Critical vocabulary for an art analysis

In our first weeks of Critical Studies, we had several lectures of how to talk about a piece of art using a appropriate vocabulary. This was particularly helpful for me because even though I've been dealing with this subject for several years now, I don't have a big range of words to describe something like art, mostly because English is not my mother tongue and we don't get to learn something this specific in our languages lessons.

We were told to bring a printed piece of art of our choice for the lecture, and I picked Antropofagia, painted by Tarsila do Amaral.

Tarsila was one of the pioneers of the Modernist movement in Brazil. Antropofagia inspired the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto in English), published by Oswald de Andrade, her husband and one of the greatest poets of that time. The essay explained the Brazilian history pointing how our culture was molded by swallowing other cultures and originated a movement that would assert Brazilian art against European post-colonial cultural domination. "Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question." is one of Its most iconic lines, "Tupi" reffering to one of the most spoken native tongues in Brazil, Tupi Guarani.

Antropofagia, Tarsila do Amaral

The story behind this painting and Its influence to Brazilian modern art fascinates me, but our task here was to talk about the composition of the scene, colours, contrast and how these elements communicate a message to Its viewer.

Tarsila uses basic, vibrant colours and the shapes are simple and distorted. It reminds me a little of Salvador Dali's art, because her creations also reflected her dreams and child memories. Making a parallel between the two artists, what picks my attention the most is the style: Salvador Dali painted dreams and non-sense with an renaissance style, It was almost a paradox to me. Tarsila, however, was much more focused on the stylized shapes, in a way that you can only recognize what each element really is by its colour and very specific details, like the breast and the feet in the human shapes.

All of her painting use a lot of green and naked figures that resemble people, what remembers me of Brazilian nature and the native population. You can see the borders of each element are very defined and there is a huge contrast between the enviroment and the main elements. In Antropofagia, I see the fertility of the people in a ever-green land.