Elements of Art: Ten Ways to Decode the Masterpieces

Art historian Hodge (Architecture in Minutes) falls short of her aim to “make looking at and understanding art more compelling” in a primer that’s more prescriptive than perceptive. She begins by overviewing 10 crucial elements of a work of art, including scale, color, light, movement, medium,technique, location (where the piece is exhibited), and artist (their “background, culture, nationality and life experience”). In the book’s second section, she uses these elements to scrutinize 30 famous artworks, exploring how the “broken brushstrokes” in Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night convey “movement and immediacy,” how the gold leaf featured in Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss “recalls medieval paintings... and Byzantine mosaics,” and how the silkscreen method used for Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans created a “mass-produced” look that served as commentary on American consumerism. Unfortunately, most of the selected artworks draw from the Western canon, contributing to a dearth of South American and African art, and Hodge’s analyses tend toward the flattened and didactic, often ascribing simplified emotional reactions to all viewers (of Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, she writes, “The enormity and strength of the wave and the vulnerability of the men in the three boats... inspires feelings of awe and fear in the viewer”). The result is a well-intentioned but one-dimensional attempt at making art more accessible. Illus. (Apr.)