Art Appreciation: How to Look at Paintings? An Introduction to Visual Analysis.

In this short course, we will discuss what we do in front of paintings. It aims to be practical and useful, as it is designed to give you some keys to be more confident in your appreciation of paintings.

A first theme will be on painting techniques and the materials of a painting. We will seek to answer the following questions: What is the painting we are looking at made of? How was it made? And how does the technique affect the appearance of the work, along with its meaning? We will look at supports (canvas, wood, plaster), tools, and pigments. We will learn about oil painting, egg tempera, watercolour, and fresco painting.

The second main theme will be on the visual elements of a painting: light, colour, space, line, scale, texture, and more. When we look at a painting, what should we look at? How do our eyes pick on certain colours and patterns of lines? What is “composition”?

In the last hour of the second session, we will consider together paintings that you will have chosen and submitted beforehand. Ahead of the session, you will receive an email asking you to select a painting that’s in a public collection that you like or find surprising or beautiful... We will apply all we learned in the first session while looking at your selected paintings.