Art Appreciation

CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 7: More Looking: Specific Criteria, The Joy Of Art: How to Look At, Appreciate,
and Talk About Art, 2020: 147-194.

1. There are several things to look for and questions you might consider as you examine
a work of visual art.

2. Intent is how an artist chooses to render the subject, which can be realistic, stylistic,
semi-abstract, or abstract.

3. The artist’s intent to render the subject is realistic if the objects are clearly recognizable,
the colors are rendered in an imitative way, and the relative size and proportions are close
to how they would appear in life, with little exaggeration.

4. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Bouquet of Flowers (1603) is realistically rendered.

5. The artist’s intent to render the subject is stylistic if, though the image is recognizable,
proportions are exaggerated, colors are more imaginative than local, there is simplification
and less detail in general and the picture is more iconic than descriptive.

6. Odilon Redon’s Etruscan Vase with Flowers (1900–1910) would be considered less realistic
and more stylized.

7. The artist’s intent to render the subject is semi-abstract if the objects were recognizable
but only barely, with emphasis more on the patterning and design than descriptiveness.

8. Arthur Dove’s Mountain and Sky (1925) has some sense that this might be a landscape,
and the title tells us we are looking at mountain and sky.

9. The artist’s intent to render the subject is abstract if the objects were not recognizable
or nameable at all, except in the title perhaps.

10. Piet Mondrian’s Composition (1929) an avant-garde neo-plasticist composition and has no
apparent references.

11. Space is created or explained by the artist by using illusion that you can see into the distance.

12. A picture suggests space by the relative size of the objects, the intensities of the colors,
the blurriness of things far away.

13. No sense of space if everything seems to be on the surface.

14. Cubists suggest space but not too deeply with flattened space as if sheets of paper were stacked
up one on top of the other.

15. Czech artist Antonín Procházka’s Lady in Sweater (1921) is a good example of the Cubist
technique of breaking up the human face into planes.

16. In abstract painting, space is front and center. With objects eliminated or just barely suggested,
the star is the imaginary space the artist has created.

17. When looking at abstract work in general, the way the space is explained are oftentimes
the subjects of the work.

18. In many cases, abstract works emphasize space, air, light, and color.

19. When we look at realistic works, we may overlook space, air, light, and color.

20. Every artist throughout time has established a point of view.

21. The artist chooses a point of view that is most interesting to him.

22. In most portraits, for instance, the point of view is directly on the frontal view.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 7: More Looking: Specific Criteria, The Joy Of Art: How to Look At, Appreciate,
and Talk About Art, 2020: 147-194.

23. In Rembrandt van Rijn’s Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair (1628), he paints himself practically
in darkness, with much of his face obscured. The light enters from the left and grazes
the shoulder, right cheek, and tip of the nose.

24. In Johannes Vermeer’s The Love Letter (1669-1670), the artist takes up an interesting point
of view, where his vantage point is the next room, and the viewer’s look at the personages
through a doorway.

25. Pablo Picasso and his fellow Cubists believe that there was no reason they could not
simultaneously paint multiple points of view in the same portrait.

26. Juan Gris’ Cubist Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1912) seemed fitting to paint the artist’s portrait
utilizing his own style.

27. Marcel Duchamp’s fabulous Nude Descending the Staircase ( ) he shows us a kind of
time-lapse picture of the different positions the figure takes when
descending the staircase.

28. Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951) and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)
are different perspectives of the same subject.

29. Space and light are the cornerstones of art.

30. Light is the enabler of all vision.

31. Paintings become lighter and lighter as they march into the future, like civilization as emerging
out of the darkness, from ignorance to enlightenment.

32. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s The Conversion on the Way to Damascus (1601)
is an example of dramatic lighting in the art of painting, which depicts the moment Paul
becomes aware of the spirit of Jesus Christ and falls off his horse in ecstasy,
where it is lit in an imaginative way, far brighter than any moonlight could deliver.

33. Franz Stuck’s The Sin (1893) is another example of dramatic lighting in the art of painting,
where the face is cast in shadow and hooded, giving the piece an especially eerie feeling.

34. French painter Monet, known as “the eye,” was consumed with the light that he painted
the same scene during different times of the day, just to show how the light influenced the hue
and value of the paint.

35. Impressionism let in the light, and with the light came the color that can only exist in the light,
not the dark hues of the past, but the pinks and yellows and baby blues that live in the light.

36. Each of the Impressionist painters had his or her own way of describing the light.

37. Claude Monet, The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) (1903–1904), is an example
of the atmosphere that he loved to paint.

38. Postimpressionist Carl Frieseke’s Afternoon—Yellow Room (1910), explores the effects
of sunlight like the Impressionists while also employing a decorative patterning and design.

39. An artist’s use of color is purposeful, not arbitrary, such that a viewer can almost feel the whiff
of breeze that enters through the open door and the afternoon light that creeps into every
mixture in Carl Frieseke’s Afternoon—Yellow Room (1910).

40. Painters explain the atmosphere be creating an imaginary world that seems to allow for air.

41. To suggest an aerated environment, a painter can soften the colors.

42. To suggest an airless atmosphere, a painter uses harsh colors and the picture will appear artificial.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 7: More Looking: Specific Criteria, The Joy Of Art: How to Look At, Appreciate,
and Talk About Art, 2020: 147-194.

43. Paul Cézanne’s Gardanne (1885–1886) has literally visualized the air by using soft naturalistic
color in this landscape, casually adding notes of light-filled pastel hues to delineate the landscape.

44. American Winslow Homer’s The Bridle Path, White Mountains (1868) creates the illusion
of the third dimension, such that a viewer is made conscious of the air that she can almost feel
the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze.

45. Looking for the air will enhances a viewer’s enjoyment of painting in general, but especially
landscape painting, where it is most evident.

46. Mixing color is one of the most joyous activities of the artist.

47. Color is the candy box of our emotions.

48. A painter uses color in a more elaborate way, not just as decoration, or to make pleasing
combinations, but to express the emotions, spatial dynamics, mood, and drama of his work.

49. To understand and appreciate the color message, you must look beyond attractiveness and ask
yourself how the colors chosen convey a mood, express space, and deliver a specific message.

50. Read the colors and the shapes as messages.

51. Think of color as flavors you can taste with your eyes.

52. Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch II for CompositionVII (1913), is a symphony of color in swirling
composition, where he created a whole dimension out of these floating colored shapes,
like a delicious feast with sweet and salty colors living together.

53. Nabis is a group of painters following the Impressionists, who utilized color in a beautiful way.

54. Pierre Bonnard’s The Brothers Bernheim-Jeune (1920), his palette is very selective, and somewhat
limited to shades of blue and gold, connected by the white of the papers.

55. A Fauvist style painting utilized purer, deeper, less pastel colors and so acquired this nickname
“Fauves,” which means “beasts.”

56. Alfred Henry Maurer’s Landscape with House (1912) is richly colored world, an example
of a Fauvist style painting by an American artist.

57. English painter James Fitton’s Self-Portrait (1987) used Fauvist colors to suggest shadow
and his lush purple background, a very unusual color choice, are exceedingly effective.

58. In formalism, the work speaks best for itself.

59. Color plays a leading role in abstract painting.

60. The way an artist composes his canvas, drawing, or art piece is essential to its success.

61. Placement and sizing are important compositional challenges.

62. Renaissance artist John Thomas Smith came up with a proposition called the rule of thirds.

63. Rule of thirds divides a canvas into thirds both vertically and horizontally, where key focal points
can be placed.

64. Negative space is the air around an object, essential to revealing that object and making it
of interest.

65. A painting represents a freezing of time, particularly noticeable when the figures are represented
in an animated state like laughing or dancing.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 7: More Looking: Specific Criteria, The Joy Of Art: How to Look At, Appreciate,
and Talk About Art, 2020: 147-194.

66. Johannes Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (1668) was composed in such a way that the painter
permits us to watch him at work.

67. Édouard Vuillard’s Madame Vuillard Sewing by the Window, Rue Truffaut (1899) was composed
purposely welcomes us into his home on Rue Truffaut to see his mother, with whom he lived
to the age of sixty.

68. Each painter has his or her own way of applying paint and distinct preferences as to how
it is best applied.

69. The way of applying the paint becomes a kind of signature for the artist, and in many cases
a viewer can recognize a painter’s work by the quality of his paint.

70. The two basic kinds of paint are either water-based or oil-based.

71. Water-based paints are quick drying, which makes them difficult to change and manipulate.

72. Oil-based paint, made with oil, which is slow to dry, is by its nature the most flexible of all
and affords the artist the greatest vocabulary with which to work.

73. Note the effectiveness of the application of the paint in expressing an idea or emotion.

74. These materials are just substances the artist uses to express.

75. How the material was chosen allowed the artist to express his personality and preferences.

76. In painting, the artist is working on a flat surface and possibly creating an illusion of depth.

77. In sculpture, an artist working from all angles.

78. Marble is a subtraction medium—the artist chips away, and, for the most part, can’t add back
the missing chunks.

79. With wood, though addition is possible—wood can be glued, laminated, and assembled.

80. Painting and sculpture are sequential processes.

81. In painting, there is a methodology known as al primo or alla prima where the painting
is completed while the paint is still wet.

82. Artists also inherently have a certain preference in terms of scale and proportion.

83. The medium not only determines the message; it is the message.

84. Other, nonartistic influences come to account in the choices artists make.

85. Painter Vincent van Gogh, who sold only one painting in his lifetime.

86. Knowing the history of an artist is relevant and may color the way you view his or her work.

87. Georges Braque was a housepainter and decorator before becoming an artist such that
his decorative patterning skill set the tone for his Cubist works
.
88. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who suffered from a debilitating condition turned to prostitutes,
and others who inhabited his world, people his exuberant, innovative, and disarming work.

89. Paul Gauguin left France to live in Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands, and left us
with the color of the tropics and the vibrantly rendered individuals who people these islands.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 7: More Looking: Specific Criteria, The Joy Of Art: How to Look At, Appreciate,
and Talk About Art, 2020: 147-194.

90. Mark Rothko taught elementary school; Jackson Pollock was a babysitter; Keith Haring, a busboy;
Jasper Johns designed shop windows for Tiffany; Richard Serra had a moving company;
and, Andy Warhol was designing greeting cards.

91. Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) was inspired by an anxiety attack he experienced
while he was walking down a road with two friends.

92. Viewers can read the emotion without knowing its cause.

93. the formalist mode, seeing the work as an entity, a world unto itself, that can be appreciated
and enjoyed without reference to the artist’s psyche and circumstances.

94. Knowing the context in which the work was created is important information for sure,
but not knowing it still allows us to use aesthetic criteria and our own senses to appreciate it.