where a piece comes from, we won’t be able to figure out the full idea of the picture.
Blog 4-Formal Analysis
The definition of formal analysis is describing was is seen not by simply looking at a structure or painting but by interpreting and evaluating it. Interpreting a piece of art can mean looking at the color, line, and scale of the picture. This can be done by asking questions about the piece. What particular colors were used? How was the quality of the brush/pencil work? Is this piece to scale? Why or Why not? Through formal analysis, you can get the true meaning of the piece and really appreciate it.
There are also a few components of formal analysis. One of them is formal properties. Formal Properties as discussed above are the physical aspect if the work. This includes the color, line, scale, material, illusions, and mimesis. A second component is a subject matter which is the prime focus of the work. But we should also consider how every item contributes to the whole story of the piece. A third component of formal analysis is historical context. When interpreting work, it is critical to consider the time period it was created in. The time period may have influenced the artist.
In the small excerpt we were given, the authors used formal analysis to dissect an ad for Dior handbags. It is shown that a well-dressed, pretty, and young woman is holding the handbag. The background shows many large buildings. The colors are whites, grays, and blacks. The bag is just a simple leather rectangle. However, the fact that they used a famous, gorgeous young woman over an area that looks quite rich, the bag is quite appealing.
The Value Of A Visual Description
When looking at works of art it can be easy to focus on the subject’s iconography rather than its form; however, in a compelling work of art, it’s important to analyze elements such as; scale, color, line, light, composition, and texture, together these elements establish a set of criteria for evaluation, known as formal analysis. Using this form of visual description allows the viewer to ask questions about the artists’ decisions in their piece. Why did they arrange the subjects the way they did? How do the colors interact with one another? Why does the light illuminate this specific subject and not the others? Did they mean to use a pattern of angles throughout the piece? Of course, no interpretation is correct as to what the artist wants us to get from the artwork, but, important to take a second and think critically about every aspect of the piece to fully appreciate it. By using formal analysis, we have the opportunity to look closely at the artwork and try to understand the meaning behind every stroke. In a sense, the purest formal analysis is limited to what the viewer sees and how the eye is led through an artwork to create an engaging visual experience.
Blog post #3: Pedagogy and Power
The banking model that Paolo Friere is refers to the knowledge that students receive are only for filing and storing deposits, meaning that students are expected to sit up straight and act a certain way to accept the knowledge that the teacher is giving them, essentially the teacher has the choice and power to put anything in the minds of students, with the students having no control on what they are learning. Just like banks whose job is only to take what is being deposited to them.
This model is mostly disempowering students at an early age and getting them used to not standing up to authority figures. Friere highlights that fact that since students are thought to sit down and just take what they are giving, that they will become people that won’t stand up to Authority, even if they aren’t treated with respect, they would always have to respect the Authority who acts over them. This type of actions empower the people already in charge as people won’t rebel against them, people like Government officials, Employers and teachers.
Like most students I’ve had most of my life spent within this banking model, where you have a set of rules and the lessons were just copy and paste of one another. This negative experience about the model was the fact that it was boring and basically set everyone up for almost the same or similar boring life, However it’s also positive because it creates order and organization of the population, plus it makes sure the population is quite equal.
Formal Analysis
Formal Analysis is a method in which one looks at both the visual and physical aspects in different works of art. When dealing with formal analysis you are looking at the work to see what the artist is trying to say visually. When looking at the work of art, you are exploring the visual effect of work of art. Some components when dealing with formal analysis are: color, line, space and mass, and scale. With color, the viewer has to first distinguish the different ranges of color such as primary (red, blue, yellow) or secondary colors (green, purple, orange). The viewer also has to determine whether the artist has used warm colors or cool colors in the art. One has to look at the saturation of the art, whether the art is of high saturation (easy to recognize) or low saturation (hard to recognize). A term used by art experts is called value which is whether the relative of light is more white or black. With line, a viewer first has to see if the art is two dimensional or three dimensional. With two dimensional works of art, artists use linearity which is how the art piece really shows line and linear contours. Artists also use painterliness which is how the artist uses light and dark in the art piece. A viewer also needs to see whether or not the line(s) the artist uses in the work of art is strong and continuous or broken up into small hatches pieces. With space and mass, space mainly refers to the three dimensional works of art. Mass is the weight or the volume of the art piece. With scale, the viewer has to relate the size of specific figures. In two-dimensional works of art, scales are used to help stress the importance of a person or an object. All these components combined together used by the artist is called composition.
Rudolf Adis Blog Post #2: My Art Story
Ever since childhood, Art and I never got along. Even the simplest drawing tasks would appear as insurmountable tasks to me. In fact, my relationship with Art was so strained, that even a simple straight line down the page would appear crooked half of the time. I truly believed I had no talent in art whatsoever, and thus had absolutely no interest in art for years! Nonetheless, my mother, who came from a very musical/artistic background as a pianist by profession and painter by hobby, changed all of that when she brought me to the Guggenheim Museum on my 18th birthday. The plethora of all the different and varying artworks helped me completely change both my outlook on art, as well as my interest in it. I previously believed Art was simply just a talent, and that one either had it or they didn’t. Furthermore, I would believe that Art was a one-way road where one can instantly imagine what to paint, and they would thus flawlessly paint/draw/sculpt that image. Now, however, it is apparent to me that Art is a beautiful expression of the human mind, our imagination, and our passions. Along with this, I have also adopted the mindset that Art is truly a matter of perspective, and is so much deeper than what one may think. In this class, I would like to further my knowledge of the history of Art, of the famous authors behind critically-acclaimed artworks, and finally, to gain more respect than already held towards Art.
Blog #4: Formal Analysis
Formal analysis is the most commonly used technique in art. This technique, using the elements of art, allows the individual scrutinizing an art piece to understand what the artist is trying to convey through his/her work. A formal analysis is not an interpretation but a deep understanding of what we see through the basic elements of art. These elements are line, color, shape, value (chiaroscuro), texture, space and form (3-dimensional shapes). These basic elements allows an individual to generalize simple findings into larger questions. In other words, in class we were discussing Titan’s Venus of Urbino and noted that Venus is drawn with soft lines, and that she is a large portion of the painting. This is a small faction of what we can analyze and of what we did analyze, but with these finding we can ask “What is the artist trying to accomplish with these soft lines, or why is Venus (other then the fact that her name is the in title of the artwork) such a large portion of the painting?” Other then just saying, “What color’s are in the painting,” we can ask in depth, “Are the colors highly saturated, or less saturated; Are they warm or cold?” These simple elements answer a great scheme formed by the artist or in better terms simplifies the composition to understand the painting in depth. In short, formal analysis is us reading the story told by the artist through these elements. 
Rudolf Adis Blog Post #1: How To Make A Post
In order to create a post, this website offers us two ways to do so. Firstly, one can hover over “+new” at the top of the page and be presented with 3 options in a drop-down menu: “Post”, “Media”, and “Document”. The user will click on “Post”, and will be redirected to a page titled “Add New Post”. The user then enters the title in the “add title” cache, writes the body of the post in the main-body cache, and then has the option to select the category, format, featured image, and tags of the post on the right hand side of the page. Once finished, the user may click on “publish”, located in the upper right hand corner, and thus finish writing and submitting the post.
There is an alternate way to reach the “Add New Post” page. When on the main page of this website, the user may hover the mouse over “Fall 2018 Art 1010 at Brooklyn College” and then click on dashboard, leading the user to be able to see “Posts” on the left corner of the webpage. Once the user hovers over this, he/she will have the option of clicking “add new” and thus bringing him/her to the same “Add New Post” page as in the earlier described method.
MD: Formal Analysis #4
Michael DeGennaro- Post#4 / Art 1010
What is formal analysis? In your own words explain what we mean when we say formal analysis and what its components are
When looking at a piece of artwork, we notice several physical elements of the work. Take “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh for example. Our eye draws us to noice the texture of swirls in the wind, the contrasts of color including the different shades of blue in the sky, a bright, radiating yellow sun, and a dark green/black mountain range. We notice the physical definition of fore, middle and backgrounds, and begin to think about why van Gogh emphasized the Alpilles mountains, and much more. Was Van Gough depicting a windy, fall night? Formal Analysis is defined as questioning and seeking answers to these visual and physical elements of a piece of artwork and determining the message that the artist is trying to convey. Line including emphasis and contour, color including identifying different hues, space/mass including dimension, form (weight and volume), and scale in terms of relative size of objects are all elements that we as the viewers take into consideration. Together, these elements make up a composition, the piece of artwork itself. When analyzing these elements, we as the viewers determine the artists intended visual effect. For example, why things are emphasized using colors and other features, the emotion that the piece portrays, and the perception of the piece. We as the viewers begin to contextualize and interpret the answers to these questions based on our personal experiences and education. For example, I could think that van Gogh is painting a fall night, because of what I imagine a fall night being, certain shades of blue, and the weather itself, but my sister could think it is a summer night, based on her perception. In formal analysis, we determine what the artist is trying to accomplish through his or her visual.
How to post
Michael DeGenanro post 1
1- Log on to https://art1010shawfall18.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-admin/post-new.php
2-On the upper middle tab on the homepage, hit “new”
3- Following that, a tab underneath should pop up with 3 options, (post, media, document), hit post
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