Exploring Values in Art, Music, and Writings

Seeing, Listening, and Reading Guide

0. Introduction

One of our most important tasks as students of Humanities is to consider directly sources which represent past cultural matrixes. (Remember that all actual cultural matrixes are "past" cultural matrixes.) We must have some means of connecting to the past and allowing its values to speak to us.

Writings, along with works of art and music, provide us with links to the past. A simple way to grab hold of such links is to interact with them. On the one side, there is the writing, or the art, or the song. On the other side is "us." How do we make the two sides meet? How do we as individuals make "friends" with the artifacts of the past?

One way we might try to understand the past is to study what "experts" say about it. This way has value, but its value is not that of Humanities. We could always take a work and read about it ... see how it might fit into its own cultural context, see how informed "critics" assess its meaning, see if we can attach the work to some sense of authorship. And so on. And so on. And so on. Why, if we add enough "so on's," we don't even have to look at a picture or listen to a song in order to come up with a nice, conventional interpretation!

"Humanities" calls for engagement. It calls for action. We have to do something ourselves -- not merely watch others doing something. We can try to have our own, "legitimate" experience of a work of art or music, or a writing. The meaning of a work can only be found in a transaction. It's what occurs when someone looks at a picture or listens to a song or reads a writing. Meaning exists in this middle ground -- between the viewer/listener/reader and the work itself.

Think of it! For you, a picture has no meaning until you look at it. A song has no meaning until you listen to it. A writing has no meaning until you read it. You can learn everything there is to be known about a work, and you have still not experienced its meaning until you have encountered it for myself. You are part of the meaning of the work at the moment it comes to have meaning for you.

To arrive at informed conclusions, we must make sensible observations of the works we study. The following Guides detail a simple process for observing art, music, and writings. The basic idea of the process is that art, music, and writings share features in common. In other words, we may use a single system for observing all forms of creative expression.

The procedure recommended here organizes questions about art, music, and writings under a simple set of categories by which you may organize your observations. The categories will help us "get something out of" the works we study, rather than just superimposing our own reactions and ideas onto the works. There are five categories:

· line

· color

· shape

· texture

· design

Using the categories and the questions that go with them will not reveal all of the information that may be gleaned from a work. It may well lead to misinterpretations -- the kind of thing that happens to experts and non-experts alike. It is not designed to reveal what some hypothetical original audience may have experienced in encountering the work. But it will allow you to make a personal interpretation of the work based on legitimate observations.

1. Art (line and color organized by space)

Developing the Ability to See

(These questions were created with the special advice of Kit Hall.)

Questions about "Line" in Art

• Are the lines curved (lazy, loose, nervous or relaxed, sweeping) or straight (brittle, jagged)?
• Are they clearly defined or vague and diffused?
• Are they simple and direct or detailed and ornamental?
• Is the quality of the lines narrow (thin) or wide (thick)?
• Is the direction of the lines horizontal or vertical or diagonal (rising or falling)?
• Are the lines long or short?

Questions about "Color" in Art (the way light is reflected from a surface)

• Is the "hue" cool or warm, exciting or dull?
• What is the "saturation" (vividness)?
• Is the overall color-scheme monochromatic or polychromatic?
• Is the overall color-scheme light or dark?

Questions about "Shape" in Art (defined by line and color)

• Are the shapes representational (organic) or abstract (geometric)? [****In either case you need to describe the shapes that are used.****]
• Do the shapes contain illusionary properties (which make us believe something that is not really possible), or cues which depict space and direct our viewing of the piece (such as overlapping, size reduction, pattern, decreasing detail, linear perspective)?
• Is the overall shape open or closed?
• Is the overall shape shallow or deep?
• Is the overall shape crowded or roomy?
• What is seen (as opposed, for instance, to what is not seen)?

Questions about "Texture" in Art (the quality of a surface -- the way a surface feels, or looks like it feels)

• What medium(s) (paint, charcoal, metal, neon tubes, etc.) are used?
• How are they applied (by hand, with brushes, by machine, etc.)?
• What textures result? Is the texture actual? Is the texture symbolic? Is the texture imitative?

Questions about "Design" in Art (how the preceding elements are organized)

• How big is it and how does its height relate to its width?
• Is the work two-dimensional or three-dimensional?
• Is it wall mounted or freestanding? Framed or unframed? Does it require a pedestal or does it sit on the floor?
• Does it have any apparent function? (Remember some art is meant to be used.)
• What is your point-of-view? That is, where does the artist position you with regard to the work of art? Do you feel small when looking at the art? Do you feel big? Do you feel a part of the art or do you feel distant?
• What makes us come close to the art, or move back?
• How does the work employ unity and variety (repetition and contrast, theme and variation)? Unity and variety function together; for instance, repetition and variation together in art are called "rhythm," which may be slow or fast, simple or complex.
• What sense of movement does the work portray (getting from one area to another, by combining similar themes or following a line)?
• How is the work balanced? (Look for shapes or blocks of light and dark. Two types of balance are symmetrical and radial.)
• How does the work display proportion (the largeness or smallness of one object to another)?
• What is the climax (point[s] of focus, emphasis, center of interest, where to look)? Where do you begin looking and why do you begin there? Where are you directed to look next? Why? How? What fascinates you and calls for your attention?
• At what pace do you visually move through the space? What determines that pace?

2. Music (sound and silence organized by time)

Developing the Ability to Hear

(These questions were created with the special advice of Jeff Walter.)

Questions about "Line" in Music

• Is the "melody" (single tones sounded successively) simple or elaborate?
• Is the melody conjunct (smooth-flowing) step-wise, with small pitch intervals; or is it disjunct (angular), with large pitch intervals?
• Does the melodic line climax (reach its highest point) near its beginning, middle, or end?
• Is the resolution of the climax, if there is one, quick or slow?

Questions about "Color" in Music (Tone "Color," or "timbre," the quality of sound that makes one instrument sound different from another)

• What produces the sound (strings, winds, percussion, other)?
• Is the pitch (frequency) high or middle or low?
• Are the instruments used to produce the sound(s) within the same "family"; for example, do strings play with strings, trumpets with trumpets, and so on? If not, what are the combinations?

Questions about "Shape" in Music (defined by line and color)

• Is the work long or short?
• Is the work programmatic or absolute? [****If you conclude that the shape is programmatic, you should describe the program.****]
• Is the work through-composed (that is, one continuous piece), or is it composed of movements (sections) which combine to make a whole?
• Is the sound consonant or dissonant?
• Are the dynamics (intensity or volume) soft or loud?
• Are changes in dynamics achieved suddenly (terraced) or smoothly (graduated)?
• If the work includes a text, what is that text's significance? Is it of greater, lesser, or equal importance in comparison to the non-texted sounds of the work?

Questions about "Texture" in Music

• How many performers are there?
• Howmanydifferent types of instruments are employed? (A choral work may have many performers, but the number of instrument types are few; a wind ensemble piece will have many instrument types, but relatively few performers on each instrument.)
• How do the performers behave (together, independently, react to one another)?
• Is the work monophonic (a single melodic line)?
• Is the work polyphonic (two or more melodic lines)?
• Is the work homophonic (a single melodic line with accompanying lines)?

Questions about "Design," or "Composition" in Music (how the preceding elements are organized)

• How does the work employ unity and variety; in particular, is the work simple or complex?
• How does the work employ repetition and contrast?
• Is the meter two or three pulses (a question of "rhythm")?
• Is the tempo fast or slow (a question of "rhythm")?
• What is the dominant duration of sounds; that is, how long do they last (a question of "rhythm")?
• Does the work have any apparent function?

3. Writing (verbal symbols organized by linear sequence)

Developing the Ability to Read

(These questions were created by Carl Smeller and Brenda Taylor)

Questions about "Line" in Writings

• Are individual sentences short or long?
• Is their syntax (word order) simple or complex?
• Are the ideas or events in the text exposed in a linear (step-by-step) or circuitous (roundabout) way?

Questions about "Color" in Writings

• Is the material written in verse or prose?
• Are the words arranged to emphasize their sound or not?
• Does the language evoke pictures in your mind?  If so, what kinds of images are used?
• Is the language more literal or figurative?  If it is figurative, what sorts of symbols and metaphors does it use?

Questions about "Shape" in Writings

• Is the piece short or long?  (If what you are reading is an excerpt, do you know if the full work is long or really long?)
• How is the work divided up into smaller units (stanzas, paragraphs, sections, chapters, etc.)?
• Does the division of the work into such units produce a simple or complex structure?

Questions about "Texture" in Writings

• How would you describe the work's “voice”?  Is this work intended mainly for reading or for oral performance?
• Does it reveal something about the person who wrote it or is it impersonal?
• How many voices are present?  Does the work present more than one point of view, or is only one perspective represented?
• Is the language used mainly concrete (descriptive of the sensible world) or abstract (dealing with ideas)?
• How would you characterize the diction (register of word choice): formal? informal? academic? literary? emotional? inflammatory? dispassionate? worshipful?

Questions about "Design," or "Composition" in Writings (how the preceding elements are organized)

• To what kind or genre of writing does the work belong -- for example: fiction (telling a made-up story), "history" (telling a "true" story), biography (telling the story of a person’s life), instruction (teaching something), correspondence (communicating from one person to another), philosophy (discussing ideas), legal document (recording laws or their particular application), scripture (relating religious values)?
• What purpose or function does the work have? Does it persuade? Does it teach? Does it record information? Does it communicate ideas? Does it preserve cultural values? Does it give aesthetic pleasure?