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Making sense of art history
Making sense of art history

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3 Art works and their effects

3.1 Introduction

Your study of art history will start with the effects point of the Study Diamond. This seems especially relevant to an examination of art by Turner Prize-nominated artists as you've seen that such art seems to provoke dramatic reactions. You'll be looking in detail at two types of effects, namely:

  1. the way you feel when you look at an art work and how to record these feelings

  2. the way you read the art work in a particular way, focusing on one aspect of it before others.

As you work through this section you'll start gathering evidence that you can use to support an analysis of the possible meaning of some Turner Prize-related art works. Perhaps the most important evidence is that which records your own reaction to these art works. When analysing any art work you should try to trust your own feelings and thoughts about what you see, and record these, rather than referring to other people's reactions to find out what you should be feeling and thinking.