Art Analysis

Assignment 1: Please read the instruction closely BEFORE you start

An essay on formal analysis is one of the most standard assignments in university-level art history courses. Please take a look at the explanation below, and pay special attention to the student pape

-“Formal Analysis and Style”

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art, Global Edition. Pearson Education Limited, 2011. 46-59.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ji3ui2nvto0f1sk/Barnet_a%20short%20guide%20to%20writing%20about%20art_46-68_formal%20analysis.pdf?dl=0 (Links to an external site.)

As I explained in lecture, for the first task of your portfolio, instead of a standard 500-750 word long formal analysis essay, you are required to analyze three objects. The three objects should be:

One digital image: one you encounter while surfing websites or social media such as Instagram
One painting (could be oil painting, watercolor, ink on paper) or a reproduction of painting that you encounter in your daily life
One painting that you see IN PERSON in a local museum (ROM, AGO, Aga Khan or any museum that you could pay a visit) (if you could not arrange a museum visit before September 17th, you are allowed to finish this component by October 12th, the due date of the first half of your Portfolio)
-Please write at least 100 words for EACH object (but do not succeed 900 words in total).

-Please include the three images and provide the captions (if creator unknown, please identify where and how you encounter the piece).

Please save your work in Microsoft Word or other compatible formats. Please submit the file to the weekly assignment portal. (By October 12th, you will be expected to combine all your weekly portfolio assignments into one file and resubmit them to the portfolio submission section.)

-In the short paragraph, you should

provide a description of the overall visual effect of the object
B) point out at least three formal qualities that contribute to that effect
-Grading rubric:

Observation of overall visual effect: 30%

Observation of formal qualities: 50%

Style (sentence structure, word choices, grammar): 20%