The Insiders Guide to Art:
How to feel comfortable, engaging,
and awesome when talking about Art.
By Sarah Starr Peterson
July 14, 2010
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Think about the last time you went to an art museum. Did you go for
fun or because someone made you? Let’s be honest, being force fed “Fine
Art” is not the best way to spend an afternoon, especially when people make
you talk about what you think it means. Does talking about Art make you
feel a little panicked? Don’t be ashamed, we’ve all been there. Art can be an
excruciating and nebulous topic that leaves even the most studied scholars
flummoxed. But it doesn’t always have to be like that. I want you know that
there is no need to stress about Art. And to begin, I’m going to let you in on
a secret: Art is actually easy to understand and can be fun to talk about!
I know most of you have been to a gallery where you saw splattered
paint that was supposed to represent the “struggles of humanity”, or weird
sculptures that look like Barbie dolls glued together. And I bet you thought
they were really, really weird. Well… you were right! Art is about what the
viewer sees, and you, my friend, are the viewer. You are in charge of
deciding what it means and how it makes you feel.
That being said, it’s a lot easier to be “in charge” of your opinions if
you have a framework in your mind to guide you while you view Art. You
need the right vocabulary to tell people why you think it’s weird, and then
you’ll sound like a seasoned Art critic. Whether you are trying to prep for a
European Art tour, or just want to know how to pick up chicks in your local
coffee shop gallery, these are the tricks of the trade that will impress your
friends and colleagues.
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Now you might still be hesitant on this idea that learning about Art can
be fun. I don’t blame you. Art (with a capital A) has been given a bad rap as
a lofty topic that is too “sophisticated,” and is only discussed by elitists and
beatniks in black turtlenecks. You may also have found yourself at the mercy
of an Art snob who would like you to believe that they have figured out a
mystery that you couldn’t possibly wrap your mind around. It’s really not
that mysterious (or elite for that matter) and once you get going you’ll
realize that Art is actually in everything you see. The chair you are sitting
on, the car you drive, the ads you read in magazines, and yes, even the
“Art” that is framed and put up on walls – these are all visuals that you, as
the viewer, get to see and appreciate. Hopefully, by learning a little more
about how to describe what you see, you can share what you appreciate
with others, and be revered as an Art genius!
Let’s talk about how we will reach our goal of being awesome Art
connoisseurs. With any big task, it’s good to start with the small stuff and
work our way up. I’ll start this guide by giving you the vocabulary you’ll
need to be successful - basically the jargon that you can throw around to
sound smart. Actually, you won’t just sound smart, you’ll be smart! After the
base knowledge, I will provide some case studies to show you how easy it is
to take the new words you’ve learned and put them all together to make
astute observations.
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And here we go! There are seven elements that make up visual art
and they are color, value, line, shape, form, space and texture. Seven. No
more, no less. If you know these seven little terms, you will be ahead of the
game in any particular museum, café, sculpture garden, furniture store, or
impromptu gallery you find yourself in. As we get further along talking about
these terms, you’ll see that one of these elements can never exist on its
own. In fact, every piece of Art reflects all seven of them, completely
intertwined. Because of that, it can be a little challenging to talk about each
element on its own, but I’ll try my best to define them individually.
The first element I listed was color, because… well, that’s always the
first one I remember. It’s also the first thing your eye sees when you look at
a piece of art for the first time. Color is the word we use to describe the
different hues that the human eye can see. Hue is just a fancy word for the
name of a color. For example, Yellow is a hue, Blue is a hue, Mango is a hue
and so on, and so on. Colors can be described in many ways. Red, orange,
and yellowish hues can be labeled “warm” while greens, blues, and purples
are often called “cool.” Color is also one of the easiest ways for an artist to
convey emotion. Come to think of it, it’s not just artists who do that. I’m
sure you’ve woken up some morning, feeling a little “blue.” You brain is
already hard wired to connect colors with your emotions.
Color is very closely related to the second element, value, and the
average non-artist will sometimes use color and value terminology
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interchangeably. This is very, very wrong. Let’s figure out why it’s wrong.
Value is used to describe the lightness and darkness that you see in Art.
Each color, or hue, can be made darker or lighter by changing its value.
When you make a hue lighter, you add white, which is called tinting. When
you make a hue darker, you add black, which is called shading. So when
someone says, “I like that lighter shade of blue” you can knowledgably
correct them and say, “don’t you mean lighter tint of blue?” They will most
likely roll their eyes at you, but you will know that you are in the know.
Value can be a hard concept to remember since there are so many things in
every day life that contradict these basic principals. For example, when you
add dark film onto car windows, we call them “tinted windows” when, by
definition, tinting means adding white. So, if you want to sound really cool
on your next blind date, explain to them why they should really be called
“shaded windows.”
Next on the list of elements is line. Line is a pretty easy one. Lines are
lines. This might be a good time to point out that some of the terms in Art
are so obvious that you will feel insulted that I ever suggested you didn’t
know what they were. Many students of Art have been trained that each part
of Art must be complex and therefore need a complex description. That is
not true. Lines are lines. By this point you’re probably picturing a line. Are
you concerned that what you think is a line isn’t actually a line? Don't be.
I’m sure it's a line. Let’s move on.
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Shapes are next, and yes, they are just as basic as lines. Art shapes
are no different than the shapes you learned as child watching Sesame
Street. Circles, squares, triangles, maybe the occasional trapezoid are all
building blocks of Art. All artists use them and combine them to make more
complex compositions… but we’ll get to that in a little bit.
So what happens when your average shape gets converted into “eye-
popping” 3-D? It becomes a form, which is the next element. Shapes and
forms are sometimes interchangeable, but shapes are flat and forms are not.
A square is a shape, but a cube is a form. Does that make sense? It’s two
dimensions versus three. Also, a form can be hard to define, because in Art,
most of the time it only looks three-dimensional using implied depth. Sorry,
that was confusing. Let me explain with and example. If you are going to do
a painting, say of an apple, you are going to paint it on a flat surface, like a
canvas. However, you want the viewer to see that it is an apple, which is a
three dimensional object. The thing you paint may start out as a shape, but
by using shading (which we learned about with value) and texture (which we
will learn about in a moment) you make it look like it would be 3-D even
though it is on a flat surface. So, sometimes form is actually the just the
illusion of three dimensions, which is called implied depth.
Space is what comes next and it is the hardest to explain because it is
all around us. Space is the area in which things exist, you know…
everything! So let’s bring that back to Art and talk about what that means in
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terms of area. Space is the area that an artist intentionally shows. Space is
how you know how far away things are supposed to be in a painting. There
are two ways to talk about space: where it is, and what’s in it.
To talk about where something is in space, you refer to the foreground
(closest to the viewer) middle ground (which is, not surprising, in the
middle) and the background (which is farthest way from the viewer) in a
work of art.
To talk about what’s in space, you refer to it as positive and negative
space. Positive space is the space that’s being used; or rather there are
things in that space that take up space. Negative space is the space that’s
empty. Negative space is an especially important term to remember,
because it comes up a lot. When an artist intentionally leaves an area blank,
you can call it “negative space” and everyone will think you are really in tune
with what the artist was thinking (even if it really just looks blank to you!)
Space might be the hardest to define, but it’s the easiest to point out,
because like I said, it’s everywhere!
Last, but definitely not least, is texture. Texture is defined as the real
or implied tactile quality that a surface has. There is that sneaky word
“implied” again. Remember we talked about implied depth with the three-
dimensional objects on a flat canvas? Well, implied texture is the same
thing, just a little different… You see, texture is how something feels. When
you pet a cat, it feels furry. But if you pet a photo of a cat, it feels smooth,
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because it's a photo. However, the picture of the cat still looks furry. That is
implied texture. The colors and lines and shading and tinting on the photo
make you think that it’s furry, when it’s really flat. This is a good time to
point out that the idea of implied texture is extremely important if you go to
a fancy museum, because if you tried to actually “feel” what a famous
painting felt like, you would most likely be kicked out of the museum, if not
arrested. Really. Don’t touch the Art. Which is why it is so important that
artists create implied texture, so you can think about what it might feel like,
which will change your emotional response.
Whoa, I jumped into some serious art jargon there! Emotional
response is a big fancy term for how a piece of art makes you feel. I
mentioned this a little bit when we talked about color, but really your
emotions relate to all of the elements. Back to our cat picture example. The
furriness may remind you of a childhood pet, or a winter jacket, which gives
you a warm and fuzzy emotional response. Artists will try different methods
of changing textures and colors to mess with our emotional responses, but
now that you know what that is, you can be in charge of your own emotional
response! Power to your feelings!
Alright, so we’ve covered all the elements of design and then some!
Quick pop quiz, can you name all seven of them? It’s okay, I’ll give you a
moment to think….
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Did you say color, value, line, shape, form, space and texture? Since I have
no way of checking if you really did get all seven of them right, I’ll just
assume you did (Congratulations, by the way) and move on. There are a few
more terms I want to throw on just for good measure. Composition is a
fancy word to use when you are talking about how a piece looks as a whole.
The composition is how all the elements work together to either look good,
or look bad. Balance is another good word to use, especially when you are
talking about space. I’m sure you’ve seen a painting before that, although it
is hung perfectly straight, looks like it’s leaning to one side. Can you picture
that? That is a painting that is off-balance (not quite the same way that the
guy that talks to himself on the bus is “off-balance,” but you get my drift.)
Sometimes an artist will make a piece look off balance to convey and idea,
or show motion in the piece. Motion is a term that will describe when there
is… wait for it… implied action in a piece. I should have warned you that
“implied” would be coming up again and again! So much of art is implying
how something would look; many times we forget to remember that Art
doesn’t always have to be realistic. It can imply anything it wants to, and,
since you are in charge, you get to infer whatever you want to in return.
So I think you all are ready for the fun stuff. We are going to take a
look at a famous piece of Art work, and then using our new found catch
phrases, you are going to make some seriously smart Art observations. Are
you ready? (Once again, I have no way of checking if you are actually
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ready… you’re just going to have to trust me and keep going. I’m sure you’ll
be able to do it.) So take a look at the following piece:
I’m pretty sure most of you have seen this piece sometime in your life. If
you haven’t that is perfectly alright… have you been living in a cave? I’m just
kidding! But it is really fine if you’ve never seen it before. It’s called “Starry
Night” by Vincent Van Gogh. So to get started I am going to just walk
through the list of elements, but remember, this is just my point of view,
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and these are in no way “right answers.” Your point of view is just as valid,
so feel free to disagree with me. Also, you will once again see that it’s
almost impossible to take them step-by-step, because they are so
interwoven together. It is hard to talk about color without value. Shading
without texture is pointless, and forms without space is like peanut butter
without jelly… or bread for that matter!
So, like I said before, color is probably the first thing you notice. The
bright blues of the sky, the piercing yellow of the stars and moon, and the
muted shadow that looms over the tiny village. All of the colors are working
together to give the atmosphere of night. The blue tints of the swirling Milky
Way in the center show both the complex texture of the sky and have
implied movement, as if it is windy. So, you see in one little paragraph, I
talked about color, value, texture, mood, and implied movement. Let’s keep
going to see what else we find!
The simple squares and parallelograms that make up the roofs of the
tiny house show the humble little space. The shapes also become forms
when we see that there is some depth to the neighborhood. We know there
is depth because the houses that are closer to us appear to be bigger than
the houses that are far away. (This is a little artist trick called perspective,
and it is often used to show space.) The biggest and most ominous form is
the dark brown figure in the foreground, on the left side of the painting. This
is one of the reasons why I love this painting so much, because this form is
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a kind of Rorschach test to see what different people think it is. Yes, there
are history books that say it’s definitely one thing… but I’m not so sure, and
since I am the viewer right at this very moment, what I say goes!
(Remember, the viewer is in charge.) So I want you to look at that dark
form. What do you think it is? I’m not going to tell you what I think it is,
because whatever you think it is, is right!
So we made some pretty good observations there. Also, we didn’t use
any information other than what was in front of us. A common fear of talking
about Art is that you are going to say something and it will be sooooo
obvious to everyone else, that they will think you are a simpleton. However,
as I think we just proved, as long as you know the correct “phraseology”
your observations will be interesting and merit further discussion. Let’s try it
again, but I’m going to talk less, and you are going to talk more.
Take a gander at this next piece. Think first about what your initial
emotional response is, and then think of the elements that you can use to
describe those emotions:
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The piece is called “The Gleaners” and it was painted by Jean-Francois Millet
in 1857. It depicts these women “gleaning” or removing the small amount of
grain that is left on the field after the harvest. These women were poor and
mostly likely lived outside of the urban areas in France. This painting has
been described by important art historians as a “commentary on the lower
classes' inaccessibility to upward mobility.” This may be true, but how does
that connect to you and me? We’re the only ones who can figure that out.
How do you think the women feel? I think they look lonely, even though
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they are together. I think the pale colors give off a sense of despair and the
contradicting textures of the rough ground and their soft clothing show the
wear and tear of a hard life. Think about what the artist chose to put in the
foreground versus what is in the background? Where is the balance? Where
is the light coming from, and whom does it shine on? See, I’m sure you can
answer all those questions. As long as you make a deliberate effort to search
through the painting, I’m positive you’ll be able to find what it means to you.
One more time! This time it is all up to you. Here is a slightly less
formal work of Art. Think about all the elements. What strikes you first? Why
do you think that is? This one is completely up to you, so have at it!
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So you may think that last piece of art was a joke. It’s not. Any visual
material can be evaluated using the tools that we’ve been talking about, so
don’t just save your awesome Art skills for when you go to a museum. The
Perrier ad is just as visually stimulating as either of the “famous” works we
looked at. Don’t let the humor fool you, it’s still Art.
I hope by this point, you all see that you are developing skills that
allow you to take ownership of your own Art opinions. You are the expert on
what Art means to you, so make sure to remember that when you feel less
than capable. Your observations will be interesting and intriguing. Your
discussions will be engaging and entertaining. And your museum trips will be
fruitful and fun.
Speaking of that, remember when I asked you about the last time you
went to a museum? Now, you can see it doesn't matter. You aren’t just a
connoisseur of fine Art now, you can be an expert on all things visual. Do
you also remember when I asked if talking about art makes you get a little
panicked? I hope you remember that. It was only about 9 pages ago!
Anyways, I hope the anxiety has melted away. I hope you see that you can
make insightful and astute observations, clove cigarettes and black
turtlenecks not needed. Now go forth and conquer the Art world with an
open mind and a full vocabulary!
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