Year 11 Visual Arts

The Practice of the Art Critic: Evaluation, Comparison, Judgement....

1) Read the two critical reviews of ‘Intensely Dutch’ by Christopher Allen and John McDonald
2) Highlight interesting words, phrases and important information
3) What view does each critic have of the exhibition? Refer to some quotes from their articles
to support your opinion.
4) Open the Art Gallery of New South Wales website www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au and then
navigate to the ‘education’ pages and the PDF document from the exhibition
5) Select ONE work to write a ½ - 1 page critical analysis using the scaffold below:
a. Citation and picture copied into a Word Document

b. Opening paragraph – Description – YOU decide whether to use the subjective,

structural or cultural frame. This sentence should be interesting attention grabbing –
even controversial!

c. Analysis – formal qualities such as composition, colour, surface texture and

brushmarks, space, line, pattern, symbolism

d. Interpretation – what did the artist intend? What mood, atmosphere and possible
meanings are communicated to audiences?

e. Context and connection – some relevant (brief) background into the CoBrA
movement or modernist abstraction and influences such as the New York School, or
the post war period in Europe

f. Evaluation – how important / significant / influential / successful is this particular

work?