Geoffrey Bent’s Persuasive Strategic Style: Targeted Diction, Antithesis, & Connotative Word...

Elizabeth Niccole Crank Crank SNHU Gr English Linguistics 550 1-‐30-‐2015 Dr. Theresa Mohamed

Geoffrey Bent’s Persuasive Strategic Style: Targeted Diction, Antithesis, & Connotative Word Choice-‐ Reveal Critical Positions

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It takes a truly gifted ventriloquist to verbally & linguistically obliterate one of the

world’s finest 20th century artists, Edward Hopper, for his one-‐of-‐a kind architectural renderings

on a grand scale of varied local architecture, which he then metamorphosed into an eclectic,

greatly demanded corpus of fine paintings. Geoffrey Bent is just that sort of “gifted linguistic

ventriloquist.” In the two essays, “Edward Hopper and The Geometry of Despair” (EHGD) and

“Claude Monet: La Roi de La France,” (CMR) Geoffrey Bent is able to persuade his audience of

his critical position by his use of cognitive and emotional language, targeted diction, and

linguistic mechanisms; specifically, he utilizes various technical jargon, diction, antithesis, and

select themes from the paintings of Hopper and Monet to further convince his readers through

the connotations of (his) language of his critical judgments.

Historically, Bent’s featured artist Hopper, initially represents decent people

reasonably coping through the Great Depression. Contrarily, according to Bent’s brilliant

language, he provoked and overwhelmed critics by exaggerating his iconic user-‐generation

doll-‐faced-‐dehumanized voids of compartmental everyday people, which distinguished his

art. As a literary critic himself of Hopper and Monet, Geoff Bent, a postmodern American

painter, aptly articulates his own (cross-‐discipline linguistic) theory of visual dialectics in his

explanation of a suite of his paintings titled “Visual Dialectics,” which directly represents his

linguistic style. Bent’s words semantically emphasize that Hopper creates drama in his

works through the juxtaposition of opposites (see excerpt below). He even uses Hegelian

language and language theory to express his use of this technique. As Hegel maintains in



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John Peters article, "The Root of Humanity: Hegel on Language and Communication,” at

University of Iowa, history (language) precedes dialectically through the encounter of living

realities that form a synthesis through the opposition and collision of thesis and antithesis,

which translates linguistically (7). Peters notes Hegel’s “I=We (Spirit of Self Theory),” which

the author applies beautifully in his essays; Bent suggest that Hopper’s intended message to

civilization is “Subject=America,” later discussed in Table 1.2 regarding antithesis (8).

Semantically the theories are identical, using antithetical logic. Curiously, Bent applies this

formulation of visual dialectics in his critique of Edward Hopper and Claude Monet (1). He is

able to allure and persuade his audience strategically (Fig. 1.1, Table 1.4); he writes as a

master, the element of emotion makes his text appealing literature, top editors noticed him

starting in 2006, and in 2012 his Essay on Edward Hopper was featured nationally.

The chief editor of The Best American Essays of 2012 Brooks writes on Bent-‐ his

“deliberation on a topic” makes it’s great comeback “to the creative roots” of essaying. The Best

American Essays collection features a selection of the year’s outstanding essay of literary

achievement that shows an awareness of (writing) craft and forcefulness of thought. Brooks is

analyst of NPR radio, and selects masterful pieces of writing for our educated American public.

His choice to feature Mr. Bent’s essay EHGD explicitly conveys his admiration of the writer and

advocates the use of Bent’s writing for educational purposes of higher resister prose and

analytics (Brooks 6).



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Bent’s theory on art is directly related to his thematic style of writing. His language is

representative of Hegelian language & philosophy, via his website in literary prose, he writes:

Contrast is perhaps the most potent device a narrative artist has in his arsenal. By

placing two seemingly irreconcilable objects side by side, one creates a visual dialectic

that explores the nature of each. Over the last 20 years, I have utilized this device

through a series of visual variations in which a central theme contrasts with the

images that seem to illustrate it (www.GeoffBent.com).

Geoffrey Bent has published over 17 works on art criticism and over 6 on literary criticism, He is

an artist, and holds a Masters in English.

Through his tone and voice, Geoffrey Bent appears to have hated Hopper because he

did not send a positive message about the familiar in friendship to his audience through an

evocation of comradery. Only Ballantine, Orwell, or Bukowski could show us more blatantly,

how or why an author’s gale-‐force l’este-‐like verbiage slants so hard in precise directions. As an

art critic and analytic Bent rolls with (writers) words such as: the “balding,” “boiled,” and

“bedraggled,”…. The “boiled shirtfronts” and “tawdry elements.” In fact, his words delineate

emotion. On cognition his words add up: the “relentless grids and relished sunlight,” all

“pimples in a mirror,” all in “faces of mask to inert to be engaging and… disappointingly

themselves” (46). “The porticos,” and “grids” –Bent’s jargon goes on-‐ the “rectangles… shaft of

light… chunks of space, highlighted folds” and “furled awnings”— “give this scene the serenity

of a traditional focal point.” Additionally, for his math audience he targets further –“an exercise



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in logic… an algebraic equation… certain planes… fractured space… and beautiful diagonals”

(EHGD)-‐ he cleverly writes, yet with penetrating fullness that wins. Using a double entendre,

Bent praises the artist’s magnificent architectural depictions. In contrast, with a brilliant analytic

charm, Bent mimics Monet’s use of visual antithesis through verbal antithesis and pledges

devout support for the life and works of Monet through his enthusiastic analysis and modeling

of his own work as well as rejection of Hopper’s. By the use of alluring words and a strategic

(Lingual-‐ Formal-‐Analysis) style, Mr. Bent targets various audiences and his aim is persuasive;

layer-‐by-‐layer his audience beckons to their friend; word-‐by-‐word he relinquishes his victorious

style. As Gena Bennett at Berkley would agree, “linguistics has come to recognize that language

characteristics differ dramatically from one register to another,” Bent’s writing is among the

best (Bennett, writing.berkley.edu).

The crafted language of Geoffrey Bent stands out. Bent stands out stylistically more

than other respective essayists. As an individual, his essays claim a personality and take on

attributes according to the groups and classifications selected by chief architect and writer, Mr.

Geoff himself. Immediately noticeable to an in-‐depth generalist or a well-‐read personage in the

fields of art history, as well as the literary criticism, are his compilations of systematic

interdisciplinary essays. Since 2006, Bent’s essay on Monet was claimed notable by editors as

one of the most persuasive essays in the prized collection of The Best American Essays (Brooks

5). Bent’s first essay on Monet did not make the cut for publication. EHGD was published in



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Boulevard in 2011/12; he epically exceeds his other clever manifestos, somewhat monumental,

of his genius in the visual arts and art criticism.

Of paramount interest, in CMR, Bent uses extremely important terminology, not just

words, but technical jargon in his opening antithetical statements. Each crosses several

disciplines: “into dramatic relief,” “power,” “paradox,” and “improvisational.” Bent’s words

intertwine meaning. His use of the terms comes across as if his connotation and intended

meaning is toward the field he is not directly stating. In the sentence, “the power of these

scenes is laced with paradox: how can anything this precise be so loose and improvisational at

the same time? The tension that exists between these two contradictory aspects throws both

into dramatic relief” (Bent). The words precise and loose are antithetical words and dramatic

relief insinuates a deep relief in the field of art, but in reality is a psychology term for

“emotional upheaval in reform” (CPRC, Bent).

The terminology is noted in the Table ( 1.1):

Cross Disciplinary Targeted Diction Terms

Precise and Loose- Antithetical words Dramatic Relief- Psychology Contradictory Aspects- is a psychoanalytic term used in psychology In Relief- Architecture or Art Power- is now a business term Power- is of course a science term Tension- can be a physics term, or psychology Paradox- means something slightly different in Literature, than in philosophy or math Improvisational- Acting and Theatre critic terminology (his own dialect shared with few) Scenes- is terminology used in theatre (dialect of art, literary, film critics which Bent is)

Table 1.1



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Bent uses this antithetical positioning as a paradox itself, to build curiosity, then later show you

how much he values Monet’s study of light, and how the audience should as well. The mixed

discipline language is alluring when used as a metaphor, or as a mechanism to draw in the

various crowds of art, philosophy, psychology, math, literature, and theatre. His usage of

antithesis (and connotation) doubles his predecessor and famous critic, John Updike.

Further more, linguistically, in strong (syntax and semantic) parallel, Bent write’s, “While light

possesses the power to penetrate the elaborate grids the artist has constructed around his

people, there is nothing beatific in the process; the recipients are illuminated, but they remain

unenlightened (50).” Updike writes in slight antithesis parallel (on Monet), “The cathedral is

dissolved not only in the shifting light and weather but in the painter’s basic indifference to it as

anything but a sun struck cliff, a contoured excrete turned into colored dough by this rendering”

(74). Yet, in comparison Updike does precede Bent and establish a similar style that Bent

appears to mimic in part. In likeness, foreshadowing Geoff, Updike wrote, “Under their hands,

painting shifted from being a dramatic record (see Table 1.1) of the act of

painting…brushstrokes…impasto, nervous outlines….” (70). He also wrote, “Monet remaining

conservative if sketchy in his draftsmanship took color over the top, into fervish pinks, crusty

golds” (Updike 70).

In the linguistic thesis book, A Stylistic Analysis of Libyan Short Stories: the Connotation of

Adjectives, by Safa Elnaili, she writes about Libyan authors “being politically censored” not

being afforded the right to freely write, and “consequently” felt forced to “write in a



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metaphorical style,” to convey their indented meaning or message (3). Connotation is defined in

the Merriam Webster dictionary as and idea or quality that a word makes you think about in

addition to it’s meaning. Similar to Elnaili, a main goal is not only to “express critical thoughts”

via the author’s language and style but to investigate the use of word choice. Bent’s word

choices attempt to connotatively as Enali would say, “contribute to the understanding and

appreciation of the literary work” ( Enaili 4; Merriam Webster).

The “coexistence” of his denotation and thematic connotation as well as antithesis

perpetually benefits the skillful way Bent proves his theses repeatedly (Elnaili 17). Similar to the

brilliant antithetical reasoning by Irena Kaluza in “Antithesis-‐A Linguistic Approach,” Bent genius

uses antithetical arguments to reveal “a clear-‐cut dichotomous oppositeness, either of

complementary (provokes: unprovoked) antonymic (lesser: greater; not so happy: much

happier), or converse (fear (v.): fair (adj.)” (see Table 1.2, e.g. absence: essence) (Kaluza 109).

Moreover, Bent then transposes an extra connotative or denotative variable that is

asymmetrical in nature to bring us to solution. The solution being that Hopper painted soul-‐less

dehumanized people, and he took something from America when he did so. Kaluza writes,

“Banquo is now not so happy as Macbeth, yet Banquo will be much happier than Macbeth,” and

states the “ordering of conjunction in an antithesis become more independent on the context

when ..factors… returns to the positive: negative ordering of conjuncts….so that a non-‐

contradictory interpretation results” (112). Much like battleship the author strategically kills-‐off

viewer arguments and replaces with his thesis. Kaluza then provides the next example, “Banquo



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is lesser than Macbeth in some respect, and Banquo is greater than Macbeth in some other

respect…Though shalt get kings, though thou shalt be none” (113). Her examples linearly show

Bent’s similar strategy, using antithesis he annihilates his former critics and replaces pawns with

new ideas (Kaluza 112-‐113).

In response to analyzing Kaluza’s Linguistic article, “Antithesis-‐ A Linguistic Approach,”

on algebraic-‐like antithesis, the hope is to find an algebraic-‐like pattern in Bent’s fundamental

analysis per paragraph, painting, or page. He uses antithesis often through out his essay on

Hopper, and his argument appears very logical to the reader juxtaposing the emotive negatively

ladened connotative language which laces his formal analysis of Hopper’s suite of paintings.

Despite his bias laced argument, the article and diction (it as a whole) feels rational. The reader

is aware of a “spirit” of logic and captivated yet able to remain objective yet engaged (Peters 7).

In parallel to the emotion charged language, it’s hypothesized that Bent is proposing a potential

new problem, and continuously solving a previous algebra argument/problem. At the same

time, he puts his “solutions” into the reader between sentences that explain the algebra of the

current composition he is analyzing, such as the value of E, D, and H=K in Table 1.2. These

solutions draw the reader’s stance toward his main thesis, which proposes Hoppers subjects are

void (K in Table 1.2). Bent semi-‐sarcastically claims he (Hopper) took hope from America, his

audience, in painting them (subjects) void by doing so. Bent also hints in places that Hopper’s

methods are brilliant and it’s directly evident in Bent’s own artwork. He copies the main



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elements of light, contrast, and inanimate compartmental objects in his art. See the table

below for, antithetical algebraic-‐like examples in EHGD:

Antithesis-‐

1)“Administering society’s diversions is anything but entertaining.” Diversions ≠ entertaining (Bent was narrating a comment about the girl) T=the artist Z=the subjects ¥ = the viewer B C 2) L7 “Rather than emphasize the scenes tawdry A elements, the artist presents them E D simply but at an unresponsive distance.” A= The artist presents them simply B= The scenes C= Tawdry Elements (rather than I guess means “obviously cheap and we the audience know its not the point) D= Unresponsive E= Distance B≠C B=A B,A=D B=E B=D D= Unresponsive (Hints at his Thesis of Hopper’s Subjects)

3) “It’s the ‘echo of apathy’ that makes G the woman’s blighted exhibitionism H I seem so sad and even a bit heroic. G=I & G=H E+D because G=I therefore H ¥ G=woman’s blighted exhibitionism H= so sad I= a bit heroic



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3) P 45, PP2 H I J L1 – If America isn’t the subject of these scenes, what is? P45, PP3 K L M L4 – “Only in the absence of people is there essence captured.” H≠I & H=I America= Subject and America= What is? Like Hegel’s I=We America=”only in the absence of people is there essence captured.” He’s accusing Hopper of saying his void human’s are us. Subect= Hegel’s I, America=Hegel’s We. Therefore K=Us and Hopper is ruthless with his personal message to American’s (Monet, Orwell, Paget, Bent, New Testament, Enalia). H might =J (Bent accuses hopper) I=J Big Deal= Bent’s Thesis J=K J=K therefore because A,B=D then H=I & I=L+M and in another anti-‐thesis theorem the artist is seen as “a bit heroic” by Bent. L M K= “Only in the absence of people is there essence captured.” L=M I=L+M (Hopper’s subjects have an absence/essence) I-‐L=M (this is true in regards to essence of normal people, essence is still subjects less any absence, which is a purer form of them..people) I-‐M=L (this is true-‐ if you take a persons essence you get something absent and soulless) H=I H=K K= LM H= America, I=Subject, J=what is?, , L= Absence, M=Essence Table 1.2 Antithetical Algebraic-like Examples in EHGD

A careful analytic reading of Geoffrey Bent’s articles demonstrates that the diction is

targeted to inform us through analysis about the formal cognitive qualities of Hopper and

Monet’s work, but especially to convince us emotionally through the positive and negative

connotations of his paradoxical and antithetical language of his critical positions of these artists.

Firstly, Bent is a knowledgeable art critic and is familiar with all the techniques, as well as the

technical jargon of the formal analysis in the visual arts (see Table 1.4). He uses his formal



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knowledge to prove his theses on Hopper and Monet. He is aware that artists use geometry

extensively in their compositions (Table 1.5-‐1.7). Objects are deftly placed by artist on abstractly

conceived horizontal and vertical lines across the canvas, along diagonals and along transverse

lines as well, and along the lines of rectangles and triangles. Light is also critical; consequently,

darkness and light (chiaroscuro) and the affects of light on objects during various times of day

are carefully represented in paintings as prose. Color is critical as well and may range from fully

saturated primary and secondary colors to subtle pastels that necessitate descriptive phrasing.

For example, in Early Sunday Morning by Hopper, light falls along a diagonal from the left across

the center of the painting in a crescendo, centered by a barber pole and fire hydrant, and

interrupts the long empty horizontal sweep of shops. Thus, according to Bent’s (language), since

there are no people in the painting, the artist is able to achieve compositional eloquence

without using the human form, consequently rendering insignificant the human subject

(negating language theory Hegel, Peters 7). In effect, Bent implies that Sunday Morning on Main

Street is desolate as is all human life. In addition, he uniquely uses four descriptive parallel

appositives, similar to Updike’s five parallel determiners below (colors), a common structure

among art critiques. Describing Hopper’s exclusive use of saturated color, such as “assertive

reds, vibrant purples, glaring yellows, [and] inky blacks” (Bent, 48). Consequently, life appears

unreal in his paintings and shadows more pronounced. The effect on his paintings on the

subject is depressing. In comparable language, Updike writes on Monet, “took color over the



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top, into fervish pinks, crusty golds, darting reds, smoldering mauves, and icy blues.” The

language of both creates descriptive imagery in parallel likeness (95).

Although Hopper is known for his lugubrious shadows, Monet spent his life studying the

effects of light in the open air on objects. Monet was obsessed by light because he saw that

light changes during various times of the day and creates different contrasting effects. Thus, his

studies in the light on haystacks, Houses of Parliament, Rouen Cathedral, and “miles” of water

lilies are renowned examples of nature of fleeting light on the objects it illuminates. Specifically,

Monet had a passion for the way light reflects on water. Hence, light is fleeting and not static it

changes the color of objects as we see them and as it changes. In brief, Bent uses the jargon of

the painter and art critic cognitively, specifically compositional lines, color, and light, to

convince the reader of his point of view (see Table 1.8). Nevertheless, Geoffrey Bent especially

excels in the emotional targeted use of connotative language by far more so than the cognitive

use of jargon.

However, targeted and connotative diction and figures of speech are dominant in Bent’s

essays. Geoffrey Bent represents the “The Hopperesque” by a deft use of language, which

linguistic analysis clearly demonstrates. In Bent’s analysis of Hotel by a Railroad, Nighthawks,

and Skyline near Washington Square. The old couple in the hotel room in Hotel by the Railroad,

according to Bent, appeared to be “transient,” “staid,” and “inert.” The fact that they are in a

hotel suggests that they are transient. However, they are also represented in such a “generic”

way by Hopper that they appear to be just other items of furniture in a room. The woman is



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reading without passion, which gives the impression that she is a mechanism. The man blankly

looks out of the window while smoking and shows no interest in what he sees. The antithetical

language (and paradox) that Bent further uses is a reference to a mirror that reflects only grey

emptiness. Mirrors paradoxically reflect real objects, not emptiness. Hence, by use of

antithetical words such as transient, inert, mirror, and emptiness, Bent further demonstrates his

thesis through the bleak connotation of these words suggesting that context is everything and

the individuals in it are nothing. According to Bent, his fixation on the production of the visual

absence or diminution of human figures in Hopper’s painting makes a viewer wonder whether

“his membership in the human race was entirely accidental, and unsolicited” (Bent, 50).

In Hopper’s most famous painting Nighthawk Bent thematically states, “If there is a

place serving coffee and pie in Hell this is it.” The imagery he creates thematically is still further

supported with contrast words as a device. With the verbal depictions— “illuminated wedge,”

“surrendered night,” “isolation,” and “alone together,”– Bent suggests that the expression of

the four figures populating the restaurant not only represent the repetitive replication of

“dehumanization,” they personify a “vacuum” of previously intelligent space. G.B. thematically

reiterates his theses, using diction he portrays Hopper’s subjects modernly translated as these

zombified subhuman-‐spectacles through idea inversions and word-‐play. The author shamelessly

claims Hopper prostitutes the figures in the painting as slaves to Uncle Sam and illustrates their

abyss-‐like hope by highlighting the similar expressions of the brothers and sisters overworked

and moneyless in the Great Depression. Yes, “alone together” they have commiserated in



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Hopper’s first series for the epitome of the prideful stubborn everyday American’s refusal to

die. “Those damn fools” Bukowski might say and— “blaspheme the man” who photo

journalistically and architecturally could capture its user-‐profile outlines, the non-‐bastard

Kennedy-‐like, staple-‐facedless, facades of figures. The sleeping cow-‐hoars to the working

population with children should be humiliated and their painter shot via Bent’s coercive

wordplay and sirenesque skill-‐sets— words such as these personify G.B.’s connotative accusations

emotion below:

Negative Connotation: Diction of EHGD First 2 pages

Alone Loosing Dim

Black Spectacle Diversions

Bedraggled Indirection Past her prime

Counter Indulging Traipses

Sullenly Circumvent Nude

Dully Incoherent Bare

Cheap Fragment Darkness

Nary Periphery Deflates

Balding

Extreme Tawdry

Haggard Slumps Ugly

Imitation Boredom Unresponsive

Blighted Urchins Slushy urban alleys

Presumptuous Stripper

Distance

Table 1.3 Connotative Language (emotional language- drama enhancing):



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In his own words, “A North Pole needs a South Pole in order to create a unified field of

gravity” (geoffbent.com, Visual Dialectics). Each of his paragraphs is unified; in Skyline near

Washington Square, Bent’s selective word phrasing unmistakably paints in broad strokes. Of a

singularity in focus, unable to break away from his gifted myopic etymology toward theme his

words nakedly unfold to represent a scene of stage like reality portrayed with facades of

solitude. The phrases: “face of a building,” “solitary brownstone,” “behind the facades,” “front

appear,” and “illusion of a mask,” contrast the statement— “compromises our

impression…even further so we see the abrupt blank of the sidewall”. His bias is evident when

he bellows, “nothing undermines…. like the prominent ears of the head and neck behind it.”

Bent inserts thematic statements in-‐between his slanted viewpoint—he states a main theses

again with, “illusion of a mask.” His use of metaphor is interrupted by the noun phrase-‐ “illusion

of a mask”-‐ and further represents the word façade. His intended message is clear, something

about Hopper’s works represent a fakeness that unnerves Bent’s capacity to accept what he

believes to be the artist message-‐ that overworked people are void in appearance thereby

severing some hopeful seed in an onlookers spirit and damming them to a life as blank as

Hopper-‐folk.

Balance and antithesis is important when contrasting ideas (1). It is important to know

that contrasting ideas can naturally express themselves in antithesis as well as in balanced

sentences (Scholastic Scope TE). Because Bent’s paragraphs were so heavily slanted in

tone/persuasion his uses of paradox and antithesis help counter the iceberg heavy sided feeling



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to balance his writing. It keeps it smooth. He lets his writing takes ahold of his reader-‐ his works

talk to the intended audiences, each target hits it’s core in word choice-‐ his words collections of

words are powerful: “Just as one projects the essence of emptiness not through silence but a

series of echoes, so these scenes are crowded with objects that create a vacuum” (EHGD Bent).

It’s almost as if one has an array of boxes sitting around, it doesn’t matter how you

arrange the group of words sitting in the box, they are so slanted within their own frames, their

own diction-‐ with motif like assemblies they semantically represent a unified voice. “While the

juxtaposition of an object and its apparent opposite (thesis and antithesis) is striking, there is

also a quality (synthesis) that naturally combines the two” (www.geoffbent.com, Visual

Dialectics).

The author promotes his position of establishment and steadfast friendship with one of

the worlds most loved artist and brilliant painters, in the form of a guy, we call Claude Monet

via his tone of words. The “it” guy whom slaved his whole life, studied light with a tenaciously

keen consumption that he evokes a kindred sense of loyalty with in us, and an old-‐fashioned

romance to enthrall his audience with sophisticated flecks of undisputable raw abstractions of

light, the pixelate. With direct opposition to an antithetical bespeaking void of his future words

toward Hopper, Bent rigorously turns and flips a phrase off-‐cuff; he cheekily coins his style as

permanent, and his unavoidable authentic pattern doesn’t change 5 years later when speaking

of a lost love. His connotation does, and he doubles the slanted words. He is bitter and it is

reflected in his hateful vocabulary — The malleable man silently calls himself Monet; with this



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antithetical forecast of irony and paradox he claims, “The viewer is never lost; they perceive his

point of departure and authorize what follows.” On Hopper, he directly is enraging his

opposition, his magnified defiance is of a contrasting parallel, Geoff says on Edward, “So

enervating people seem to have lost their faces in mask of shadow” (46). This is an example of a

semantic inversion device, in comparison to Monet, “he was an artist that was always great”

and “compadres” to all, but “great in different ways” (104).

Formal Analysis It is a close inspection

Artist use of: line, color, mass, space, function Analysis of forms utilized in art or composition

Function: What details in the piece are used to convey its meaning? Consider how details function by

themselves and together as a whole.

Use of color? Stark contrasts or is it blended? Are there symbolic meanings

behind the color choices?

Architecture and Space: Analyze the work itself, or painting.

How does the artist use line? Are forms linearly arranged or disordered? Are there geometric shapes

implied by the forms in the piece?

What is the form of the structure, and what is the function? How do form and function complement

each other?

Are the forms in the piece realistic or abstract? Are they fully one style or do they mix the two?

Is the structure useful? How do people move throughout the structure? Are there significant

accommodations or restrictions to this movement?

What role does daylight play? Is the inside bright or somber?

Is the building or space structurally sound, given its location, design, and materials?

What was the purpose of this piece? In what setting was

it originally placed?

What role does daylight play? Is the inside bright or somber?

What is the medium of the piece, and how does it affect the viewer’s impression?

Table 1.4 Formal Analysis Example Questions (University of Texas, Art History): A formal analysis is quite simply an analysis of the forms utilized in the work of art (UT).



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Figure 1.1 Language groups: making up Geoffrey Bent’s Persuasive Formal Analysis Essay, Generally explaining his success at creating a bridge between literary essay and art analysis through use of targeted diction: Thematic Word Choice, Architectural Language & Jargon (of formal Analysis), Descriptive Words creating Imagery, Strong voice via Antithesis and Connotation, Use of Antithetical Devices and Metaphors as mechanisms that generate clarity, and finally his aim at targeting emotion and cognition logic via Emotional and Cognitive Language as a tool of persuasion.

Table 1.4 Formal Analysis

EHGD Pg. 46 PP1 Diction, Jargon, Connotation | Theme Word or Phrase: Isolation (Bent Angry)

Nouns or Noun Phrases

Consolations Conversational Void

Isolation Impersonal Sartre

Adjectives Crowded Confining Cramped Separating Trapped

Adverbs Verbs, ing

Faces Away, Separating

Leans Forward, Enervating

Leaning Against Fill

Cognitive Architectural

& Art

Architectural patterns.

Horizontal lines, scene

Compositional elegance,

Grids of rectangles and squares, visual, shadow

Space, windowsill, upright piano

Frame, apartment, frame,

brownstone

persuasive language ( Targeted Diction) of

Geoffrey Bent

Literary Diction & Thematic Word choice Cognitive

Language Logical

arguments of analysis or

reasoning Mostly Architectural or Critical/Formal

Cognitive -‐Neutralizes Emotion-‐Antithetical Devices & Use of Metaphors

(Cognitive) Formal Analysis: Architectural Jargon, Art

Jargon, Artistic Descriptions, Use of Imagery, Strong Voice

Emotional Language-‐ Targets Audience Emotions (Helps Persuade/Sends Message of Bent):

Connotative Language



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Architectural &

Art

Rectangular panels Framed pictures, wall

Round table, Wall, door Instrument

Antithetical To inert to be engaging

To impersonal to be private

At …most intimate people are

disappointingly themselves

Dull familiarity

Phrases or Sentences

So enervating people seem to have lost their faces in mask of shadow | Our stolen glance into other people’s lives wasn’t worth stealing

The artist’s men and women seem resigned to producing consolations of sound to fill the conversational void.

To their compromised space but not trapped by it, rather the grid is an outer expression of the attitudes they harbor within.

Table 1.5

EHGD Pg. 46 PP 3/4 Diction Theme: Sarcastic, Lightly Positive Description Room by Brooklyn

Nouns or Noun Phrases

Sunlight Female Flowers Contrast Point

Adjectives Vacant Triptych Warm Vivid Vapid Sky Blue

Adverbs Verbs

Rust-colored, Slumped

Behind, Merging

Discreetly Handful

Architectural &

Art Jargon

Horizontal and vertical lines

Vapid as the vase

Made vivid by Shaft of glancing sunlight

Provides a warm sky-blue

shadow. Arch.

& Art Jargon

Perspective, three windows

Picture, vase, table

Shaft of sunlight Chair, foreground,

pattern, tablecloth

Far right

Antithetical Phrases or Sentences

-these scenes are crowded with objects that create a vacuum

-Which nothing happens, but this isn’t true, nothing doesn’t look like this -not through the silence but through a series of echoes

The central focus of the picture is a white vase of flowers that sits on a small table between two of the windows

Out, but the shift in perspective doesn’t change the emotional climate

Table 1.6



20

47/48 Diction (Content Words): Second Story Sunlight

Theme Word or Phrase: Descriptive Emotional & Physical Space Nouns or Noun

Phrases Years, Chess

Master, Europe Statements, one,

close-up love Artist’s

temperament Nouns or Noun

Phrases Strategy Willingness Huge Sacrifices

Adjectives Anonymous, Ten

Central, expressive

Shaded, dark Dispassionate, Unrequited

Unduly Cluttered

Adverbs Verbs

Away, Interrupting

Only, only relieved by a laundry line

Unduly, Unduly cluttered

Usually, Superimposing

Cede

Architectural &

Art

Facades,Two figures, roof

Tool, Comprise the focus

Central third, Horizontal,

Vertical

Of the painting, Functional

Detruis

Shows an anonymous

forest Architectural

& Art

Device,Third on the left

Shaded side of the building

Dark side of the cottage (Seawatchers)

Victorian Mansion,

Brownstone

By ..train Tracks

Art Jargon Colorfully, Superimposing

Saturated Hues, Shaded, bisected

Painter, Scene Foreground,

compositional

Of the painting Reds, vibrant purples, inky

Shows an Anonymous

forest Antithesis Phrases or Sentences

-visible…window…no escape | …..Completely alone together -studies….expression…devoid…of all expectation | …unrequited : love

(For an architectural or art analysis, or just a fan of design Bent’s essay on EHGD has just the right amount of description, mixed with persuasive phrasing, vibrant adjectives, and alluring style to create

room for the reader to admire and understand the work visually and logically with out too much density and lack-luster tone.)

Table 1.7 Using antithesis as his closing device G.B. uses an antithetical pair of sentences to gain support

from fans for Monet. Geoff writes in “Claude Monet: Le Roi de la France,” “What is missing

becomes obvious when you turn to the Impressionist landscapes Monet was painting at the

same time. One has to go back to Caravaggio to find another artist who has made reality such a

startling experience.” When Bent mentions the word “missing,” he creates a sense of doubt

that is relieved in connotation at the end of his following sentence. This method in direct

opposite of his negative connotative use of antithesis in EHGD Bent’s word choices and diction



21

are specific to artist and art fans. The prose wording is seductively persuasive to both because

it’s of looser cognitive complexity than an extremely dense art analysis as required by art

history graduate level students. It’s an easier read, it lures the art crowd because they don’t

specifically know his style-‐ he combines a persuasive Orwell-‐like essay with a good art analytic

paper. Each are thematically descriptive as a good formal analysis for art.

Monet 98 PP 2 & 3

Content Words: Artist Description

Diction | Theme Word : paradox & description Nouns or

Noun Phrases glimpse, color,

sunlight, history, echo, Scenes

Monet

Power, Aspects, they, impressionism, Venus, Nature,

Anything, Dramatic relief, equivalents,

movements, original Sky, example

Paradox, Tension, effects,

viewer, place, feature

Virtuoso, surface, objects, water, s,

bank, ability, Creation

Adjectives Look up

Precise, lucid, popular, prominent,

Excellent, grooved,

equivocating

Invisible, agitated, late-afternoon, liquid,

pictorial

Larger, loose, buttermilk,

greater

Improvisational, imperfect

Adverbs Verbs

Sharply, transforms, throws, robbed

Contradictory, reproduce

Capacity, alternates, made, create

Gradually, demands, will

create

Catch, gauge, only, described

ing Words Swimming, reflecting Boating, anything

Lining, pulling Equivocating Painting

Cognitive & Imagery (emotion)

Art Formal Analysis Jargon

PP2 S4,S5 La Grenouillere, Grooved Surface,

Water, Reflect Objects, Reproduce

colors of Objects

PP2 S6 pt1 Monet,

Alternates Dashes, Dark

Shade,

PP2 S6 pt2 Buttermilk ..the Sky,

Into a Band of Buttermilk, Blue

of the..

PP2 S6 Pt. 3 Gauge color,

saturated w/ late-afternoon

sunlight, only described as

Interrupted glint of reflected trees,

lining the opposite bank

(appearing) mustard green

Cong. Architect Analysis Jargon

Grooved, Surface, Objects

Foreground, Shade

Opposite, Trees Landscape Foreground, water,

Phrases or Sentences

G.B. Uses antithesis to gain support for Monet, which is the opposite of Hopper. Jargon more descriptive of Art instead of architectural (buildings)

How can something this precise be so loose and improvisational at the same time? …..landscape/he finds equivalents

Descriptive Words Used in Formal Analysis in 1 paragraph 150-200 words: scenes, glimpse, color, sunlight, viewer, place, surface, feature, water, earth, sky, aspects, impressionism

Table 1.8



22

In comparison to Bent, other viewpoints are historically not as connotative. They

thematically alternate from positive to interesting and avant-‐garde (20-‐80). One German

author’s viewpoint psychological depicts Hopper and his works. The PhD, Rolf G. Renner wrote

on Hopper, “I believe this is caused by the coincidence of his coming to the fore at a time when,

in our literature, the American small towns and cities were being lampooned so viciously; so

that almost any straightforward and honest representation of the American Scene was thought

of necessity to be satirical…. It is unbiased and dispassionate outlook…” (Cover of “Hopper”

Renner).

In Bent’s EHGD vocabulary, the vulnerable human condition is exploited: “godly light”

vs. human (un)presence, “aloneness” vs. against being together (alone)-‐ in the presence of

great architecture; his connotation and diction tell an intimate story that highly involve us

emotionally and visually as readers (Aristotle, Mitchell 50). The cognitive process is great but

neutralizes and educates. Differently, the piece on Monet tells us a positive story (Getty AAT

Verification). The imagery personifies, “foreground with the blue of the water and buttermilk of

the sky…interrupted by glints… reflected trees… sunlight.” The author’s literal usage of diction

paints a superb picture, each amass entwines systematically proving each point; Bent’s

chronological texts comes together as thematic, cohesive, and provides resolve (Kolln).

Hence, in introduction to controlled vocabularies Harpings descriptions of the

Gettysburg museum emphasizes the importance of documenting everything about art in



23

written form. She writes, “The purpose of controlled vocabularies it to organize information and

to provide terminology to catalog and retrieve information [on art, architecture, visual arts,

cultural heritage]” (6). She explains, “Given that a shared goal of the cultural heritage

community is to improve access to visual arts … culture information, controlled vocabularies are

essential.” She further classifies why in her discussion of scholars, architects, future academic

writers, critics and any professional person needing a resource for art information; effectively

supporting my thesis that this vocabulary is from a unique source/s (Harping 13). Art heritage

terminology is created by scholars of art & architectural historians in the fields of education.

The information gathered in research is usually for teaching or other publications. Scholars now

capture information electronically to aid in their research (Harping 6).

Stanford’s Rickford concludes dialects, “as … refer(ing) to the systematic usage of a

group of speakers ” (2). Borson argues that architects absolutely possess their own language; In

“Life of an Architect,” he writes “if you want to be an architect, you speak in a certain way.

Architects tend to be overly specific and words [in their field, are] rarely uttered by regular

human beings during normal conversations ” (1). The root in a similar argument on AAVE

sociolinguistics is, “that the "language" varies from one region to another, from one social group

to another, and even …from one occasion or topic to another ” (Rickford 2). Furthermore, he

concludes, “dialects are distinguished in accordance to the group of people in a certain network

vs. those not in (network)” (Rickford 2). In theory the thesis that F.A. targeted diction serves as



24

a variance, and it’s implementation into Boulevard literary journal shows multidiscipline

promise, an “intersection of … social categories” (Rickford 4).

While formal art analysis is not a dialect it is greatly argued that the essayist that

preform them use intelligent jargon that delineates them from the general population (Harper

5). In the Article, “The Emergence of Literary Diction,” from The Journal of Digital Humanities,

Underwood and Sellers say, “ if we could trace the transformation of literary language in a

detailed way…we could use the changing characteristics that have marked language as literary

to illuminate the transformation of literature as a social category” (website). Compositional

analysis is not in the same category as Poetry, yet the style and descriptive verbiage, as well as

rule requirements are strong enough to further linguistic research in this discipline. There is not

enough substantial research to help educate the youth about the professional linguistics of

Formal Analysis (academic) essays-‐ seen from the lack of research found in this area. Even if the

popular essays in the American culture are predominantly narrative, the linguistic world should

include another sector of text for analysis; it is difficult to establish if the text stay primarily with

in their own disciplines. Geoffrey Bent has gifted this world with his slanted, connotative essay

on Hopper. Bent lightly waters the style of general Formal Analysis and loads paragraphs with

heavy voice, thematic language, targeted jargon, diction, and penetrating antithetical

language— the writer has put Formal Analysis into the realm the greater literary world. The

format is brilliant and difficult to first spot for novice fans, but it yells at the visual-‐ the weak of

great words and clever descriptions. His persuasive antithetical positioning dually impacts-‐



25

“verbal/visual persuasion,” (Yates)-‐ creating a magnetic “theory of drama” (Aristotle) as

referenced in “Word and Image,” concluding that “painting is poetry” via W.J.T Mitchell (47-‐51).

The ability to write at the interdisciplinary level is imperative; of formal or critical analysis, it’s

essential for an advanced degree in arts and core subjects (UNC Writing Center). It is important

to create a new sector of language to research linguistically in the genre form of Formal Analysis

Essays and its related text. The hope is— to see more scholarly secondary and primary sources

on the Internet and digital format. Mr. Bent’s style is persuasive and alluring largely because he

is successful at conveying formal analysis to the public; therefore, the next step is to continue

linguistic analysis of such works. With the amazing foundation present in Getty, it is reassuring

that, Formal Analysis in the art and design genres will be further studied and categorized in a

unique fashion to facilitate easier research-‐ that is considered scholarly in linguistics. Bent wins

us with allure and persuasion: with negative connotation, amazing antithetical and algebraic-‐

style reasoning, targeted multidisciplinary jargon, and diction. He convinces his audience of his

critical position by his use of cognitive and emotional language, thematic word choice and

literary devices. After reading his essays, one can see the art he’s transcribed into words and is

motivated to go out and become educated linguistically, in prose, and on subject. What a gift

(Getty, Sapir, UNC, Brooks).



26

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