The More Variety in a Work of Art the More the Artist

Art As Visual Input

Visual art manifests itself through media, ideas, themes and sheer creative imagination. Withal all of these rely on basic structural principles that, similar the elements we've been studying, combine to give voice to creative expression. Incorporating the principles into your artistic vocabulary non just allows yous to objectively describe artworks y'all may not understand, merely contributes in the search for their meaning.

The first way to think about a principle is that it is something that tin be repeatedly and dependably done with elements to produce some sort of visual effect in a composition.

The principles are based on sensory responses to visual input: elements APPEAR to have visual weight, movement, etc.  The principles help govern what might occur when particular elements are arranged in a item style.  Using a chemistry analogy, the principles are the ways the elements "stick together" to brand a "chemical" (in our case, an epitome). Principles tin exist confusing.  There are at least two very dissimilar simply correct ways of thinking about principles.  On the 1 hand, a principle tin exist used to describe an operational cause and upshot such as "bright things come forward and ho-hum things recede".  On the other hand, a principle tin can describe a high quality standard to strive for such as "unity is meliorate than anarchy" or "variation beats boredom" in a work of fine art.  So, the discussion "principle" can be used for very different purposes.

Another way to think about a principle is that it is a way to express a value judgment about a limerick.  Whatever list of these effects may not be comprehensive, but there are some that are more normally used (unity, remainder, etc). When we say a painting has unity we are making a value judgment.  Too much unity without multifariousness is boring and too much variation without unity is chaotic.

The principles of design help you to carefully programme and organize the elements of fine art so that you will concord interest and command attention.  This is sometimes referred to equally visual affect.

In any work of fine art there is a thought process for the arrangement and use of the elements of design.  The artist who works with the principles of good limerick will create a more interesting piece; it will be arranged to show a pleasing rhythm and motion.  The center of interest will be strong and the viewer will not look away, instead, they volition be drawn into the work.  A good noesis of composition is essential in producing good artwork.  Some artists today similar to bend or ignore these rules and by doing and so are experimenting with different forms of expression.  The post-obit page explore of import principles in composition.

Visual Balance

All works of art possess some class of visual residual – a sense of weighted clarity created in a composition. The artist arranges residuum to set the dynamics of a composition. A really adept case is in the work of Piet Mondrian, whose revolutionary paintings of the early twentieth century used not-objective balance instead of realistic subject matter to generate the visual power in his work. In the examples below y'all can encounter that where the white rectangle is placed makes a big deviation in how the entire picture plane is activated.

Image by Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

The case on the top left is weighted toward the top, and the diagonal orientation of the white shape gives the whole area a sense of motility. The top center example is weighted more than toward the lesser, only still maintains a sense that the white shape is floating. On the top right, the white shape is nearly off the picture plane birthday, leaving most of the remaining surface area visually empty. This arrangement works if you want to convey a feeling of loftiness or simply directly the viewer'south optics to the peak of the composition. The lower left example is perhaps the least dynamic: the white shape is resting at the lesser, mimicking the horizontal bottom edge of the ground. The overall sense here is restful, heavy and without any dynamic character. The bottom center limerick is weighted decidedly toward the bottom correct corner, but again, the diagonal orientation of the white shape leaves some sense of movement. Lastly, the lower right case places the white shape straight in the middle on a horizontal axis. This is visually the about stable, but lacks whatever sense of motion. Refer to these six diagrams when you are determining the visual weight of specific artworks.

There are iii basic forms of visual residuum:

• Symmetrical
• Asymmetrical
• Radial

Examples of Visual Residual. Left: Symmetrical. Eye: Asymmetrical. Right: Radial. Image past Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

Symmetrical balance is the most visually stable, and characterized by an exact—or virtually verbal—compositional design on either (or both) sides of the horizontal or vertical axis of the picture plane. Symmetrical compositions are commonly dominated past a central anchoring element. There are many examples of symmetry in the natural world that reverberate an aesthetic dimension. The Moon Jellyfish fits this clarification; ghostly lit confronting a blackness background, only absolute symmetry in its design.

Moon Jellyfish, (detail). Digital paradigm past Luc Viator, licensed by Creative Commons

But symmetry's inherent stability can sometimes preclude a static quality. View the Tibetan roll painting to see the unsaid motility of the central figure Vajrakilaya. The visual busyness of the shapes and patterns surrounding the figure are balanced by their compositional symmetry, and the wall of flame backside Vajrakilaya tilts to the right every bit the figure itself tilts to the left. Tibetan curlicue paintings utilise the symmetry of the figure to symbolize their power and spiritual presence.

Spiritual paintings from other cultures utilise this same rest for similar reasons. Sano di Pietro's 'Madonna of Humility', painted around 1440, is centrally positioned, holding the Christ child and forming a triangular design, her caput the apex and her flowing gown making a wide base at the lesser of the picture. Their halos are visually reinforced with the heads of the angels and the arc of the frame.

Sano di Peitro, Madonna of Humility, c.1440, tempera and tooled gold and silverish on panel. Brooklyn Museum, New York. Image is in the public domain

The apply of symmetry is evident in 3-dimensional art, too. A famous example is the Gateway Curvation in St. Louis, Missouri (below). Commemorating the west expansion of the United States, its stainless steel frame rises over 600 anxiety into the air earlier gently curving back to the ground. Another instance is Richard Serra'due south Tilted Spheres  (besides below). The iv massive slabs of steel bear witness a concentric symmetry and accept on an organic dimension as they curve around each other, actualization to almost hover above the ground.

Eero Saarinen, Gateway Curvation, 1963-65, stainless steel, 630' high. St. Louis, Missouri. Paradigm Licensed through Artistic Commons

Richard Serra, Tilted Spheres, 2002 – 04, Cor-ten steel, 14' ten 39' x 22'. Pearson International Airport, Toronto, Canada. Prototype Licensed through Creative Commons

Asymmetry uses compositional elements that are offset from each other, creating a visually unstable balance. Asymmetrical visual balance is the almost dynamic because it creates a more complex design construction. A graphic poster from the 1930s shows how start positioning and strong contrasts can increase the visual effect of the entire composition.

Poster from the Library of Congress archives. Paradigm is in the public domain

Claude Monet's Nonetheless Life with Apples and Grapesfrom 1880 (below) uses asymmetry in its blueprint to enliven an otherwise mundane arrangement. First, he sets the whole limerick on the diagonal, cutting off the lower left corner with a dark triangle. The arrangement of fruit appears haphazard, but Monet purposely sets most of it on the tiptop half of the canvas to accomplish a lighter visual weight. He balances the darker basket of fruit with the white of the tablecloth, even placing a few smaller apples at the lower correct to complete the limerick.

Monet and other Impressionist painters were influenced past Japanese woodcut prints, whose flat spatial areas and graphic color appealed to the artist'due south sense of design.

Claude Monet, However Life with Apples and Grapes, 1880, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago. Licensed nether Creative Commons

One of the best-known Japanese print artists is Ando Hiroshige. You lot tin see the design force of asymmetry in his woodcut Shinagawa on the Tokaido(below), one of a series of works that explores the landscape around the Takaido road. Y'all tin can view many of his works through the hyperlink above.

Hiroshige, Shinagawa on the Tokaido, ukiyo-eastward print, later 1832. Licensed nether Creative Commons

In Henry Moore's Reclining Effigythe organic grade of the abstracted effigy, strong lighting and precarious balance obtained through asymmetry make the sculpture a powerful case in 3-dimensions.

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1951. Painted bronze. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Photo by Andrew Dunn and licensed under Creative Commons

Radial balance suggests motion from the center of a composition towards the outer edge—or vise versa. Many times radial balance is another course of symmetry, offering stability and a point of focus at the middle of the composition. Buddhist mandala paintings offer this kind of balance well-nigh exclusively. Similar to the scroll painting we viewed previously, the image radiates outward from a cardinal spirit effigy. In the example below there are six of these figures forming a star shape in the middle. Hither we have absolute symmetry in the composition, notwithstanding a feeling of move is generated by the concentric circles within a rectangular format.

Tibetan Mandala of the Six Chakravartins, c. 1429-46. Central Tibet (Ngor Monestary). Image is in the public domain

Raphael's painting of Galatea, a body of water nymph in Greek mythology, incorporates a double ready of radial designs into one limerick. The first is the swirl of figures at the bottom of the painting, the second being the 4 cherubs circulating at the summit. The entire work is a current of figures, limbs and implied motility. Notice too the stabilizing classic triangle formed with Galatea'due south head at the apex and the other figures' positions inclined towards her. The cherub outstretched horizontally along the bottom of the composition completes the 2nd circle.

Raphael, Galatea, fresco, 1512. Villa Farnesina, Rome. Work is in the public domain

Within this word of visual residual, in that location is a relationship between the natural generation of organic systems and their ultimate grade. This relationship is mathematical too equally artful, and is expressed equally the Gold Ratio:

Hither is an example of the gilt ratio in the class of a rectangle and the enclosed screw generated by the ratios:

The gold ratio. Prototype from Wikipedia Commons and licensed through Artistic Commons

The natural world expresses radial balance, manifest through the golden ratio, in many of its structures, from galaxies to tree rings and waves generated from dropping a stone on the water's surface. Y'all tin see this organic radial construction in some natural systems past comparing the satellite epitome of hurricane Isabel and a scope image of screw galaxy M51 below.

Images by the National Weather service and NASA. Images are in the public domain.

A snail trounce, unbeknownst to its inhabitant, is formed past this same universal ratio, and, in this case, takes on the greenish tint of its surroundings.

Image by Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

Environmental artist Robert Smithson created Spiral Jetty,an earthwork of rock and soil, in 1970. The jetty extends nearly 1500 anxiety into the Groovy Salt Lake in Utah as a symbol of the interconnectedness of our selves to the rest of the natural world.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. Image by Soren Harward, CC By-SA

Repetition

Repetition is the use of 2 or more similar elements or forms within a composition. The systematic arrangement of a repeated shapes or forms creates pattern.

Patterns create rhythm, the lyric or syncopated visual upshot that helps carry the viewer, and the creative person's idea, throughout the work. A simple but stunning visual pattern, created in this photograph of an orchard past Jim Wilson for the New York Times, combines color, shape and direction into a rhythmic flow from left to correct. Setting the limerick on a diagonal increases the feeling of movement and drama.

The traditional art of Australian aboriginal culture uses repetition and pattern almost exclusively both as ornamentation and to requite symbolic significant to images. The coolamon, or carrying vessel pictured below, is made of tree bark and painted with stylized patterns of colored dots indicating paths, landscapes or animals. You can encounter how adequately simple patterns create rhythmic undulations across the surface of the work. The design on this particular piece indicates it was probably made for ceremonial use. We'll explore ancient works in more than depth in the 'Other Worlds' module.

Australian aboriginal softwood coolamon with acrylic paint design. Licensed under Creative Commons

Rhythmic cadences have circuitous visual form when subordinated by others. Elements of line and shape coagulate into a formal matrix that supports the leaping salmon in Alfredo Arreguin's 'Malila Diptych'. Abstract arches and spirals of water reverberate in the scales, eyes and gills of the fish. Arreguin creates 2 rhythmic beats here, that of the water flowing downstream to the left and the fish gracefully jumping confronting it on their way upstream.

Alfredo Arreguin, Malila Diptych, 2003 (detail). Washington State Arts Commission. Digital Prototype by Christopher Gildow. Licensed under Artistic Commons.

The fabric medium is well suited to comprise pattern into art. The warp and weft of the yarns create natural patterns that are manipulated through position, color and size past the weaver. The Tlingit culture of littoral British Columbia produce spectacular formalism blankets distinguished by graphic patterns and rhythms in stylized fauna forms separated past a bureaucracy of geometric shapes. The symmetry and high contrast of the design is stunning in its effect.

Scale and Proportion

Scale and proportion evidence the relative size of one form in relation to another. Scalar relationships are oftentimes used to create illusions of depth on a two-dimensional surface, the larger course being in front of the smaller one. The scale of an object tin can provide a focal point or accent in an image. In Winslow Homer's watercolor A Expert Shot, Adirondacks the deer is centered in the foreground and highlighted to assure its identify of importance in the composition. In comparison, there is a small puff of white fume from a rifle in the left center groundwork, the just indicator of the hunter'due south position. Click the image for a larger view.

Scale and proportion are incremental in nature. Works of art don't always rely on big differences in scale to brand a stiff visual bear on. A expert example of this is Michelangelo'due south sculptural masterpiece Pieta from 1499 (below). Hither Mary cradles her dead son, the 2 figures forming a stable triangular limerick. Michelangelo sculpts Mary to a slightly larger calibration than the dead Christ to requite the central figure more significance, both visually and psychologically.

Michelangelo's Pieta, 1499, marble. St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Licensed under GNU Complimentary Documentation License and Artistic Commons

When scale and proportion are profoundly increased the results can be impressive, giving a work commanding space or fantastic implications. Rene Magritte's painting Personal Valuesconstructs a room with objects whose proportions are and then out of whack that it becomes an ironic play on how we view everyday items in our lives.

American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen create works of mutual objects at enormous scales. Their Stake Hitchreaches a full height of more than than 53 feet and links two floors of the Dallas Museum of Art. As large as it is, the work retains a comic and playful grapheme, in part considering of its gigantic size.

Accent

Emphasis—the surface area of main visual importance—can be attained in a number of means. We've but seen how it can be a function of differences in scale. Emphasis can also be obtained by isolating an area or specific discipline matter through its location or colour, value and texture. Main emphasis in a composition is usually supported past areas of lesser importance, a bureaucracy within an artwork that's activated and sustained at unlike levels.

Like other creative principles, emphasis can be expanded to include the chief idea contained in a work of fine art. Allow's wait at the following work to explore this.

We can conspicuously determine the figure in the white shirt as the main emphasis in Francisco de Goya'due south painting The Third of May, 1808below. Even though his location is left of centre, a candle lantern in front of him acts as a spotlight, and his dramatic opinion reinforces his relative isolation from the residuum of the crowd. Moreover, the soldiers with their aimed rifles create an implied line betwixt them selves and the figure. At that place is a rhythm created past all the figures' heads—roughly all at the same level throughout the painting—that is continued in the soldiers' legs and scabbards to the lower right. Goya counters the horizontal accent past including the distant church and its vertical towers in the background.

In terms of the thought, Goya'due south narrative painting gives witness to the summary execution of Spanish resistance fighters by Napoleon's armies on the night of May iii, 1808. He poses the figure in the white shirt to imply a crucifixion equally he faces his own expiry, and his compatriots surrounding him either clutch their faces in disbelief or stand stoically with him, looking their executioners in the optics. While the carnage takes place in forepart of us, the church stands dark and silent in the distance. The genius of Goya is his ability to straight the narrative content by the emphasis he places in his composition.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Third of May, 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas. The Prado Museum, Madrid. This image is in the public domain

A second example showing emphasis is seen in Landscape with Pheasants, a silk tapestry from nineteenth-century China. Hither the main focus is obtained in a couple of different means. Starting time, the pair of birds are woven in colored silk, setting them apart visually from the gray landscape they inhabit. Secondly, their placement at the top of the outcrop of land allows them to stand up out against the light groundwork, their tail feathers mimicked by the nearby leaves. The convoluted treatment of the rocky outcrop keeps information technology in competition with the pheasants as a focal bespeak, but in the stop the pair of birds' color wins out.

A final example on emphasis, taken from The Art of Burkina Fasoby Christopher D. Roy, University of Iowa, covers both design features and the idea backside the art. Many world cultures include artworks in ceremony and ritual. African Bwa Masks are large, graphically painted in black and white and unremarkably fastened to fiber costumes that encompass the head. They describe mythic characters and animals or are abstract and accept a stylized face with a tall, rectangular wooden plank attached to the acme.* In any manifestation, the mask and the dance for which they are worn are inseparable. They get role of a customs outpouring of cultural expression and emotion.

Time and Motion

Ane of the bug artists face in creating static (singular, fixed images) is how to imbue them with a sense of time and motility. Some traditional solutions to this problem employ the use of spatial relationships, especially perspective and atmospheric perspective. Calibration and proportion can also be employed to show the passage of time or the illusion of depth and movement. For example, every bit something recedes into the background, it becomes smaller in calibration and lighter in value. Also, the same figure (or other form) repeated in different places inside the same epitome gives the result of movement and the passage of time.

An early example of this is in the carved sculpture of Kuya Shonin. The Buddhist monk leans forrard, his cloak seeming to motility with the breeze of his steps. The figure is remarkably realistic in mode, his head lifted slightly and his mouth open up. Six small figures emerge from his mouth, visual symbols of the dirge he utters.

Visual experiments in movement were first produced in the eye of the 19^thursday century. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge snapped black and white sequences of figures and animals walking, running and jumping, then placing them side-by-side to examine the mechanics and rhythms created by each action.

Eadweard Muybridge, sequences of himself throwing a disc, using a stride and walking. Licensed through Creative Commons

In the modern era, the rise of cubism (please refer back to our written report of 'space' in module 3) and subsequent related styles in modern painting and sculpture had a major effect on how static works of art depict time and movement. These new developments in form came about, in part, through the cubist's initial exploration of how to draw an object and the infinite around information technology by representing it from multiple viewpoints, incorporating all of them into a unmarried image.

Marcel Duchamp'southward painting Nude Descending a Staircase from 1912 formally concentrates Muybridge's idea into a single image. The figure is abstract, a consequence of Duchamp's influence by cubism, but gives the viewer a definite feeling of motility from left to right. This work was exhibited at The Arsenal Show in New York City in 1913. The testify was the get-go to exhibit modernistic art from the United States and Europe at an American venue on such a big scale. Controversial and fantastic, the Armory show became a symbol for the emerging modern fine art motion. Duchamp's painting is representative of the new ideas brought forth in the exhibition.

In three dimensions the effect of motility is achieved past imbuing the subject affair with a dynamic pose or gesture (recall that the employ of diagonals in a composition helps create a sense of move). Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture of David from 1623 is a study of coiled visual tension and motion. The artist shows us the effigy of David with furrowed brow, fifty-fifty biting his lip in concentration as he optics Goliath and prepares to release the stone from his sling.

The temporal arts of film, video and digital projection by their definition show motion and the passage of time. In all of these mediums we scout as a narrative unfolds before our eyes. Film is substantially thousands of static images divided onto i long scroll of film that is passed through a lens at a certain speed. From this apparatus comes the term movies.

Video uses magnetic tape to achieve the aforementioned result, and digital media streams millions of electronically pixilated images across the screen. An example is seen in the piece of work of Swedish Artist Pipilotti Rist. Her large-calibration digital work Cascade Your Body Out is fluid, colorful and absolutely arresting as information technology unfolds beyond the walls.

Unity and Variety

Ultimately, a work of art is the strongest when it expresses an overall unity in composition and form, a visual sense that all the parts fit together; that the whole is greater than its parts. This same sense of unity is projected to embrace the idea and pregnant of the work besides. This visual and conceptual unity is sublimated by the variety of elements and principles used to create it. We can think of this in terms of a musical orchestra and its usher: directing many different instruments, sounds and feelings into a single comprehendible symphony of sound. This is where the objective functions of line, colour, design, scale and all the other artistic elements and principles yield to a more than subjective view of the entire piece of work, and from that an appreciation of the aesthetics and meaning it resonates.

We tin can view Eva Isaksen's piece of work Orange Lite below to come across how unity and variety work together.

Eva Isaksen, Orangish Light, 2010. Print and collage on canvas. xl" x 60." Permission of the creative person

Isaksen makes apply of about every element and principle including shallow infinite, a range of values, colors and textures, asymmetrical residual and unlike areas of emphasis. The unity of her limerick stays potent by keeping the various parts in cheque confronting each other and the space they inhabit. In the end the viewer is caught upwardly in a mysterious world of organic forms that float beyond the surface similar seeds being caught by a summer breeze.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-artappreciation/chapter/oer-1-8/