Curated Guides > Syllabus > Art Appreciation
Art Appreciation
Looking—deep, careful looking—is not as simple as it seems. It is the aim of this guide to teach the skills needed to decode art, to provide you with tools you can apply to all of the visual information around you.
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Marisol Escobar, The Party, 1965-66, fifteen freestanding, life-size figures and three wall panels, with painted and carved wood, mirrors, plastic, television set, clothes, shoes, glasses, and other accessories, variable dimensions (Toledo Museum of Art, © artist’s estate)
- Introduction to Art Appreciation
- Elements of art
- Line
- Shape and Form
- Color
- Space
- Texture
- Surface and Depth
- Light and shadow
- Principles of composition
- Balance, symmetry, and emphasis
- Movement
- Proportion and scale
- Pattern, repetition and rhythm, variety and unity
Detail, Horse Panel, wall painting in the Chauvet Cave (Pont d'Arc from the cave replica), France, c. 30,000 - 28.,000 B.C.E. or c. 15,000 - 13,000 B.C.E. (photo: Claude Valette, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sesshu Toyo, Winter Landscape, c. 1470, ink on paper, 18 x 11 1/2 inches (Tokyo National Museum, Japan)
Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, Warriors, terracotta (photo: scottgunn, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician 拙政园 (also translated as “The Humble Administrator's Garden”), Suzhou, China (image: Caitriana Nicholson, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Left: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Napoleon on his Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas, 260 x 163 cm (Musée de l’Armée, Paris); right: Kehinde Wiley, Ice T, 2005, oil on canvas, 243.8 x 182.9 cm (private collection) © Kehinde Wiley
