A formalist approach to art history differs from an iconographic and iconological analysis in different ways. The formalist approach describes that the most essential aspect of art is its form. It describes the way the work of art is made based purely on its visual aspects rather than its narrative content. In a painting, a formalist critic will concentrate on form, composition, brushwork, line, and color qualities. The approach came into being in response to both post-impressionism and impressionism in which more weight was placed on visual aspects of the work.
The iconographic analysis involves analyzing art in terms of image content such as their gestures and placing, number of figures utilized. It is mainly used to build the meaning of specific at a particular time. For a historian to accomplish this kind of analysis, they need to know the culture and individuals that produced the work. Its approach is generally descriptive but when detailed observations are applied it becomes analytical [1] . On the other hand, iconological analysis is a technique of interpretation in both cultural and visual art history used by Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg that discloses the social, historical, and cultural background of subjects and themes in visual arts. The iconological analysis explains the meaning and essence of art. The analysis utilizes pre-iconographic observation and from the result, it recognizes and penetrates various themes.
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Bibliography
Barnet, Sylvan, Writing About Art, (1993) pp.48-68. Retrieved from http://ids180.alexgalarza.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Barnet-Formal-Analysis-and-Style.pdf on 12th May 2021
