Saturday, February 12, 2011
What is Formal Analysis?
Many of you will get stuck on your formal analysis, and that is OK. Here is a link to a good succinct discussion (click on the title to this post). You will be talking a lot more about formal analysis in your first Writing Studio (this Monday).
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Below is a quote from the Dartmouth Writing Program website, which discusses formal analysis and other kinds of art history papers. This may serve as another aid, similar to the one your professor posted, when writing your art history papers.
"•Formal Analysis asks students to consider the formal parts of a work of art, and to create from a discussion of these parts some interesting or fresh way of seeing or understanding the work in question. The following example is from a student paper on Kathe Kollwitz's lithograph, Death Reaches for a Child.
The placement of the figures in space plays an essential role in the picture. The three figures occupy the bulk of the framed area. The woman technically occupies the most drawn space; however, the figure of Death dominates and controls the space of the other figures. His head almost touches the uppermost border, but he does not strain against it. In a sense, the figure of Death becomes the top part of the frame. The vertical nature of Death's domination over the mother and child makes the compression of space all the more menacing. The woman strains against the borders that Death constricts. She attempts to break out of these confines with her extended elbow, which pushes against the right-hand edge of the picture, but resistance is futile. Her arm is necessarily attached to the arm of Death, as all three figures are inextricably bound both physically and symbolically."
Source:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/arthistory.shtml
thanks much, Catherine.
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