Comparative Study Part 1: Selection and research of Formal Qualities and Cultural Significance
Choose Artists and Artworks relevant to you.
What are your first reactions to the work? How does it make you think or feel? What does the work remind you of?
Can you find any appropriate sources to support your research?
What connection can you make to other things you have seen? How do your gender, class, age, background influence the way you respond?
Will you be able to connect it with your own practice?
What issues, either in terms of content or style, can you relate to your own ongoing development? Is there anything you'd like to try out?
Describe the works visually.
What kind of artwork is it? (painting, drawing, sculpture?)
□ Elements and Principles
What elements are used? How so?
What principles are used? How so?
What colors does the artist use and why do you think this is? How are they organized?
What kind of shapes and lines do you see?
□ Materials and Techniques
What kind of marks does the artist use?
How would you describe the style? The genre? Is it abstract? Realistic? Expressive?
What is the overall mood?
What kind of surface do you see? Is there texture?
What materials does the artist use? Are they traditional? Any found objects? What connotations/associations do the materials carry?
How big is the work, is scale important to this piece and why?
What sense of space do you see? Is there illusionistic depth or is it flat?
How is the work organized and put together?
How was the work made? Has the artist made it or is it fabricated?
How visible is the making process?
If it is an installation how is it assembled?
If it is a video how is it filmed and projected?
Investigate the works within the larger framework of its culture, history and audience
What does this process involve?
Is there a reason the material might be significant?
Is the material was popular at the time? Was it cheap and accessible, or expensive and a status symbol?
Does the material have a conceptual significance? Does it support the idea of the piece?
□ Conceptual Significance
What is the message/meaning/ idea of the piece? Is this significant? Why? How so?
Is it saying something new or advanced for its time?
Is the idea of this piece, or the movement it belongs to, revolutionary or new in any way?
□ Cultural Significance (Include only what is relevant)
When was it made, what period in history?
Does the artwork tell us about a period in time or of a group of people?
Does the artwork reflect the culture and time period during which it was made? How so? How not?
Where was it made, what does it tell us about this?
What were the social and historical events at the time it was made?
Was/is the piece controversial?
Where was the piece made?
What are some cultural characteristics of the area? (dominant religion, language spoken, type of government)
What was happening in that part of the world at the time?
What was happening in the rest of the world at that time?
What was life like for people in that part of the world at that period of time?
Does the artwork have cultural significance?
What was the artist’s life like?
What position were they in socially/economically?
Were there any major events or happenings in their life that influenced their artwork?
Male/female? Is their gender important or influential in their artwork?
Is there anything else - political, social, or economic in nature- that possibly influenced the artist or inspired the artist to make this work of art?
Can you relate it to other arts of its time, music, literature, film?
Relate it to other areas of knowledge such as science, geography?
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