The following references and tools may be helpful in analyzing the artist’s intentions for you to respond to:
Elements of Visual Design-pdf file for details
Principles of Design-pdf file for details
Rough-and-Tumble Ways to Assess Personal Reactions to Art -below is the details
A Rough-and-Tumble Guide to Assessing Some of Our Personal Reactions to Art
(More questions will follow in the future as we start to engage with the creator’s aesthetic as well as our own!)
How do you feel as you are experiencing the art?
How do you feel after experiencing the art?
What words or phrases would you use to describe the art?
What feels comfortable or familiar about the art?
What feels unknown about the art?
What feels challenging about the art?
Does this art hold meaning for you?
Rough-and-Tumble Ways to Consider Context
A Rough-and-Tumble Guide to Considering Context
What is the artist’s intention in creating this work?
Who is the artist’s intended or likely audience?
What do I need to understand more about to contextualize this piece?
What is the setting? What are the given circumstances of life for people in that setting? i.e. What was significant about this time, place, and people’s politics, geography, culture, society, history, religion, language, art, agriculture, diet, etc. etc. etc.? (There is always so much context—part of our job is to educate ourselves to help identify our blind spots.)
How is my lived experience aligned with or different from the artist and/or the characters, and how does that influence my perception of the work?
How is the artist’s lived experience aligned with or different from their subject?
Is there an element of cultural appropriation in the work? Is this the artist’s story to tell? How does that impact the way the subject is depicted?
What will I never be able to fully understand about the world of this artwork? (A difficult but important question—how do you know what you don’t know?)
Give us the essence or theme or structure or anything you feel is paramount to the piece. It can be musical, it can be audio—a podcast, a song—it can be visual—a collage, a video, a garment—it can be a piece of performance art. If your piece is ephemeral, you must have a plan to document it so it can be uploaded to Canvas.
Additionally, the piece must be composed and you must be able, to describe the choices that you made and why
