HUMN 100 Description of a Painting Question
The “Notice and Focus” is a common tool used in the Humanities and other Cultural Studies fields. It allows one to take a more in depth look at the details in a text/artwork. The goal here is to delay judgments, not make assumptions or rush to conclusions about meaning. By taking these essential first steps of observing/noticing, before assessing, you ultimately form more plausible conclusions.The exercise consists of 3 steps, each of which you will record (typed) and submit all parts together at the end. Submitted assignments that are missing any of the steps, cannot earn full points.You can work with any of the art forms covered in Unit 1: Painting, Print (photograph or digital), Sculpture, or Architecture. If you are interested in working with music instead – please check with me first (need a music background).Step 1) Ask yourself, “What do you notice?” and come up with a list of nonjudgmental observations. These should be straightforward observations and not involve any interpretation or analysis. List as many things as you can, even if they seem odd or out of place (need at least 10).For instance, one might look at a painting and say this piece is scary, which would be jumping to assumptions and interpretation analysis. Instead one would list the elements they see/hear/etc. that would give you that impression of scary dark shapes, use of shadows, color choice, lighting, setting these would all be elements that contribute to a general feeling. These are the list of observations.As you work on this list, youll notice patterns arise, these are usually connected to the meaning and/or the significance of a work.Step 2) Rank the features that you noticed from most to least important/significant.You may find in this step, if you have a lot of observations, that sorting them into categories helps you rank them this is fine, go with what makes sense and feels right to you. There are no wrong answers here, different people might rank the same observations differently and thats normal. Understanding why you chose that ranking is the most important part.Step 3) The third and final step is to say why – explain only the top three things you listed in your ranking. What made these items so important to your understanding of the work as a whole?
