| What are the roles of materials and processes? Technical properties While carefully observing a work's sensory and formal properties is essential to speculating productively about what the work appears to be expressing, noting how a work is actually constructed is also helpful. |
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If The Ironers, for example, were to be rendered in heavy paint and short strokes of lighter and brighter colors, it would appear to be very different from the work we are analyzing.
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| In the work by Degas, the paint is thinly applied and modulated colors are utilized. The result is a somber and somewhat tranquil painting.
What does a work have to say to us? Expressive properties After identifying a work's sensory and formal properties, we are now ready to speculate about how these particular properties contribute to what the work may be saying to us, literally, symbolically and metaphorically; i.e., its expressive properties. What appears to be the mood of the work (somber, gay, menacing)? What is its dynamic state (tension, conflict, relaxation)? What ideas and/or ideals does the work evoke (courage, wisdom, drudgery)? How these factors come into play is demonstrated in the following description of the expressive properties associated with The Ironers. |
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1. The lack of significant diagonal movement, bright colors, strong value contrasts and definite shapes creates a somewhat apathetic atmosphere and somber mood. Warm colors found primarily in the figures and floor in the middle of the painting seem to be caught between cool colors used so extensively in both foreground and background. This suggests that the two laundry women are captives of their oppressive task. The conflict generated by the different uses of warm and cool colors implies the tensions existing between human desires for diversion and the demands of society, which require being involved in tedious but necessary activities. 2. The dynamic relationships between the relaxed and working figures seem to complete the cycle of labor, rest, labor. But these relationships conflict with the symmetrical position of the starched and ironed shirts placed so assertively in the very center of the foreground. These shirts appear to be almost sculptural. They symbolize the magnitude of the task confronting the ironers. The importance of these shirts also suggests that even though one might take a break to sip some wine and rest aching muscles, one's labors must continue. 3. The women in this painting seem to be somewhat anonymous. Their femininity is hardly noted. It is the industrious aspects of their nature that is accentuated. By not stressing the femininity or individuality of his characters and emphasizing, instead, the significance of their chore, Degas creates a provocative visual metaphor for the drudgery of many vocations usually reserved for women. |
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