Anne d alleva how to write art history pdf

Answer the following questions over from Look! by Anne D'Alleva. Type your responses in a Word™ document or similar format.

D’Alleva defines formal analysis but adds a warning for viewers attempting to describe works of art. What is the warning that the author offers for viewers? (pp. 27–28)
The author lists formal analysis elements on pp. 28–31 and offers questions to use when thinking about composition. Using the questions on p. 31, analyze figure 2.2 Anti-Vice Campaign Series 001, 2005, by Zhang Haiying.
Describe how your thinking about looking at two-dimensional art (painting, graphic arts, photography), sculpture, or architecture has changed after reading this chapter. (pp. 31–42)
After reading about installation art, performance and video art, digital art, and textile and decorative arts, how do these categories expand your understanding of art?chapter 2 Formal analysis *r Looking isn’t as easy as it looks. Ad Reinhardt (19 13-6 7 ), artist In our culture, we are so constantly bombarded by visu­ al images in television, movies, billboards, books, and magazines that it’s easy to develop habits o f lazy looking. We’re often on such visual overload that we don’t take the time to examine images carefully and analyze what we’re seeing. This chapter explains the basic art-historical meth­ od o f formal analysis, which will help you to look carefully and frame good questions as you interpret works o f art. Formal analysis Formal analysis doesn’t mean simply describing what you see in a work o f art, although description is part o f it. It means looking at the work o f art and trying to understand what the artist wants to convey. In a sense, there’s no such thing as a pure formal analysis that is totally divorced from contextual analysis. This is because you, the viewer, do provide a kind o f context. The way that you interpret things is based on who you are— a person living in your place and time, with your educa­ tion and experiences— and that inevitably shapes your inter­ pretation. There are certain basic characteristics o f works o f art that you will focus on in formal analysis, such as color, line, space and mass, and scale. Often, these visual or physical qualities o f the work are most effectively discussed in terms of a sliding scale between pairs o f opposite qualities, such as linearity vs. painterliness, flatness vs. three-dimensionality, or dark vs. light. You can find brief definitions o f a range o f specialized terms used in describing art in the Glossary on pages 17 0 -71. When you’re engaged in formal analysis, remember works o f art change with the passage o f time. Be sure that you’re not ascribing visual or physical characteristics to the work that it didn’t have at the time it was made. For example, although we now see the Parthenon as an austere, white marble structure, it was originally decorated with red, blue, and yellow paint, and polished bronze disks. The bright colors revealed when the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescos were cleaned in the 1980s have radically altered our understanding o f Michelangelo’s work. A wooden mask from New Guinea may have originally borne decorations made o f shells, feathers, leaves, or pig­ ments. When you’re not sure about changes over time in the work o f art, you may want to consult outside sources rather than working purely from your visual experience. Formal elements Color The first step to undertake in analyzing color is to identify the different hues (red, blue, green, etc.) that an artist uses and see whether she is using a particular range o f colors (pri­ mary colors, secondary colors; Figure 2.1). You would also look at the characteristics o f each color used. I f it appears to be a representation o f the color in its most vivid form, as it is represented on the color chart, it is highly saturated.