Duke Writing Studio 5
major shifts in European art. Modern Western art often plays with perspectives, sometimes within the
same painting.
Because Western art was focused on realistic, three-dimensional perspective in art for so long, there was a
tendency to label art which did not use this type of perspective as primitive or less skilled.
Content: Symbolism
In order to understand the symbolism in a painting, it’s important to learn about the culture and time
period that produced it. Andy Warhol’s famous paintings of Campbell’s soup cans would have been
incomprehensible in eighteenth-century India, while the complicated religious symbolism of Hindu
paintings would baffle most twentieth-century Americans. If you’re writing about a painting, research the
historical, cultural, and religious meaning of aspects of the painting. Don’t forget that the same object or
color can have widely varying meanings in different times and places.
Painting Types: Portraits
Sylvan Barnet provides the following questions as guidelines for the analysis of portraits:
How much of the figure does the artist show (just the face, or the face and bust, or the full
figure)? How much of the available space does the artist cause the figure to occupy?
Does the picture advertise the sitter’s political importance, or does it advertise the sitter’s
personal superiority? What sort of identity is presented—social or psychological? That is, does
the image present a strong sense of social station (ruler, soldier, merchant, wife, mother, etc.), or
does it present a strong sense of psychology—a sense of an independent inner life?
What do the clothing, furnishings, accessories (swords, dogs, flowers, clocks, etc.), background,
angle of the head or posture of the head and body, direction of the gaze, and facial expression
contribute to our sense of the figure’s personality (intense, cool, inviting)? Is the sitter portrayed
in a studio setting or in his or her own surroundings? If accessories and suggestions of a particular
setting are absent, does the absence suggest timelessness—as when, for instance, a saint is
depicted against a uniform gold background?
Is the picture largely propaganda for the sitter (as is common in pictures commissioned by sitters
or members of their family), or is it largely concerned with the painter’s response to the sitter (as
is common since the late nineteenth century, when artists working with dealers had a larger
market)?
If frontal, does the figure seem to face us as if observing everything before it? If angled, does it
suggest motion, a figure involved in the social world? If profile, is the emphasis decorative or
psychological? (Generally speaking, a frontal, or, especially, a three-quarter view lends itself to
the rendering of a dynamic personality, perhaps even interacting in an imagined context, whereas
a profile is relatively inexpressive and seems apart from any social interaction.)
(Barnet 58)
The following four paintings show the great variety which can exist among portraits. How are these
subjects presented? What sorts of social, professional, and personal identities are being displayed? What
emotions are being expressed?