Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

旁白：下面听一段艺术史课程的片段。

Professor: Last class I passed out your assignment for your first paper and today I want to spend some time going over it.

教授：上节课我把你们第一次论文发回了，今天我想花些时间去讲下它。

Emm...Most people never take any art history until they get to college, so many of you have probably never written an art history paper before.

嗯……大部分人在上大学之前没有上过艺术历史课，所以你们中很多人可能之前从没写过艺术史论文。

I gave you a list of appropriate works of art for you to write about.

我给你们一个适合的艺术作品清单让你们去写。

So your next step in this process needs to be to go look at the work you've selected as your topic and bring a pencil and a notepad with you.

所以你们下一步需要去看下你选为论文主题的艺术品并且带上铅笔和笔记本。

Because I don't mean you should just drop by at the museum and glance at it, so you can say you've seen it in real life, you need to go and sit in front of the work and really look at it carefully and slowly, and keep careful notes about what you see.

因为我不想你们仅仅到了博物馆然后看一眼它后，你就说你亲眼见过了。你必须走进去然后坐在艺术品前面，仔细地慢慢地欣赏它，对于你看到的东西做好详细的笔记。

You'll need them for the kind of art history paper you are going to be writing.

你将需要这些笔记来完成你的艺术历史论文。

It's what we call a formal analysis.

这就是我们所说的形式分析。

A formal analysis of a work of art, any kind of art, is based on its formal qualities, which means qualities related to the form.

对于艺术作品，任何艺术形式的形式分析，是基于它的形式质量，也就是关于形式的量。

Things like color, texture, line, shapes, proportion and composition.

比如颜色，质地，线条，形状，比例以及构造。

Now, probably the closest thing to a formal analysis you might have written is for an English class.

可能你写过的跟形式分析最接近的东西就是英文课堂上的论文了。

If, you've, say, written an analysis of a poem, you've used the same skills.

比方说你写了一篇诗歌的分析文，你差不多用的是同样的技巧。

You've given an analysis of the poem by describing and analyzing its form and meter.

你通过描述和分析诗歌的形式和韵律来分析诗歌。

A formal analysis paper in art history is very similar.

艺术历史的形式论文跟这个差不多。

Now, before you begin writing your formal analysis, you'll want to start with a summary of the overall appearance of the work, a brief description of what you see: either figures, people, what are they doing, or is it a landscape, or an abstract representation of something.

在你开始写形式分析之前，你要先写这个作品整体外表的简介，一个简要的描述关于你看到的东西：要么是人物，人们，他们在做的事情，或者一个风景，或者一个事物的抽象表现。

Tell what the subject is and what aspects are emphasized in the painting.

写出画面主角是谁，或者这幅画的重点是什么方面。

This will give your reader an overview of what the work looks like before you analyze it.

这些会给你的读者在你分析作品前对作品有个整体的感受。

The next part of your paper, the actual formal analysis, would be the longest and most important section of your paper, where you describe and analyze individual design elements.

接下来，真正的分析部分将是你论文最长最重要的部分，在这一部分你要描述和分析个体的设计元素。

For this portion of the paper, you are going to rely on the notes you took at the museum because you should be able to describe in detail the design elements the artist uses and how they are used.

在这一部分，你将依赖你在博物馆做的笔记因为你必须描述作者设计元素的细节以及它们是如何被采用的。

For example, does the artist use harsh lines or soft lines?

比如，这个艺术家的线条是硬朗的还是柔和的？

Are the colors bright or muted?

颜色是明亮的还是灰暗的？

Focus on the design elements that you feel are most strongly represented in that particular work of art.

重心放在你觉得最能体现这个作品特别之处的设计元素上。

And if you don't know where to begin, take note of where your eye goes first.

如果你不知道从哪写起，就从你第一眼看到的地方开始写。

Then describe things in the order in which your eye moves around the work.

然后按照你眼睛移动的顺序描述。

This will help you understand how one part relates to another, the interaction between the different parts of the work.

这样能帮助你理解一部分是如何与另一部分相连，以及部分之间的相关性。

Ok? This kind of analysis should occur throughout the main portion of the paper.

Ok？这种分析要贯穿你整个论文主体。

In the last section of your paper, and this goes beyond formal analysis, you comment on the significance of what you've seen, what details of the work convey meaning.

在你论文的最后一个部分，这个部分要超越之前的形式分析，你要评论你看到的重点，以及细节传达的意思。

Some significant details will not be apparent to you right away.

一些重要的细节不会直接明了得让你看到。

But if you look long enough, you realize how important they are for your interpretation of the work.

但是如果你看得足够久，你就会明白它们对于你对整个艺术品的理解有多重要了。

Many years ago, I was writing a formal analysis of a painting of a little boy.

很久以前，我写过一篇关于一个小男孩的油画的形式分析。

In the painting, a little boy was standing in his nursery and he was holding a toy bird in his hand.

在油画中，一个小男孩站在育儿室里，手里拿着一个玩具小鸟。

And there were more toys around him in the background of the painting.

背景里有好多玩具围绕着他。

Because of the bird he was holding, I assumed at first that the painting was about the innocence of children.

因为他抓的是只鸟，所以我第一反应是这幅画有关孩子的天真无邪。

But as I looked at the painting longer, I realized that the boy's eyes look sad even though there was no discernable expression on his face.

但是当我看久了，我意识到这个男孩的眼神是悲伤的，尽管他脸上看不出表情。

And then it dawned on me that even though he was surrounded by toys, he was all alone in his nursery.

然后我领悟到尽管他周围都是玩具，但是他始终是一个人在房间里。

The boy's eyes were a significant detail in the painting that I didn't notice at first.

这个孩子的眼睛就是我第一次没有注意到的重要细节。