Christmas break

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas! Yesterday brought a close to my second grouping of essays, and I have learned (or re-learned) a lot about my preferences and biases, and more importantly the history of the arts. First, I insist on originality, and I appreciate the risk involved in its pursuit. I believe this so much that I'm integrating it into my personal brand identity. Second, I do favor simplicity, order and balance, but not to a militaristic degree. Third, after some of my Romanesque study, I find I don't care for gold. I also found I have a lot of respect for the formal aspects of value, repetition and texture.

Last, and most importantly, I would rather take a stand and be completely wrong than try to please everyone by "covering all bases". So, when I make my analysis, I will generally select a single component out of a handful what I believe to be the "primary". I'll follow that up by describing what the "subordinates" are and why I think they are secondary.

My final grouping of essays will begin on 1/8/18, and I will switch from weekly to daily postings. The weekly strategy was very effective at developing my analysis model and helping me memorize it. Going back to daily postings will teach me more about its strengths and weakness, in addition to exercising my mind in new ways. During the break, I will be fine-tuning my model, working it to a point where it could possibly be its own design project and consumed by the public.

My impressions now go on the posting page ("share" or "comments" dialog), not on the actual essay. I will skip the portion where I describe the basic subject because I am including a citation and an image. I think the single-greatest thing holding my analysis back is my unfamiliarity with the Bible and cultural symbols for several artistic periods.

From essay to essay, I repeat certain observations. Elemental comparisons, contrasts, ratios, populations, the presence or lack of balance and equivalence, an general observation about the work's sense of order or chaos are all things I tend to touch on. I characterize an aspect all visual compositions share (eg, abstraction, balance, movement) and define it. If I am wrong about an observation, or fail to mention something vital, usually this will be corrected in the conclusion paragraph. Last, I am going to attempt restrict the length of my essays to three paragraphs and stick to "non-obvious" observations. Some of the essays I posted in this last group were way too long.

So, I'm preparing for my final group of 82, and looking forward to finding out where that will leave me in my understanding of visual artistic formalism. If I had to guess, conceptual and content study will come next. Any comments/questions/criticisms are welcome!