museum Assignment

Instructor: S.Worley

MUSEUM ASSIGNMENT WORKSHEET

Choose an artwork on display at the Menil Collection. See chapters 4-8 Visual Elements and Principles of Design in SAYRE A WORLD OF ART textbook for complete definitions of the visual elements and principles of design.

Artist:________________________ Region/Country____________________

Title:__________________________ Date:____________________________

Medium:_______________________ Style:____________________________

Patron:________________________

Cultural context and artist’s biography (see museum label and museum catalogues of general collections located in museum bookstores and libraries):

Visual Elements: In taking notes on the various visual elements, be sure to relate them directly to the artist and style. In other words consider how the handling of paint (precise or loose brushwork) is characteristic of a specific artist’s style. Or is the abstraction and stylization or ideal and naturalistic representation of the human form characteristic of a particular region, style and culture?

Subject (who or what is represented):

Style (Abstract and Stylized or Realistic, Naturalistic, Ideal?):

Iconography (symbolism or narrative):

Form (shape or structure; 2 dimensional or 3 dimension):

Composition (arrangement of forms in space; balanced; symmetrical; asymmetrical)

Technique (handling of materials):

Line (contour; implied line of sight; thick; precise; broken):

Light (additive or natural; reflected; implied inside or outside the picture frame):

Color (value/tonality (light or dark) /hue (name) /saturation or intensity (relative purity)

Chiaroscuro (shading or modeling of form with dark and light):

Texture (quality of surface; rough, shiny, smooth):

Pattern:

Mass (bulk density):

Volume (space mass organizes):

Perspective (linear, aerial, estimated, vanishing point, orthogonals; creates the illusion space recedes into the distance on a 2D surface):

Foreshortening (figures represented at angles to the picture plane surface and literally shortened to create the illusion of 3-D and projection into space):

Proportion (relation of parts to the whole; i.e. Canon of ideal human proportions):

Scale (relative size relation between members of a group; hierarchy of scale: one figure is larger than the rest):

Time and Motion:

Emphasis and Focal Point:

Unity and Variety

Repetition and Rhythm