arts analysis

ARTS 1A

Topic 6: Signs and Symbols

In Topics 1 through 5, we organized our work by discussion of subject type.

For Topics 6 through 10, we will organize our work by discussion of interpretive methods of art history.

We have studied the subjects of works of art.

Next we ask, What does art mean?

In Topic 6 we will explore signs and symbols in art, as we address three methods of interpretation:

• Iconology

• Iconography

• Semiotics

For Topics 6 through 10, print five sets of Topic worksheets instead of four for your notes.

First, click on the link below and watch the following short video, “The Scrovegni Chapel: history, restoration, conservation”:

[Set aside twenty-one minutes to watch this video.]

https://youtu.be/oE7mTnzKRnU

Pair 1: Giotto di Bondone and Giovanni Bellini

Giotto di Bondone

I. During the Middle Ages in Europe, not only monks but many professional artists, as well, produced imagery which required spiritual figures and ideas to be conveyed in physical form. Such projects often resulted in artists representing forms in highly abstract ways. But a painter from Italy, Giotto di Bondone, chose to use a more natural approach to forms when representing religious figures. For one of Giotto’s patrons, Enrico Scrovegni, who was a wealthy man from Padua, the artist designed imagery to cover the entire interior of a chapel built to honor the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The chapel came to be known as the Arena Chapel. It is featured in our introductory video to this presentation.

Giotto and his assistants worked in fresco, a technique in which water-based paint is applied to a damp plaster wall. As it dries the plaster pulls the paint pigment into its surface, where it remains permanently. In the Arena Chapel, Giotto and his assistants produced a fresco cycle: a comprehensive thematic work of art in the fresco technique. This fresco cycle represents the life of the Virgin Mary as well as the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The cycle also includes representations of virtues and the vices, according to Catholic tradition.

On the west wall of the Arena Chapel, Giotto painted a portrait of Enrico Scrovegni Presenting the Arena Chapel to the Virgin Mary, part of a larger representation of the Last Judgement of Christ. Here the patron, aided by a monk, presents the Arena chapel to the Virgin Mary and two other figures.

Giotto di Bondone

Enrico Scrovegni Presenting the Arena Chapel to the Virgin Mary Padua, Italy

c. 1305

Fresco

[Before proceeding, click on the link below to identify the location of this specific detail from Giotto’s fresco cycle.

Can you find the detail of Enrico Scrovegni Presenting the Arena Chapel to the Virgin Mary?

It is located just above the door, at the video’s 30-second mark.]

https://youtu.be/l-e9m_k230o

II. Some students might ask, What historical sources can I study to help me understand these figures and objects, and who (or what) they represent? A student of art history who practices iconology examines written sources from the historical period of a work of art to understand the meaning of individual objects. Iconology can also be used to understand the gestures of people in a work of art. The word iconology positions the Greek word logos at its root, which means “word” or “reason.”

How can written sources inform us about why the patron, Enrico Scrovegni, commissioned Giotto to produce this fresco cycle? Giotto was not a local artist. Enrico had to bring him all the way from Florence to Padua to complete this project.

Familiarity with Italian literature from the period of the Middle Ages yields a clue about why Enrico Scrovegni may have commissioned a chapel to honor the Virgin Mary.

A few years after Giotto finished his work in the Arena Chapel the Italian poet Dante published his epic poem, “The Inferno.” In this popular work of literature, Dante imagined walking through Hell and seeing there some of Italy’s most corrupt citizens. In Canto 17, while walking through the seventh circle of Hell, Dante saw Reginaldo Scrovegni, a notoriously corrupt money lender, sitting among those upon whom “the painful fire falls.”

Reginaldo Scrovegni was Enrico’s Scrovegni’s father.

To be clear, Dante’s poem was published after Giotto designed and painted the fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel. As such, Enrico did not build the chapel because of Dante’s reference to Enrico’s father in his famous poem. But Dante’s poem points to the fact that Enrico Scrovegni’s father was well known to have been a corrupt man. The son had a strong motivation to make a public gesture in an attempt to restore his family’s reputation.

Enrico Scrovegni may have wanted to demonstrate to people in Padua that he was different from his father. He opened this chapel to members of the public once each year, on the Feast of the Annunciation, a holiday in honor of the Virgin Mary. On that busy day, people would visit the Arena Chapel then exit through the door placed directly under Enrico Scrovegni Presenting the Arena Chapel to the Virgin Mary, giving everyone an opportunity to see it.

The presence of a portrait of Enrico Scrovegni in a place highly visible to the public suggests that this patron desired to be regarded as a person devoted to the Virgin Mary and, by extension, to God. Could the patron have commissioned this work purely out of religious devotion? Of course. But a work of literature—Dante’s poem—provides information that allows for the interpretation explored here.

Giovanni Bellini

I. Giotto’s decision to represent forms more lifelike than his predecessors appears to have influenced later artists. Consider, for example, Woman with a Mirror by Giovanni Bellini, who lived and worked in Venice two centuries later. If Giotto’s work demonstrates that he was committed to providing a strong sense of three-dimensionality in painted forms, Bellini appears to have mastered the illusion of weight and volume when representing the human figure. Here Bellini adds a window, revealing a landscape sufficiently detailed to appear to represent a real place.

The woman is not engaged in big, dramatic action. Rather, she looks into a mirror, a quiet, subtle gesture of daily life.

Some might the woman’s form to be too smooth and too pale to look believable. While Bellini clearly understood how to represent natural forms, he also idealized his model, that is, he removed nature’s “flaws.” This was the typical approach of artists during the Renaissance: a period during which artists embraced a rebirth of the ideas and forms of Classical antiquity.

Giovanni Bellini

Woman with a Mirror

1515

Oil on wood

II. We do not know who commissioned this painting by Bellini. Despite our lack of documentation about its patron, art historian Sarah Blake McHam has suggested that Bellini may have been inspired by paragone: a spirit of competition which motivated Italian artists to compare themselves to other artists. She argues that Bellini desired to establish himself as particularly skillful in the representation of nude figures, to the extent that he was willing to compare himself to legendary artists of Classical antiquity.

But let’s look deeper. There is much more to this work than Bellini’s approach to form.

An art history student who practices iconology might point out the letter lying next to the woman on the bench.

What does it say?

Joannes Bellinus faciebat MDXV [Giovanni Bellini was making this 1515]

It is the artist’s signature and date. But it looks like a “note“ that someone has placed next to the nude woman. It might suggest a larger narrative. Could the “note” be from her lover, whom she now prepares to meet?

Dante was the best known poet to Italian speakers in the Middle Ages, the era of Giotto. The most distinguished and beloved writer known to a Venetian Renaissance painter like Bellini was Petrarch. Unlike Dante, who was popular because of his religious poetry, Petrarch was appreciated for his love poetry. If a student of art history wishes to practice iconology to interpret Woman with a Mirror, analyzing the writings of Petrarch may be a good first step.

Pair 1

Analysis Exercises: Pair 1 Analysis Exercise 1: In what ways might an understanding of the importance of the written word, whether the published poetry of Dante or an allusion to a meeting with a lover signaled by the appearance of a ”note”—help to reveal the ways these works of art may have been meaningful to their patrons?

Analysis Exercise 2: Giotto is usually referred to as a proto-Renaissance artist, which means that he worked during the Middle Ages but his work signals a shift in art making toward the tendencies of the Renaissance. How does this become clear to you as you compare his work with Bellini’s?

Analysis Exercise 3: Venetian painters are often discussed in relation to natural forms. What about Bellini’s approach to color is natural? Are there aspects of his approach to color that are unnatural?

Pair 2: Robert Campin and an unidentified Turkish artist

Robert Campin

I. By the time Giovanni Bellini produced Woman with a Mirror, which is an oil painting, artists in Europe had been painting works in oil for around a century. But oil painting was not invented in Italy; it appears first to have been utilized as a painting medium in the “Low Countries” of northern Europe, those countries which correspond to The Netherlands and Belgium today. One of the first artists to work professionally in the medium of oil was Robert Campin, who produced an altarpiece in the form of a triptych we call the The Mérode Altarpiece, titled in honor of one of the families who owned it. A triptych is a three-paneled work of art. In this case, two side panels are hinged to a center panel.

Robert Campin

The Mérode Altarpiece

c. 1427-1432

Oil on wood

II. The writer of our reading, Erwin Panofsky, identified in The Mérode Altarpiece the presence of disguised symbolism: the saturation of every-day objects with additional meaning. In the center panel, which is a scene of the annunciation of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, objects such as the lilies in the pitcher, the wash basin, the sculpted lions on the armrests of the bench, the single candle on a sconce above the fireplace . . . all have been tied to references in religious literature produced during the period of the Northern Renaissance, or to the Bible itself.

Whether “man-made or natural” objects, wrote Panofsky in his book Early Netherlandish Painting, ”[disguised symbolism in early Flemish painting] was employed as a general principle instead of only occasionally just as was the case with the method of naturalism.”

Unidentified artist in Turkey

I. During the reign of the Byzantine Empress Theodora and her husband, the Emperor Justinian, numerous churches were built or remodeled in Constantinople, their seat of power. Constantinople is known today as Istanbul. The first church built there in the fourth century, Hagia Irene, burned down in the sixth century, at which point it was rebuilt by Justinian and Theodora. Later, in the eighth century, the church was partly destroyed in an earthquake.

Today the east end of the church (the location of the altar) contains little imagery. Only the mosaic of a cross remains, outlined in black against a gold background. Students of art history do not need written texts to interpret the meaning of the cross, an object recognizable as a visual symbol of Christianity. The interpretation of visual symbols is called iconography, derived from the Greek word graphos which means “to draw.”

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0c88d2 Unidentified artist in Turkey

Interior apse, Hagia Irene Istanbul, Turkey

Rebuilt in the 6th century; altered in the 8th century

Brick and mosaic

II. Why is there so little imagery in this Byzantine church? Rebuilt during the reign of Theodora and Justinian in the sixth century, Hagia Irene would have been richly ornamented with mosaics, like San Vitale in Ravenna. It is tempting to assume that the eighth-century earthquake destroyed the mosaics, or that the church was later converted into a mosque, at which point its mosaics may have been removed.

But Hagia Irene never became a mosque. And while its mosaics may have been damaged during the earthquake, the church was carefully restored in the aftermath of the earthquake.

The reason there is only a single mosaic in Hagia Irene today is because Emperor Constantine V, who was in power in the eighth century, insisted that the original mosaics be destroyed and replaced by a simple cross. Constantine V believed that a cross was the only symbol appropriate for inclusion in a place of Christian worship. Because Constantine V was determined to destroy religious imagery in Orthodox churches, many artists fled Byzantium and relocated to western Europe with hopes of finding work in Catholic institutions.

As a result of this iconoclasm, that is, a systematic destruction of images, Byzantine artists from Turkey and Greece who relocated to Catholic institutions in western Europe, such as monasteries, influenced the work of artists as far away from Byzantium as the manuscript illuminators at the Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers in France.

Pair 2

Analysis Exercises: Pair 2

Analysis Exercise 1: Other than those already mentioned in this presentation, what other objects may have held disguised symbolism in The Mérode Altarpiece?

Analysis Exercise 2: Are there objects in The Mérode Altarpiece that you believe do not hold disguised symbolism, and were not intended by the artist to convey additional meaning?

Analysis Exercise 3: What do you find to be more visually powerful: many meaningful objects, as in The Mérode Altarpiece, or one meaningful symbol, as in Hagia Irene?

Pair 3: Jan van Eyck and Paolo Veronese

Jan van Eyck

I. In this presentation we have acknowledged the ways meaning in works of art can clarified through the study of poetry, religious literature, and recognizable symbols. But is it possible to misinterpret the meaning of objects included in a work of art?

In 1934, Erwin Panofsky published an essay on the disguised symbolism in The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. This painting is a double portrait: a portrait representation of two people. The individuals pictured here are Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, Giovanna Cenami, Italians who were living in the city of Bruges, Flanders, at the time this work was constructed.

IIAn expert iconologist and iconographer, Panofsky determined that this painting represents a wedding. Indeed, it looks like a wedding. Note the white veil and the dog, often a symbol of fidelity in wedding portraits.

There are even witnesses to this event reflected in the tondo mirror on the back wall. Tondo refers to a round work of art. Tondo is the Italian word for ”round.”

But there are problems with Panofsky’s interpretation of this scene as a wedding. There was no tradition of wedding portraiture in Flanders as early as the 1430s. Couples were married in churches, not at home. Women were not married in veils but wore their hair loose before marriage. And Giovanna Cenami looks as though she is expecting a child.

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Jan van Eyck

The Arnolfini Portrait

1434

Oil on wood

IIII. In an essay published in 1993, art historian Margaret Carroll publicly challenged Panofsky’s interpretation of this painting. She proposed that the Arnolfinis were already married by 1434, the year this painting was completed. (The painting’s date is not in dispute, since the artist, Jan van Eyck, painted his signature and the date under the mirror.)

Carroll contends that what is represented here is not a wedding but a legal ceremony during which Giovanni Arnolfini bestowed power-of-attorney to his wife, an event which would have required the presence of witnesses. If this is the case, Giovanna Cenami appropriately wears the veil of an already married woman who appears to be expecting a baby. The presence of the dog, long a symbol of marital fidelity, may suggest here that Giovanna Cenami, as a faithful wife, merited her husband’s trust.

II

Since Giovanni Arnolfini was a merchant who frequently travelled, his bestowal of legal authority to his wife to engage in business on his behalf made sense. In Bruges it was typical for busy merchants to bestow such authority to their wives. Carroll writes, “we can imagine how the painting might have served a practical function in the Arnolfini household. . . . [S]he could be asked to show the document . . . to prove that she had received her husband’s consent to make contracts which he would not later attempt to invalidate.”

II

Moreover, the painter did not merely sign and date this work. Extraordinarily, he painted the words, “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” (Jan van Eyck was here). Jan van Eyck was a court painter to the Duke of Burgundy, a distinction which lends credibility to Carroll’s idea that the painting served to remind business associates that Giovanna Cenami carried her husband’s authority to make decisions in his absence. The establishment of power-of-attorney witnessed by a court painter to the duke added the weight of a witness who was associated with local royalty.

II

It took nearly sixty years from the time Erwin Panofsky published his interpretation of The Arnolfini Portrait for someone to offer a credible re-interpretation of it. But does Margaret Carroll have the last word? Certainly not.

As long as there are documents in the archives, political treatises, published sermons, or recognizable visual symbols to analyze, art historians who rely on alternative methods of interpretation will continue to find new ways to read this painting.

Paolo Veronese

I. Like the The Arnolfini Portrait, Veronese’s The Conversion of Mary Magdalene hangs in the National Gallery in London. Each time I visit London I spend time with this painting. Its colors are dazzling. Veronese’s figures are graceful. They gesture elegantly but dramatically, creating a strong sense of movement. But one of the main reasons I look forward to seeing it is to learn its new title. The reason the title keeps changing is because art historians cannot decide what Veronese intended to communicate as the subject of this painting.

This work was produced during Mannerism, a period in the sixteenth century when many artists were rewarded by their patrons for interpreting subjects in unusual and innovative ways. During this period artists were also rewarded for developing bold new ways of approaching style.

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Paolo Veronese

The Conversion of Mary Magdalene

c. 1548

Oil on canvas

II. Painted while Veronese was a relatively young artist, it is not known who commissioned The Conversion of Mary Magdalene. If we knew the patron or the intended location for the work. we might have a better sense of its function and hence its meaning.

As it is, there are few clues as to what subject Veronese intended. Museum conservators have compared it to other early paintings by Veronese, analyzing the paint layers for similarities and differences. A pentimento in an early painting by Veronese now in the collection of the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona reveals the presence of a figure whose oversized hand is similar to the hand beneath Christ’s elbow in The Conversion of Mary Magdalene. A pentimento is the remnant of an earlier work of art which remains visible beneath the layers of a painting. The hand in question is large and its gesture is flamboyant, tying together these two works stylistically. But this pentimento does not assist us in making an iconologic interpretation.

It is clear that one of these figures is Jesus Christ: the figure who emits a halo of light at the center left. One possibility for explaining Veronese’s unusual approach to representing Jesus may be to look beyond the gospels and into religious literature of the sixteenth century. It has been brought to light that L‘umanità di Cristo published in 1535, a book by popular but controversial writer Pietro Aretino, included a story about Mary Magdalene becoming a follower of Jesus when she heard him speak in the temple.

But even this interpretation is problematic. An expensive necklace worn by the kneeling woman appears to be broken or unclasped, falling from her neck. An opportunity for iconologic research is to look for references to broken necklaces in sixteenth- century Italian literature. An opportunity for iconographic research is to search for representations of broken necklaces in other works of art from the period.

Pair 3

Analysis Exercises: Pair 3

Analysis Exercise 1: Jan van Eyck and Paolo Veronese were oil painters. How might you explain their different approaches to color, since one’s approach is somewhat natural while the other’s is decorative?

Analysis Exercise 2: The setting of the painting by Jan van Eyck is clear. The setting of the painting by Veronese is not. Does it matter that we understand (or do not understand) the environment in which the figures are meant to be positioned?

Analysis Exercise 3: Both paintings have stumped scholars who have tried to interpret them with written sources. Make a careful survey of the objects in each work. Are there symbols included in these works which we may discover to be meaningful?

Pair 4: Maya Lin and Michael Jean Cooper

Maya Lin

I. Giovanni Bellini, whose work was discussed earlier in this presentation, was not the only artist inclined toward competition. As a college student, Maya Lin entered and won the competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This work was installed in the midst of other prominent national monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C.

To some viewers, Maya Lin’s winning design looks surprisingly simple. The meaning she hoped to convey with this work has been lost on some people. Maya Lin eventually described her intentions for this work in an interview.

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“I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth. I imagine taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up and the initial violence and pain that in time would heal. . . .”

”The need for the names to be on the memorial would become the memorial,” she continued.

“There was no need to embellish the design further. The people and their names would allow everyone to respond and remember. It would be an interface between our world and the quieter, darker, more peaceful world beyond.”

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The difference between a monument and a memorial may be characterized as follows: a monument is a work of architecture or sculpture which honors someone or an event. By contrast, a memorial is a designated place or structure which aids people in remembering.

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Maya Lin

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Washington, D.C.

Dedicated in 1982

Black granite

SII. Exploring Maya Lin’s work from the starting point of her original ideas is closely linked to the study of iconology and iconography. While all works of art are, in one way or another, shaped by ideas, these methods teach us to identify the flow of ideas from the world into the mind of the artist, then into the work itself.

Since this is a work of non-representational art, that is, art which does not depict recognizable images or objects, we may not identify at first glance that this artist draws her ideas from the natural world. To understand her motivation we can hope to find broadcast or published interviews and other written sources. Our document analysis reveals that Maya Lin is generous when interviewed, in that she is willing to reveal a range of information about the production and the meaning of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Michael J. Cooper

I. From the seventeenth century through the present day academically-trained artists in Europe and the United States have competed to win scholarships to study in Rome. In France this sought-after prize is called the Prix de Rome. In the 1980s, artist Michael J. Cooper, a sculptor who works with wood, won the American version of this prize when he was named a Rome Prize winner, awarding the artist an opportunity to study for several months at the American Academy in Rome, where he was given a stipend and a studio.

In 1977, prior to receiving the Rome Prize, Cooper completed Turbo, which he exhibited at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.

Michael J. Cooper

Turbo

1977

Wood

II. At the heart of Cooper’s design for Turbo is the shape of a gun. Guns are the stimulus for many works of art Cooper has produced throughout his career. Here the gun is carved from marbled blonde wood and protrudes from the engine, facing forward. As someone who has been negatively affected by guns throughout his life, this artist has long considered both the personal and the public impact of gun use in American culture. In another wood sculpture by Cooper, How the West Was Won, How the West Was Lost, he explored the relationship between guns and the expansion of European Americans westward, part of the larger narrative of imperialism in United States history.

For many years Cooper served as the head of the three- dimensional arts program at De Anza College, where he shaped the work of a generation of sculptors in the San Francisco Bay Area. The presence of such a provocative object—a gun—at the heart of many of his works may have emerged in part from his work as a teacher. Given that Cooper has long been committed to exploring ideas about violence in histories of the American west, the shape of a gun within a work like Turbo may serve the purpose of a mnemonic device: an aid to memory during the process of learning.

Pair 4

Analysis Exercises: Pair 4

Analysis Exercise 1: Maya Lin has reduced her concept of the earth to one color and one texture. In what ways is Cooper’s Turbo tied to nature? In what ways does it depart from nature?

Analysis Exercise 2: To what forms of text or literature is Maya Lin’s work linked? To what forms of text or literature is Michael Cooper’s work linked?

Analysis Exercise 3: What is the relationship between Maya Lin’s sculpture to violence? What is the relationship between Michael Cooper’s sculpture to violence? What is the relationship between their works to each other?

Pair 5: Jean Arp and Praxiteles

Jean Arp

I. In 1916 and 1917 Jean Arp produced a collage on paper, Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance). Like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, this work by Arp is an example of non-representational art.

Like Maya Lin’s project, which memorialized U.S. soldiers killed during the Vietnam War, Arp’s work was motivated by wartime loss. The art movement we associate with Arp and this collage is Dada, whose participants explored randomness and irrationality motivated by widespread despair stemming from World War I.

Jean Arp

Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance)

1916-1917

Torn and pasted paper on paper

II. To make this work, Arp tore pieces of paper and threw them into the air. After they landed, he pasted the torn paper pieces to another sheet of paper (but only after rearranging them, to strike a pleasing balance of shapes within the composition). The technique of attaching fragments of various materials to a support is called collage.

One of the ways that Arp conveyed a sense of randomness in this collage was through his use of irregular shapes. Further, torn edges suggest the artist’s decision to relinquish the traditional tools of collage construction (knives, scissors). Moreover, Arp allowed spontaneous gesture to play a role in determining the outcome of this work of art.

How can we use the methods of iconology or iconography to find meaning in Arp’s collage, especially since it is a non- representational work?

Place this question on hold for a few minutes. We will return to it before the end of this Topic presentation.

Praxiteles

I. If you engage in the research of ancient Greek art at an archive or art library, you may come across a file of photographs of Hermes and the Infant Dionysos. Many representations of this pair of figures has this in common: Hermes, the Greek messenger god, dangles a bunch of grapes in front of the baby Dionysos. Grapes are significant to Dionysos because the child will grow up to become the god of wine.

However, in Hermes and the Infant Dionysos by the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles, the grapes are not present. We think they were held in Hermes’s outstretched right hand, but this this sculpture has been heavily damaged, buried for hundreds of years and then reassembled in the late nineteenth century. Found in pieces, the hand that likely held the grapes has never been recovered.

A traditional iconologist might ask and answer why grapes were meaningful in relation to this work of art. But the first time I saw this sculpture in the Archaeological Museum in Olympia, Greece, it was not the absent grapes but the smooth, luminous surface of marble that interested me.

Praxiteles

Hermes and the Infant Dionysos

c. 330-270 B.C.

Marble

(details)

II. Praxiteles worked with Parian marble mined on the Greek island of Paros. Parian marble is famous for its fine grain and translucency, which means that diffused light can pass through passages of stone. What can be “meaningful” about this work’s extraordinary craftsmanship? Can things like “polish” and “finish” be meaningful, in the ways that iconographers and iconologists make meaning of symbols, objects, and gestures?

In addition to iconology and iconography, students of art history may use the interpretive method of semiotics, the study of signs. A practitioner of semiotics may ask, What meaning can I derive from visually significant aspects of the work of art? Accordingly semiotics allows me to ask, What does “polish” signify? What does “smoothness” signify? Examining these aspects of the sculpture for meaning may lead us to consider the type of person (or institution) who commissioned this work from Praxiteles.

Finally, return to Jean Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance) and apply questions informed by semiotics. What do the torn edges signify? What is signified by the visual balance of this work?

As you think about these questions, remember that this work was produced during wartime.

Pair 5

Analysis Exercises: Pair 5

Exercise 1: What is the effect of each of these works of art on you, in purely visual terms? Does one hold your attention more than the other? If so, why do you think this is the case?

Exercise 2: How would you describe each artist’s approach to shape?

Exercise 3: In what ways do both works have raw edges?