Presentation on theme: "Understanding Art Criticism"— Presentation transcript:
1Understanding Art Criticism Art criticism is studying, understanding, and judging works of art.Henri Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
2Solving art mysteries is one of the jobs that art critics set out to accomplish. What if you don’t know what an artwork is communicating?How can you figure it out?Following the steps of art criticism can help you discover lots of clues to really understand and appreciate a work of art.
3The Steps of Art Criticism In each step of art criticism, you are answering a different question. The four steps of art criticism are:Description: What do I see?Analysis: How is the work organized?Interpretation: What is the artist trying to communicate?Judgment: Is this a successful work of art?
4DescriptionLook at the work of art here:What do you see?
9PRINCIPLES OF ART/DESIGN Unity=Balance=Contrast=Emphasis=Movement=Rhythm=Proportion=
10PRINCIPLES OF ART/DESIGN Unity= color, shape & lineBalance= woman-chair, room- windowContrast= red-green, black-white pattern-solid, curve-straightEmphasis= woman arranging fruitMovement= diagional bottom right to top left, curved lines of pattern & treesRhythm= repeated- curved pattern (wall paper, cloth, trees), dots of color (lemons/flowers)Proportion= large with small square
11InterpretationWhat do you think Matisse is trying to communicate?Give your opinion based on the clues you have collected.What ideas, moods, emotions, and stories do you think the artwork communicates?
12How does the predominant redness make you feel? In Matisse's Harmony in Red (Red Room) , red is the predominant color in the painting.How does the predominant redness make you feel?
13The color red usually makes one feel warmth because it is associated with the sun and fire, but also because the color red has a physiological affect that excites and stimulates.More energy is reflected from warm colors than from the cooler ones. "Warm" colors - red, yellow and orange - traditionally are thought to evoke feelings of heat, whether psychological or real.
14Artists understand the power of color in affecting the viewer's feelings. Throughout art history, artists have used color to convey and heighten the emotional content of a painting. In the early twentieth century, artists began to focus on color as a direct translation of their feelings, and to use color as an emotional force.This group of artists was called the Fauves (or the wild beasts in French) and they included Henri Matisse ( ), Maurice de Vlaminck ( ), and Andre Derain ( )
15Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions.
16How would you feel about the painting if it was mostly green How would you feel about the painting if it was mostly green? Or overwhelmingly blue instead of red?This painting went through three successive stages. First it was green, then blue, after it hung at the Salond'Automne in It was finally delivered in scarlet to the Russian collector Shchukin to decorate his dining room.Did you know that the color red in many restaurants is there only to make customers hungry, and to encourage them to order more than they normally would. Red walls and décor also cause people to eat faster, since the color increases our normal levels of energy.
17What affect did the final location for the painting What affect did the final location for the painting (Shchukin dining room) have on Matisse’s color and subject choice?
18Matisse also limits his perspective in this work. He. makes Matisse also limits his perspective in this work. He makes breaks in the line around the table, frames the chair, the window, and the little house in an innovative manner by cutting them off, and encloses two of the planes, the green and the blue in a window.
19JudgmentDo you think this work is successful? Why or why not?What reasons can you give for your idea of why this is a good or bad artwork?
20The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a painting by French artist Henri Matisse, from It is considered by some critics to be Matisse's masterpiece. It is an example of Impressionism's lack of a central focal point.The painting was ordered as "Harmony in Blue," but Matisse was dissatisfied with the result, and so he painted it over with his preferred red.
21Now look at the painting by Marc Chagall called Paris Through the Window and answer each of the art criticism questions on your own:Description: What do I see? Analysis: How are elements and principles of art used? Interpretation: What is the artist trying to communicate? Judgment: Is this a successful work of art?
35After Marc Chagall moved to Paris from Russia in 1910, his paintings quickly came to reflect the latest avant-garde styles.In Paris Through the Window, Chagall’s Cubism is semitransparent overlapping planes of vivid color in the sky above the city.The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the cityscapeMaybe a metaphor for Paris and perhaps modernity itself.Chagall’s parachutist might also refer to contemporary experience, since the first successful jump occurred in 1912.Other motifs suggest the artist’s native Vitebsk.This painting is an enlarged version of a window view in a self-portrait painted one year earlier, in which the artist contrasted his birthplace with Paris.The figure in Paris Through the Window has been read as the artist looking at once westward to his new home in France and eastward to Russia. Chagall, however, refused literal interpretations of his paintings.
37191320 August feet above Buc, parachutist Adolphe Pegond jumps from an airplane and lands safely.19143 August - Germany declares war on Russia's ally France.9 August - Battle of Mulhouse begins, the opening attack of World War I by the French army against Germany.