Most students want to learn how to analyze artwork when pursuing art appreciation studies. In most cases, learners develop this fundamental skill during upper-level classes and art history surveys. Every art piece is a pattern with intentions and a complex system. A student should learn to observe and evaluate the distinctive features of any artwork. When analyzing photography, drawing, paintings, mixed-media installations, or sculptures, learners should think about them deeply and critically to understand the more delicate meanings.
Table of Contents
What Does Analyze Mean in Art?
In art, analyzing means determining what the elements or features of an artistic work suggest and deciding what prompted the artist to use them to convey their ideas.
Artistic analysis entails determining the subject matter via naming the iconographic elements like mythology, allegory, and historical events. Ideally, art analysis aims to determine how and why an artist did something or made specific choices to convey their ideas.
The Purpose of Artwork Analysis
The primary purpose of artwork analysis is to recognize and comprehend the artist’s choices in creating the subject. Students can analyze the qualities of art, features and what they suggest, and how the artist conveys specific ideas through the art piece.
When a college instructor or university professor assigns you an art analysis task, they want you to carefully look at the work and think about it as a series of careful decisions that the artist made. Ideally, teachers want students to identify, describe, interpret, and explain those decisions. Also, they want learners to explain why the artist made the choices.
How to Analyze Art
The purpose of any artwork analysis is to determine why and how the piece is significant. Ideally, art analysis is a description, interpretation, and judgment of the work. Here’s how to evaluate art in a formal analysis.
- Description: Start by describing the object without analysis, interpretation, or value judgment. Here, you consider elements like an art form, sculpture, drawing, painting, or architecture. You also consider the work’s medium, whether paint, stone, clay, or technique. Also, consider the subject, its shape, colors, texture, and context.
- Analysis: After describing the artwork, delve deeper to determine the elements and what they suggest while figuring out why the artist chose them to convey their ideas. For instance, name iconographic elements like the context of the work in the art history. Also, consider the distinctive characteristics or features of the work, such as the shapes, color, and texture. You can also analyze the composition or design principles, whether stable, rhythmic, repetitious, symmetrical, unified, geometric, chaotic, vertically oriented, or horizontal. The analysis should also tell the readers how the artist uses light and color, symbolism, landscape, and their perception of such elements. Also, explain how certain features make the subject or monument unique.
- Interpretation: In this section, explain why the artist created the work and its meaning. An artwork’s elaboration can constitute the main idea or overall meaning of the piece, an interpretive statement, and evidence. The interpretive statement expresses what the writer thinks the artwork is all about. The evidence supports the interpretation and can be outside or inside it.
- Judgment: Judging the artwork entails ranking it with other pieces while considering its essential aspects. Here, you tell your readers whether the work is suitable for the audience. Your readers should know the appropriate criteria for judging the piece while providing evidence to support it. Show the readers how you evaluated the work based on these criteria.
It’s almost impossible to know what the artist wanted to convey via their artwork. However, students should personally understand and interpret the work by considering the features’ ideas. If you feel stressed about that assignment, keep in your mind that there is always an opportunity to buy homework online.
Ways to Analyze Art
After knowing the steps to follow when analyzing art, it’s crucial to learn ways to do it. When you analyze artwork, you make it easier for the audience to understand. Here are the top ways of evaluating art.
- Composition analysis
This analysis entails evaluating the formal elements of art. When performing this evaluation, you consider what you see or what makes the piece and how the artist brings it out. Ideally, you limit yourself to an accurate, objective, and pure description of the work. And this will raise other questions, including the following:- What is the genre of the art piece based on its overall style?
- What is the form and composition of the work?
- How does the artist use space?
- How does the artist use light, color, and texture to express their ideas?
Ideally, this analysis enables you to determine the effects of various elements the artist chose to convey specific ideas.
- Visual Analysis
This analysis covers different design principles and visual elements. It’s easy to focus on a few composition elements while neglecting the rest. For instance, a learner can concentrate on color usage. But this leads to a repetitive, incomplete, and narrow artwork analysis. Therefore, focus on covering different artistic elements, context, meaning, and design principles. You can support your conclusions by enlarging small sections or making sketches of some composition parts. While doing this, you will look at the work closely, noticing elements that may not be obvious to everyone who gives the piece a single glance. - Critical analysis
Most educators require art students to analyze pieces of artistic work critically. With this approach, you critically look at an artist’s work to understand its compositional devices. Ideally, the educator wants you to respond to, interpret meaning, and critically judge a specific artistic work. Critical analysis art writing should enable viewers to perceive, understand, and make conclusions about the art piece.
How to Write About Art – Basic Elements to Consider
Art elements are essential in creating any artistic piece. Therefore, any artwork analysis should consider the following art elements.
- Shape: Artists create various forms by encasing a line. Consider how an artist creates the artwork by joining lines and how this influences their composition when analyzing an artistic piece.
- Line: An artist uses lines to demonstrate the end of an object. And a line creates a shape.
- Form: Form alludes to an object with three dimensions: width, length, and height.
- Space: Space is the area inside, around, and above an object.
- Value: Value manages the dimness or softness of color.
- Texture: This element alludes to how an artwork feels when you touch it.
- Colors: Color alludes to the reflected light, which affects how a person feels about and responds to an object or condition.
Practical artwork analysis should consider all these elements to serve its purpose effectively.
How to Analyze a Painting
Paintings are the most common artistic works that teachers ask students to analyze. Examples of paintings to analyze may include pictures by great artists like Bellini, Giovanni, Angelico, and Bosch. Here’s how you can study a painting.
- Record details of the painting, including the work’s title, painter, and date.
- Describe the subject and underlying themes of the work
- Describe the composition of the painting or how the painter organizes figures and objects.
- Explain the depth or space of the painting- Tell the readers how the painter creates the depth illusion.
- Highlight the colors that the painter uses and their impact.
- Explain light direction and the atmosphere it creates.
- Describe the form and its impact- How the artist outlines the picture and the feelings this approach creates.
- Explain the technique the painter uses- Does the painter use a smooth or thick texture, and does it create a natural feeling about the painting?
- Research and explain the context of the painting. Consider social, historical, and artistic aspects of the work.
Analyzing a picture entails looking at it and figuring out what you see, even if the piece seems incomprehensible. Once you’ve done that, get evidence in the artwork to support what you see.
Tips on How to Make a Successful Art Analysis
Any artwork analysis is open to insights and new stimuli. Consider these tips to improve your interpretation.
- Feel free to state what you like or dislike about the work, but provide evidence outside or inside the piece.
- Go beyond describing the artwork and provide a detailed analysis of its meanings.
- Take an inquiry-based approach after an objective observation.
- Consider all visual elements of the work and highlight them in your analysis
- Trust your intuition but formalize instinctive impressions because that’s the purpose of art.
If you still can’t analyze a piece of art, consider this art analysis example as your guide.
Need Urgent Artwork Help
Our experts can help you write a unique, high-quality artwork analysis. We know that not every student has what it takes to compose a winning art analysis. That’s why we’ve included this service in our homework help. Whether in high school, college, or university, our homework writers can provide fast, reliable, and affordable custom help with this task. Our online assistance will enable you to submit the best analysis in your art class. Please place your order now or contact our customer support for assistance.
FAQ
How do I analyze my artwork?
Understanding and interpreting the artwork will help you to evaluate it by answering some questions. What message do you want to convey through the work of art? Are there areas of the artwork you want to draw people’s attention to, and how do you emphasize them? How do you see it regarding colors, shapes, texture and lines? Is there color harmony and connection among the elements?
What is the analysis of a work of art?
It refers to evaluating principles and elements of design used in creating artwork and interpreting their usage to convey a message about a concept. Visual analysis is an understanding of an artwork based on its visual elements like texture, line, color, and scale.
What are the methodologies to analyze art?
The four steps of art analysis are:
- Description involves listing the artwork’s shapes, colors, figures, objects, and background.
- Analyze, a method involving examining the composition of artwork and the organization of elements used.
- Interpretation, which involves discovering the message an artist wants to communicate.
- Evaluation involves stating your opinion about an artwork based on your observations.
