Learning About Art

Guidelines to Looking at Art

Sometimes the work of art doesn't communicate the artist's intention. Sometimes it succeeds in ways he or she didn't expect or imagine. And then, once it is in a museum, the work takes on its own life because we each bring our own ideas and personal associations to the work.

Part of what makes art interesting is that there is room for a variety of individual responses from the viewer. Word association is one way to collect your impressions of a work of art.

Another way to understand art is to explore the physical sensation it evokes. You can feel the energy. Ask yourself some questions about how it would feel to step through that doorway. If you could walk into the painting, what would you see? Who would you move? Would you dance or tiptoe carefully? How would the atmosphere of the painting feel against you skin? Like velvet or perhaps like water? Warm and soft or cool or liquid?

The Language of Art

Abstract art is concerned with the formal qualities of an image (such as line and form and color), or with the emotions that may be expressed through it.

Many 20th century artists reject the notion that a work of art should represent nature and instead emphasize the work as a real object in and of itself. The abstract artist represents objects as they appear to the mind’s eye in the world of the imagination and ideas.

Many of our Creative Writing classes use works of art in the museum as a stimulus for writing assignments.