Formal Analysis
Formal analysis is a specific type of visualdescription. Unlike ekphrasis, it is not meant to evokethe work in the reader’s mind. Instead it is anexplanation of visual structure, of the ways in whichcertain visual elements have been arranged and functionwithin a composition. Strictly speaking, subject is notconsidered and neither is historical or culturalcontext. The purest formal analysis is limited to whatthe viewer sees. Because it explains how the eye is ledthrough a work, this kind of description provides asolid foundation for other types of analysis. It isalways a useful exercise, even when it is not intendedas an end in itself.
The British art critic Roger Fry (1866-1934) played animportant role in developing the language of formalanalysis we use in English today. Inspired by modernart, Fry set out to escape the interpretative writing ofVictorians like Ruskin. He wanted to describe what theviewer saw, independent of the subject of the work orits emotional impact. Relying in part upon late 19th-and early 20th-century studies of visual perception, Fryhoped to bring scientific rigor to the analysis of art.If all viewers responded to visual stimuli in the sameway, he reasoned, then the essential features of aviewer’s response to a work could be analyzed inabsolute – rather than subjective orinterpretative – terms. This approach reflectedFry’s study of the natural sciences as an undergraduate.Even more important were his studies as a painter, whichmade him especially aware of the importance of howthings had been made.17
The idea of analyzing a single work of art, especially apainting, in terms of specific visual components was notnew. One of the most influential systems was created bythe 17th-century French Academician Roger de Piles(1635-1709). His book,The Principles of Painting, became very popularthroughout Europe and appeared in many languages. An18th-century English edition translates de Piles’s termsof analysis as: composition (made up of invention anddisposition or design), drawing, color, and expression.These ideas and, even more, these words, gainedadditional fame in the English-speaking world when thepainter and art critic Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745)included a version of de Piles’s system in a popularguide to Italy. Intended for travelers, Richardson’sbook was read by everyone who was interested in art. Inthis way, de Piles’s terms entered into the mainstreamof discussions about art in English.18
Like de Piles’s system, Roger Fry’s method of analysisbreaks a work of art into component parts, but they aredifferent ones. The key elements are (in Joshua Taylor’sexplanation):
Color, both as establishing a general keyand as setting up a relationship of parts;line, both as creating a sense of structureand as embodying movement and character;light and dark, which created expressiveforms and patterns at the same time as it suggestedthe character of volumes through light and shade;the sense of volume itself and what mightbe called mass as contrasted with space;and the concept of plane, which wasnecessary in discussing the organization of space,both in depth and in a two-dimensional pattern.Towering over all these individual elements was thecomposition, how part related to part andto whole: composition not as an arbitrary scheme oforganization but as a dominant contributor to theexpressive content of the painting.19
Fry first outlined his analytical approach in 1909,published in an article which was reprinted in 1920 inhis bookVision and Design.20
Some of the most famous examples of Fry's own analysesappear inCézanne. A Study of His Development.21Published in 1927, the book was intended to persuadereaders that Cézanne was one of the great mastersof Western art long before that was a generally acceptedpoint of view. Fry made his argument through carefulstudy of individual paintings, many in privatecollections and almost all of them unfamiliar to hisreaders. Although the book included reproductions of theworks, they were small black-and-white illustrations,murky in tone and detail, which conveyed only the mostapproximate idea of the pictures. Furthermore, Frywarned his readers, “it must always be kept in mind thatsuch [written] analysis halts before the ultimateconcrete reality of the work of art, and perhaps inproportion to the greatness of the work it must leaveuntouched a greater part of the objective.”22In other words, the greater the work, the less it can beexplained in writing. Nonetheless, he set out to makehis case with words.
One of the key paintings in Fry’s book isCézanne’sStill-life with Compotier (Private collection,Paris), painted about 1880. The lengthy analysis of thepicture begins with a description of the application ofpaint. This was, Fry felt, the necessary place ofbeginning because all that we see and feel ultimatelycomes from paint applied to a surface. He wrote:“Instead of those brave swashing strokes of the brush orpalette knife [that Cézanne had used earlier], wefind him here proceeding by the accumulation of smalltouches of a full brush.”23This single sentence vividly outlines two waysCézanne applied paint to his canvas (“brave,swashing strokes” versus “small touches”) and thespecific tools he used (brush and palette knife). As isoften the case in Fry’s writing, the words he chose gobeyond what the viewer sees to suggest the process ofpainting, an explanation of the surface in terms of themovement of the painter’s hand.
After a digression about how other artists handledpaint, Fry returned toStill-life with Compotier. He rephrased what hehad said before, integrating it with a fullerdescription of Cézanne’s technique:
[Cézanne] has abandoned altogether the sweepof a broad brush, and builds up his masses by asuccession of hatched strokes with a small brush.These strokes are strictly parallel, almost entirelyrectilinear, and slant from right to left as theydescend. And this direction of the brush strokes iscarried through without regard to the contours ofthe objects.24
From these three sentences, the reader gathers enoughinformation to visualize the surface of the work. Thesize of the strokes, their shape, the direction theytake on the canvas, and how they relate to the formsthey create are all explained. Already the paintingseems very specific. On the other hand, the reader hasnot been given the most basic facts about what thepicture represents. For Fry, that information only cameafter everything else, if it was mentioned at all.
Then Fry turned to “the organization of the forms andthe ordering of the volumes.” Three of the objects inthe still-life are mentioned, but only as aspects of thecomposition.
Each form seems to have a surprising amplitude, topermit of our apprehending it with an ease whichsurprises us, and yet they admit a free circulationin the surrounding space. It is above all the maindirections given by the rectilinear lines of thenapkin and the knife that make us feel so vividlythis horizontal extension [of space]. And thishorizontal [visually] supports the sphericalvolumes, which enforce, far more than real applescould, the sense of their density and mass.
He continued in a new paragraph:
One notes how few the forms are. How the sphere isrepeated again and again in varied quantities. Tothis is added the rounded oblong shapes which arerepeated in two very distinct quantities in thecompotier and the glass. If we add the continuallyrepeated right lines [of the brush strokes] and thefrequently repeated but identical forms of theleaves on the wallpaper, we have exhausted thisshort catalogue. The variation of quantities ofthese forms is arranged to give points of clearpredominance to the compotier itself to the left,and the larger apples to the right centre. Onedivines, in fact, that the forms are held togetherby some strict harmonic principle almost like thatof the canon in Greek architecture, and that it isthis that gives its extraordinary repose andequilibrium to the whole design.25
Finally the objects in the still-life have come intoview: a compotier (or fruit dish), a glass, apples, anda knife, arranged on a cloth and set before patternedwallpaper.
In Fry’s view of Cézanne, contour, or the edgesof forms, are especially important. The Impressionists,Cézanne's peers and exact contemporaries, werepreoccupied “by the continuity of the visual welt.” ForCézanne, on the other hand, contour
became an obsession. We find the traces of thisthroughout this still-life. He actually draws thecontour with his brush, generally in a bluish grey.Naturally the curvature of this line is sharplycontrasted with his parallel hatchings, and arreststhe eye too much. He then returns upon itincessantly by repeated hatchings which graduallyheap up round the contour to a great thickness. Thecontour is continually being lost and then recovered... [which] naturally lends a certainheaviness, almost clumsiness, to the effect; but itends by giving to the forms that impressive solidityand weight which we have noticed.26
Fry ended his analysis with the shapes, conceived inthree dimensions (“volumes”) and in two dimensions(“contours”):
At first sight the volumes and contours declarethemselves boldly to the eye. They are of asurprising simplicity, and are clearly apprehended.But the more one looks the more they elude anyprecise definition. The apparent continuity of thecontour is illusory, for it changes in qualitythroughout each particle of its length. There is nouniformity in the tracing of the smallestcurve.... We thus get at once thenotion of extreme simplicity in the general resultand of infinite variety in every part. It is thisinfinitely changing quality of the very stuff ofpainting which communicates so vivid a sense oflife. In spite of the austerity of the forms, all isvibration and movement.27
Fry wrote with a missionary fervor, intent uponpersuading readers of his point of view. In thisrespect, his writings resemble Ruskin’s, although Fryreplaced Ruskin’s rich and complicated language withclear, spare words about paint and composition. A textby Fry like the one above provides the reader withtangible details about the way a specific picture looks,whereas Ruskin’s text supplies an interpretation of itssubject. Of course, different approaches may be inspiredby the works themselves. Ignoring the subject is mucheasier if the picture represents a grouping of ordinaryobjects than if it shows a dramatic scene of storm anddeath at sea. The fact that Fry believed inCézanne’s art so deeply says something about whathe believed was important in art. It also says somethingabout the taste of the modern period, just as Ruskin’svalues and style of writing reveal things about theVictorian period. Nonetheless, anyone can learn a greatdeal from reading either of them.
Ellen Johnson, an art historian and art critic who wroteextensively about modern art, often used formalanalysis. One example is a long description of RichardDiebenkorn'sWoman by a Large Window (Allen Art Museum,Oberlin), which covers the arrangement of shapes into acomposition, the application of paint, the colors, andfinally the mood of the work. Although organized in adifferent order from Fry's analysis of Cézanne'sstill-life, her discussion defines the painting insimilar terms.
[Diebenkorn's] particular way of forming the picture... is captivating, ...organizing the picture plane into large, relativelyopen areas interrupted by a greater concentration ofactivity, a spilling of shapes and colorsasymmetrically placed on one side of the picture.InWoman by a Large Window the asymmetry ofthe painting is further enhanced by having thefigure not only placed at the left of the picturebut, more daringly, facing directly out of thepicture. This leftward direction and placement isbrought into a precarious and exciting butbeautifully controlled balance by the mirror on theright which ... creates a fascinatingambiguity and enrichment of the picture space.
...The interior of the room andthe woman in it are painted in subdued, desert-sandcolors, roughly and vigorously applied with much ofthe drawing achieved by leaving exposed an earlierlayer of paint. The edges of the window, table andchair, and the contours of the figure, not tomention the purple eye, were drawn in this way. Inother areas, the top layer, roughly applied asthough with a scrub brush, is sufficiently thin topermit the under-color to show through and vary thesurface hue. ... [T]he landscape is morepositive in hue and value contrasts and the paintmore thick and rich. The bright apple-green of thefields and the very dark green of the trees areenlivened by smaller areas of orange, yellow andpurple; the sky is intensely blue. The glowinglandscape takes on added sparkle by contrast withthe muted interior ....Pictorially, however, [the woman] is anchored tothe landscape by the dark of her hair forming onevalue and shape with the trees behind her. Thisunion of in and out, of near and far, repeated inthe mirror image, emphasizes the plane of thepicture, the two-dimensional character of which isfurther asserted by the planar organization intofour horizontal divisions: floor, ledge, landscapeand sky. Thus, while the distance of the landscapeis firmly stated, it is just as firmly denied....
While the mood of the picture is conveyed mostobviously through the position and attitude of thefigure, still the entire painting functions inevoking this response ...Lonely butcomposed, withdrawn from but related to herenvironment, the woman reminds one of theself-contained, quiet and melancholy figures onGreek funerary reliefs. Like them, relaxed andstill, she seems to have sat for centuries.28
Johnson’s description touches on all aspects of what theviewer sees before ending with a final paragraph aboutmood. Firmly situated in our understanding of specificphysical and visual aspects of Diebenkorn’s painting,her analogy to the seated women on Greek funeraryreliefs enhances our ability to envision the positionand spirit of this woman. It makes the picture seemvivid by referring to something entirely other. Theimage also is unexpected, so the description ends withan idea that catches our attention because it is new,while simultaneously summarizing an important part ofher analysis. An allusion must work perfectly to beuseful, however. Otherwise it becomes a distraction, ared herring that leads the reader away from the subjectat hand.
The formal analysis of works other than paintings needsdifferent words. In Learning to Look, JoshuaTaylor identified three key elements that determine muchof our response to works of sculpture. The artist“creates not only an object of a certain size and weightbut also a space that we experience in a specific way.”A comparison between an Egyptian seated figure (Louvre,Paris) and Giovanni da Bologna’sMercury (National Gallery of Art, Washington,DC) reveals two very different treatments of form andspace:
The Egyptian sculptor, cutting into a block ofstone, has shaped and organized the parts of hiswork so that they produce a particular sense oforder, a unique and expressive total form. Theindividual parts have been conceived of as planeswhich define the figure by creating a movement fromone part to another, a movement that depends on ourresponding to each new change in direction.... In this process our sense of thethird-dimensional aspect of the work is enforced andwe become conscious of the work as a whole. Themovement within the figure is very slight, and ourimpression is one of solidity, compactness, andimmobility.
In Mercury, on the other hand, “the movement isactive and rapid.”
The sculptor’s medium has encouraged him to create afree movement around the figure and out into thespace in which the figure is seen. This spacebecomes an active part of the composition. We areconscious not only of the actual space displaced bythe figure, as in the former piece, but also of thespace seeming to emanate from the figure of Mercury.The importance of this expanding space for thestatue may be illustrated if we imagine this figureplaced in a narrow niche. Although it might fitphysically, its rhythms would seem truncated, and itwould suffer considerably as a work of art. TheEgyptian sculpture might not demand so particular aspace setting, but it would clearly suffer inassuming Mercury’s place as the center piece of asplashing fountain.29
Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) also used formal analysis,but as it relates to the process of perception andpsychology, specifically Gestalt psychology, which hestudied in Berlin during the 1920s. Less concerned withaesthetic qualities than the authors quoted above, hewas more rigorous in his study of shapes, volumes, andcomposition. In his best-known book,Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of theCreative Eye, first published in 1954, Arnheim analyzed, in order:balance, shape, form, growth, space, light, color,movement, tension, and expression.30Many of the examples given in the text are works of art,but he made it clear that the basic principles relate toany kind of visual experience. In other books, notablyVisual Thinking and the Power of the Center: AStudy of Composition in the Visual Arts, Arnheim developed the idea that visual perception isitself a kind of thought.31Seeing and comprehending what has been seen are twodifferent aspects of the same mental process. This wasnot a new idea, but he explored it in relation to manyspecific visual examples.
Arnheim began with the assumption that any work of artis a composition before it is anything else:
When the eyes meet a particular picture for thefirst time, they are faced with the challenge of thenew situation: they have to orient themselves, theyhave to find a structure that will lead the mind tothe picture’s meaning. If the picture isrepresentational, the first task is to understandthe subject matter. But the subject matter isdependent on the form, the arrangement of the shapesand colors, which appears in its pure state in“abstract,” non-mimetic works.32
To explain how different uses of a central axis altercompositional structure, for example, Arnheim comparedEl Greco’sExpulsion from the Temple (Frick Collection,New York) to Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (SanMarco, Florence). About the first, Arnheim wrote:
The central object reposes in stillness even whenwithin itself it expresses strong action. The Christ... is a typicalfigura serpentinata [spiral figure]. Hechastises the merchant with a decisive swing of theright arm, which forces the entire body into atwist. The figure as a whole, however, is firmlyanchored in the center of the painting, which raisesthe event beyond the level of a passing episode.Although entangled with the temple crowd, Christ isa stable axis around which the noisy happeningchurns.33
Although his discussion identifies the forms in terms ofsubject, Arnheim’s only concern is the way thecomposition works around its center. The same is true inhis discussion of Fra Angelico’s fresco:
As soon as we split the compositional space down themiddle, its structure changes. It now consists oftwo halves, each organized around its owncenter.... Appropriatecompositional features must bridge the boundary. FraAngelico’sAnnunciation at San Marco, for example, issubdivided by a prominent frontal column, whichdistinguishes the celestial realm of the angel fromthe earthly realm of the Virgin. But the division iscountered by the continuity of the space behind thecolumn. The space is momentarily covered but notinterrupted by the vertical in the foreground. Thelively interaction between the messenger andrecipient also helps bridge the separation.34
All formal analysis identifies specific visual elementsand discusses how they work together. If the goal of awriter is to explain how parts combine to create awhole, and what effect that whole has on the viewer,then this type of analysis is essential. It also can beused to define visual characteristics shared by a numberof objects. When the similarities seem strong enough toset a group of objects apart from others, they can besaid to define a "style." Stylistic analysiscan be applied to everything from works made during asingle period by a single individual to a survey ofobjects made over centuries. All art historians use it.
