How to Look at & Understand Great Art

Description The 36 richly illustrated lectures of How to Look at and Understand Great Art take you on an in-depth exploration of the practical skill of viewing art through the lenses of line, light, perspective, composition, and other crucial elements. Using timeless masterpieces of Western art as well as hands-on studio demonstrations, Professor Sharon Latchaw Hirsh gives you the specific visual and interpretive knowledge you need to enhance your appreciation of great art.

• Class Preview
• The Importance of First Impressions
• Where Am I? Point of View & Focal Point
• Color-Description, Symbol & More
• Line-Description & Expression
• Space, Shape, Shade & Shadow
• Seeing the Big Picture-Composition
• The Illusion-Getting the Right Perspective
• Art That Moves Us-Time & Motion
• Feeling with Our Eyes-Texture & Light
• Drawing-Dry, Liquid & Modern Media
• Printmaking-Relief & Intaglio
• Modern Printmaking-Planographic
• Sculpture-Salt Cellars to Monuments
• Development of Painting-Tempera & Oils
• Modern Painting-Acrylics & Assemblages
• Subject Matters
• Signs-Symbols, Icons & Indexes in Art
• Portraits-How Artists See Others
• Self-Portraits-How Artists See Themselves
• Landscapes-Art of the Great Outdoors
• Putting It All Together
• Early Renaissance-Humanism Emergent
• Northern Renaissance-Devil in the Details
• High Renaissance-Humanism Perfected
• Mannerism & Baroque-Distortion & Drama
• Going Baroque-North versus South
• 18th-Century Reality & Decorative Rococo
• Revolutions-Neoclassicism & Romanticism
• From Realism to Impressionism
• Postimpressionism-Form & Content Re-Viewed
• Expressionism-Empathy & Emotion
• Cubism-An Experiment in Form
• Abstraction/Modernism-New Visual Language
• Dada Found Objects/Surreal Doodles & Dreams
• Postmodernism-Focus on the Viewer
• Your Next Museum Visit-Do It Yourself!