4. Course no. 2: The Critical Essay. The Formal Analysis

The artistic discourse community:

- a socio-rhetorical group of people who share common goals directly related to art; certain mechanisms of communication (eg. art magazines); specific vocabulary, grammar, semantics, rhetoric; specific GENRES

- genre: type of texts that share the same communicative purpose



The Critical Essay = a genre whose communicative purpose is to offer a personal opinion on a specific subject. Therefore we can consider it subjective writing. Nontheless, subjective does not mean total lack of evidence for what we claim.



The Formal Analysis
- a type of critical essay

- to analyse = to take a thing apart; to decompose it in order to see what its components are and how they work together as a whole => to analyse a work of art = to deconstruct it into smaller elements such as : subject-matter; formal elements; principles of design; style; purpose, etc.
- purpose: to describe, interpret and/or evaluate a work of art, that is, to analyse a work of art
- prerequisite: direct access to the real work or to a good reproduction
- each such important element is then analysed in order to see what role it plays in the whole

- the standard move-structure of a text belonging to the subgenre of formal analysis:

MOVE I: Introducing the work and the artist

• step 1: identifying the work (some details about the title, author, theme, subject-matter, medium, dimensions, period of creation, current location, purposes of creation)
• step 2: identifying the artist: only that biographical information considered relevant for the work analysed

MOVE II: Transition:


- usually offers a personal first response to the work


MOVE III: Analysing de-constructed elements:

• step 1: analysing first element : describing the first element + interpreting the first element + /- evaluating the first element (e.g. a character in the work)
• step 2: analysing element 2 (e.g. the principle of the perfect symmetry)
• step 3: analysing element 3 (e.g. the dominating colour)

MOVE IV: Concluding:


- offering a final interpretation +/- evaluation of the whole work, based on the previous analyses


TASKS:

- study the texts:

1. The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Jeanne Cenami by Jan van Eyck, written by Erwin Panofsky

The text you are supposed to read is really Panofsky's text (which can be found in the book Anda-Elena Cretiu: Discourse and Communication in Visual Arts, Casa Cartii de Stiinta, 2014, or in Genre-Structured Discourse in Art Texts, Presa Univ. Clujeana, 2003) (in our library). The links below are only commentaries on the text and may help you better understand it. 

Erwin Panofsky and his interpretation of art works
another version of the text
https://www.facebook.com/thenationalgallery/videos/263963624322918/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait

2. Ten Lizes by Andy Warhol by Anca Teodora Pora


- comment on the analyses made by the authors, that is, on the descriptions and interpretations and/or evaluations offered; did they convince you?; can you find other possible interpretations to those elements?; are there other elements you would have chosen instead? which? why?

DEADLINE 1 (for task 1): November 3

DEADLINE 2 (for task 2): November 17 

2. BASIC TAXONOMY (course one continued)

Here are the most important terms we will be using throughout this year's study; please be sure you get well acquainted with all of them:

• THEME: the general content of the art work (general aspect/subject) (e.g. the landscape)
• SUBJECT-MATTER: the sum of identifiable objects, persons, places, references in the artwork (e.g. the rosegarden)
• MEANING (or, CONTENT): is revealed through interpretation; sometimes the title may be of help, but most often than not, it is revealed through careful iconographic and/or iconologic interpretation
• ICONOGRAPHY: the overt or hidden symbolism in the artwork, rendered through images (signs, symbols)
• ICONOLOGY: the meaning revealed through the study of the cultural, social, historical background of the artwork (through literary, historical,aso, texts)
• DESCRIBING ART: the verbal pointing to the features; a means of gathering the support for interpretations; it concerns the subject-matter, the most expressive formal elements; the principles of design, aso.
• ANALYSING ART: explaining how the described elements get their meanings, the artist's choices; inferring meaning; evaluating technique
• INTERPRETING ART: a most important and complex activity; the arriving at the meaning of the artwork by employing different strategies of interpreting based on the information gathered through iconographical and iconological insights
• EVALUATING ART: determining how good the artwork is, according to some criteria,either clearly stated, or implied, while providing reasons and evidence for judgments