How to Read a Painting - 1

Reading a painting: general questions

1) Can You Say a Few Things About this Painting?

2) What can you tell me about what the paint is like in each painting? How has it been used? Thick? Thin? Are the lines precise, neat, or is this or that (pointing to the painting's content) smudged?

3) How do the colors make you feel?

4) How do you get those colors?

5) Does the painting make you feel happy or sad?

6) Is it a somber or an energetic painting?

7) Can you paint like this?

8) Do you like the brush strokes?

9) Does this painting look three dimensional to you? Why?

10) How is the perspective of the painting?

11) Regarding the subject matter: What is the "mood" of the painting? Is it sad or happy? Is it making fun of anything -- is it satirizing/satirical?

12) What are the expressions of the characters? What are they doing? What can you say about what they are doing? What is your guess about when this was painted? Was it hundreds of years ago, or done more recently?

13) What kind of times are represented in these paintings? (this question is a little more advanced -- time allowing.) Comment on the sitters’ clothes, painting background, architecture, lifestyle of the painting's subject.

14) What time of day is this painting?

15) What did the artist want to say?

III. Study the following text:

Read the following text. Make up questions for the text. Be ready to impart the text’s information:

How to Read a Painting - 1

Van Gogh Sunflowers

Art is a great status symbol in modern society and because of that it can be quite intimidating to the casual viewer. For many the first impulse is to blow it off, to see it as a worthless plaything for the rich and boring. This is too bad, not only because art can be a great source of pleasure in our lives, but because even a passing acquaintance with art can enrich and deepen our understanding of the world around us.

Fortunately, developing a casual understanding of art is not all that difficult. It is true that some people devote their entire lives to studying the minutest details of an artists’ work, but there’s no need to become an expert to have a meaningful relationship with art. All it takes is a moderate attention to detail, a little bit of patience, and a willingness to reflect on your own feelings.

Andy Warhol said that if you want to tell a good painting from a bad one, first look at a thousand paintings. here are no hard and fast rules about what makes a piece great, mediocre, or bad; remember, Van Gogh’s work was once considered amateurish and forgettable. There are, of course, standards that matter within the professional art world, but you don’t owe the professionals anything, so don’t worry too much about what they think qualifies as “great”.

Breughel, Tower of Babel

Take a Look

Art should appeal to you first through your senses. That doesn’t mean a painting has to be beautiful to be good, but it must grab your eye in some way. Give a work a moment to do its thing — some works are intriguing in subtle ways. A work might grab your attention through its subject matter, its use of color, an interesting juxtaposition of objects, its realistic appearance, a visual joke, or any number of other factors.

Once you’ve gotten an overall look at the painting, ask yourself “what’s this a picture of?” That is, what is the subject of the painting? The subject might be a landscape, a person or group of people, a scene from a story, a building or city scene, an animal, a still life (a collection of everyday items like a bowl of fruit, a pile of books, or a set of tools), a fantasy scene, and so on. Some paintings won’t have a subject — much of the work of the 20th century is abstract, playing with form and color and even the quality of the paint rather than representing reality.

The painting to the left, by the Dutch artist Breughel, represents the Tower of Babel. Scenes from the Bible or from classical mythology are popular in older work; since the end of the 19th century, scenes of everyday life have become more common. If you know the story, you’re one step ahead of the game, but it’s possible to enjoy the work without knowing the story it illustrates.

What’s That All About?

Look for symbols. A symbol, very simply, is something that means something else. The Tower of Babel is a well-known symbol in Western society, representing both the dangers of pride and the disruption of human unity. Often a painting will include very clear symbols — skulls, for instance, were often included in portraits of the wealthy to remind them that their wealth was only worldly and, in the grand scheme of things, ultimately meaningless. But just as often the symbolism is unique, the artist’s own individual statement. Don’t get caught in the trap of trying to figure out “what the artist meant”; focus instead on what the work says to you.

Vermeer, Milkmaid

How’d They Do That?

Jackson Pollock

The next consideration is style, which is essentially the mark of the artist’s individual creativity on the canvas. Some artists follow well-established styles — many Renaissance portraits look almost exactly alike to the casual viewer, for instance — while others go out of their way to be different and challenging. Some artists create closely detailed, finely controlled works, others slap paint around almost haphazardly creating a wild, ecstatic effect.

It may not seem as obvious as the subject and symbolism, but style can also convey meaning to a viewer. For example, Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings convey the motion and freedom of the artist in the act of creation, despite being completely abstract. Vermeer’s Milkmaid, on the other hand, is notable for it’s incredibly fine detail and careful application of thin glazes of oil paints (which doesn’t come across in a photograph, alas) which create a luminous quality, imparting a kind of nobility and even divinity to the simple act of a servant pouring milk.

IV. Study an example of the painting analysis: