Scroll down for essays on sculpture, painting, film, and introducing your kid to art.
Sculpture
- Getting More Enjoyment from Art You Love (Kindle) – A favorite artwork can provide you with enjoyment and inspiration, help you recall important events of the past, and help you project a course into the future. Get even more enjoyment from a work of art you love by approaching it with an active mind: studying its details and asking questions about its meaning.
- And more: Representational vs. abstract art; Innovators in Sculpture (5,000 years in 2 exhilarating hours!). Even more: see the Sculpture page on this site.
Painting
- How to Analyze and Appreciate Paintings (Kindle) – Via discussions of Holbein’s Sir Thomas More and Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, we work through a series of questions to help you systematically observe the details of a painting, state what effect they have, and set them in the context of the rest of the work. As we go, we work out tentative themes and then a final statement of the theme; and finally, we evaluate the works in emotional, esthetic, philosophical, and art historical terms.
- And more: How art jumped from representational to abstract in barely a century; brief overviews of landscapes and still-lifes. Even more: the Painting page on this site.
Film
- What are the elements of a good movie review?
- Who votes on the Oscars, and what standards do they use?
- How would you set about analyzing a film as a work of art, as opposed to writing a review that will help others decide whether to see it?
- And more: see the Movies, TV & Photography page on this site.
Have a blast talking to your kid about art!
- “How to Introduce Your Kid to Art” (Medium.com): Advice from a former homeschooling parent and current art historian.