Steps in Art Analysis
Formative Visual Journal AssignmentArt Analysis Page Requirements:
1. Intuitive Response
• Your first initial reaction to the work. What
is your opinion.
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2. Description
• List all the literal object and things you see in•
the picture (people, room, etc.)
3. Formal Elements
• principles/elements of art and how they are
used in the artwork.
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4. Media
• What is it made from, what materials?
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5. Cultural Context- Who is the artist, where
are they from, time period, what has influenced
their work form their live (artists, art
movement, social aspects)
6. Function and Purpose- What is the work
about? What is the message.
Label your page “Art Analysis Steps”
Date and Number page
Draw a small thumbnail sketch of “The Scream” on your
page and underneath include the labeling information• Artist- Edvard Munch
• Title- The Scream
• Medium: Oil, tempera, pastel and crayon on
cardboard
• Date: 1893
Create a chart with the following steps listed to the left
for art analysis.
Use the information from the PowerPoint and Video to
fill in each step of analysis as you look at the painting.
Artist
Edvard Munch
Year
1893
Type
Oil, tempera, pastel and crayon
on cardboard
Dimensions
91 cm × 73.5 cm (36 in × 28.9 in)
Location
National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
STEP IN ART ANALYSIS
1.Intuitive Response
2.Description
3.Formal Elements
4.Media
5.Cultural Context
6.Function and Purpose
Elements-
Line
Shape
Form
Texture
Value
Color
Space
Principles-
Movement
Balance
Rhythm
Contrast
Pattern
Emphasis
Unity
Video -Edvard Munch
Video Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHK-d7ToTOI
Influences (Cultural Elements)
To Do Group Work: Think, Pair, Share
Art Movements/Styles/Artists/
Inspirations/themes in work
Artist Information
(Biographical)
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Norwegian born (1863)
20th century
Related to famous painter
Father suffered from mental
illness, sickness in the family
 Raised with fears of hell
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Expressionist painter (German
Expressionism)
Impressionism (Claude Monet,
Edouard Manet)
Post-Impressionism
Sigmund Freud
Nature
Symbolism
Life and death scenes
Love and terror
Feeling of loneliness
“The Scream”- Function and Purpose- How
does cultural information help you interpret?
 4 versions of composition (German title “The Scream
of Nature)
 Inspiration- Walk through city, view over fjord, sun
setting, clouds blood red- metaphor of scream
passing through nature. Colors shrieking.
 Reddish sky- effects of volcanic eruption of Krakatoa(tinted Western hemisphere between 1883-1884)
 Slaughterhouse and lunatic asylum offered inspiration
(sister was a patient in the asylum at the time)
 Figure (Peruvian mummy)- seen at 1889 Exposition in
Paris- buried in fetal position
 Depersonalization disorder- distortion of the
environment and one’s self
 Facial pain-Trigeminal neuralgia
Art Movement/Styles that influenced Edvard Munch
Impressionism 1872-1892
• Developing in Paris in the 1860s
• Its originators were artists who rejected the official,
government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and
were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions.
• In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists
of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the
momentary,
sensory effect of a scene.
• Impressionism was a style of representational art that
did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. The
Impressionists sought to capture
• the optical effects of light
• to convey the passage of time
• changes in weather, and other shifts in the
atmosphere in their canvases.
• The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened
their palettes to include pure, intense colors.
Claude Monet
Art Movement/Styles that influenced Edvard Munch
EXPRESSIONSIM- INFLUENCES ON MUNCH’S STYLE
1.Expressionism was a modernist
movement, initially in poetry and
painting (origins in Germany early
20th c.) It typically presents the
world solely from a subjective
perspective, distorting it radically
for emotional effect in order to
evoke moods or ideas.
• Artists sought to express the
meaning of emotional
experience (inner landscape of
the soul) rather than physical
reality.
• Spiritual vision of the world
Stylistic Characteristics- intense color,
agitated brushstrokes, vivid, jarring, violent,
spontaneous self-expression
EMILE NOLDE (1867-1956)
'Crucifixion', 1912 (oil on canvas)
Die Brücke- artistic community in a
working class district of Dresden,
deliberately isolating themselves from
the 'comfortably established'.
• artists should have total freedom
of expression, unrestricted by
social or artistic conventions.
• Emile Nolde
• Grew up very religious
• Expressive intensity of Crucifixion
scene
Art Movement/Styles that influenced Edvard Munch
Symbolism was a late nineteenthcentury art movement of French,
Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and
other arts.
• Art shows the internal view of the
objects as exposed to the exterior
(what is seen visually).
• Metaphors through symbols
• Art reflects an emotion or idea rather
than representing the natural world
in the objective.
• Ideas through symbols- express artist
ideologies (color, brushstrokes)
“Death and the Masks” (1897)
Artist: James Ensor
Masks- symbolize the hollow
decadence of the time (critique of
the contemporary society by the
artist)