All works of art can communicate ideas and associations, feelings, and memories. The ways in which artists use materials, subject matter, color, and composition evoke complex reactions and responses from the viewer. These guidelines offer strategies to develop visual literacy skills and help you articulate your observations, responses to, and interpretations of works of art. They provide an approach to analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating your perceptions using your imagination, knowledge, and critical thinking skills. In addition, they offer ways to identify, describe and discuss visual images, place them in an historical and social context, and promote understanding of relationships between works of art, your own experiences, and the world around you.

Here we have provided two ways of looking at works of art: A Process Approach, and A Component Approach. These approaches can be use separately or in combination with each other. Please feel free to change the order of the questions within these approaches so that they work best for you .

Getting Started

1. Select a work of art that interests you.

2. Enlarge the work of art and take a closer look. Study the work of art.

3. Use the following guidelines to spend some time observing, thinking, and free writing about this work of art.

Reading a Work of Art: A Process Approach

Initial reaction
Pay attention to your initial reaction to this work of art.
What is the first thing you notice? Why?
What interests you about this work? Why did you select it?
Write a list of adjectives that come to mind as you look.

Objective Observation
Without making any judgments, describe to yourself or another person everything you see in the work of art. Focus only on what you see, and take notes. (step by step help here)

The Label
Read the label. What is the title of the piece? What does it tell you about the work?
Look at the date. When was it made? How does this inform your interpretation?
What other label information can provide clues to the work of art?

Subjective Observation
What does this work say to you?
What does it make you think about?
How does it make you feel?
How would you describe this work of art?
Is it realistic? Metaphorical? Symbolic? Abstract? How?
(step by step help here)
How does the artist's approach?his/her use of materials, subject matter, color, composition--communicate his/her ideas?

Reading a Work of Art: A Component Approach

Ask yourself:

Materials
What is the work made of? How was it made?
Why did the artist choose to use these materials?

Content
What is happening in this work
Is there a narrative?
Does this piece remind me of anything else? In what ways?

Meaning
What does the work mean to me?
How does it relate to my personal experience?
Does the work have more than one meaning?
(step by step help here)

Form
How did the artist use color, texture, light, shape, and composition to create this piece?
(step by step help here)

Context
Does the work tell me anything about when or where it was made?
What do I know about that time period?
What was happening in society when this work was made?

Make connections
1. Select one or more additional images. Choose works of art that relate to the first work you selected.

2. Compare the first work of art that you chose with these works. Use the process Approach and/or Component Approach to take an in-depth look at the works you selected.

3. Explore relationships between the works of art. Spend some time observing, thinking, and free writing about what you discover.

What is this work's relationship to other works that you selected?
How does this work change when seen in context with other works of art?
What new things do you notice?
How does this new information change your interpretation of the first work you selected?

Explore a theme
1. Find up to 6 works of art that best exemplify a theme. Save these images.

2. Use the guidelines for looking at works of art to write your responses to them. Based on your close observation, find visual evidence and make thematic connections.

Adapted from:
©2000 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY