The Arrangement or Organization of Elements in a Work of Art Is Its

Art As Visual Input

Visual art manifests itself through media, ideas, themes and sheer artistic imagination. Still all of these rely on basic structural principles that, like the elements we've been studying, combine to give phonation to creative expression. Incorporating the principles into your artistic vocabulary not only allows you to considerately depict artworks you may not sympathise, but contributes in the search for their meaning.

The first style to retrieve virtually a principle is that it is something that can 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 detail elements are arranged in a item way.  Using a chemistry analogy, the principles are the means the elements "stick together" to make a "chemic" (in our case, an image). Principles tin be disruptive.  There are at to the lowest degree 2 very different but correct means of thinking nearly principles.  On the one hand, a principle can be used to describe an operational crusade and effect such every bit "bright things come forward and dull things recede".  On the other hand, a principle tin can draw a high quality standard to strive for such equally "unity is better than anarchy" or "variation beats boredom" in a work of art.  And then, the word "principle" tin can be used for very different purposes.

Another way to remember about a principle is that it is a style to express a value judgment well-nigh a composition.  Any list of these effects may non be comprehensive, only there are some that are more commonly used (unity, balance, etc). When we say a painting has unity we are making a value judgment.  Likewise much unity without variety is wearisome and as well much variation without unity is chaotic.

The principles of pattern assistance you to carefully programme and organize the elements of art then that you volition hold interest and control attending.  This is sometimes referred to equally visual impact.

In any work of art there is a thought process for the organization and use of the elements of design.  The artist who works with the principles of skillful composition will create a more interesting piece; it volition be arranged to show a pleasing rhythm and movement.  The center of involvement will be potent and the viewer will not wait away, instead, they will be drawn into the work.  A skillful knowledge of composition is essential in producing expert artwork.  Some artists today like to curve or ignore these rules and by doing and so are experimenting with dissimilar forms of expression.  The following page explore important principles in limerick.

Visual Balance

All works of art possess some form of visual residuum – a sense of weighted clarity created in a composition. The creative person arranges balance to prepare the dynamics of a composition. A actually good example is in the work of Piet Mondrian, whose revolutionary paintings of the early twentieth century used non-objective balance instead of realistic field of study matter to generate the visual ability in his work. In the examples below you can run into that where the white rectangle is placed makes a big difference in how the unabridged picture plane is activated.

Paradigm past Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

The example on the height left is weighted toward the top, and the diagonal orientation of the white shape gives the whole surface area a sense of motility. The top middle example is weighted more than toward the bottom, but still maintains a sense that the white shape is floating. On the tiptop right, the white shape is virtually off the picture plane altogether, leaving most of the remaining area visually empty. This arrangement works if you want to convey a feeling of loftiness or simply straight the viewer'south eyes to the pinnacle of the composition. The lower left case is peradventure the least dynamic: the white shape is resting at the bottom, mimicking the horizontal bottom edge of the footing. The overall sense hither is restful, heavy and without any dynamic grapheme. The bottom heart composition is weighted decidedly toward the bottom right corner, but again, the diagonal orientation of the white shape leaves some sense of movement. Lastly, the lower right instance places the white shape directly in the centre on a horizontal axis. This is visually the most stable, just lacks any sense of movement. Refer to these 6 diagrams when you are determining the visual weight of specific artworks.

At that place are iii basic forms of visual residue:

• Symmetrical
• Asymmetrical
• Radial

Examples of Visual Remainder. Left: Symmetrical. Center: Asymmetrical. Right: Radial. Image by Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

Symmetrical remainder is the most visually stable, and characterized by an exact—or nearly exact—compositional design on either (or both) sides of the horizontal or vertical axis of the picture airplane. Symmetrical compositions are usually dominated by a cardinal 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 against a blackness background, but accented symmetry in its design.

Moon Jellyfish, (particular). Digital image by Luc Viator, licensed by Artistic Commons

But symmetry's inherent stability tin sometimes preclude a static quality. View the Tibetan ringlet painting to see the unsaid move 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 behind Vajrakilaya tilts to the right as the figure itself tilts to the left. Tibetan scroll paintings use the symmetry of the figure to symbolize their ability and spiritual presence.

Spiritual paintings from other cultures employ this same balance for similar reasons. Sano di Pietro'southward 'Madonna of Humility', painted around 1440, is centrally positioned, holding the Christ child and forming a triangular design, her head the apex and her flowing gown making a broad base at the bottom of the pic. 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 silver on console. Brooklyn Museum, New York. Image is in the public domain

The utilize of symmetry is evident in iii-dimensional art, besides. A famous example is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri (below). Commemorating the westward expansion of the United States, its stainless steel frame rises over 600 anxiety into the air before gently curving back to the ground. Another example is Richard Serra's Tilted Spheres  (likewise below). The 4 massive slabs of steel evidence a concentric symmetry and take on an organic dimension as they curve around each other, appearing to nigh hover higher up the ground.

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

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

Disproportion uses compositional elements that are offset from each other, creating a visually unstable balance. Asymmetrical visual rest is the most dynamic because it creates a more circuitous design construction. A graphic poster from the 1930s shows how offset positioning and strong contrasts tin can increment the visual effect of the entire composition.

Affiche from the Library of Congress archives. Image is in the public domain

Claude Monet'south Nonetheless Life with Apples and Grapesfrom 1880 (beneath) uses disproportion in its design to enliven an otherwise mundane arrangement. Showtime, he sets the whole limerick on the diagonal, cutting off the lower left corner with a dark triangle. The organisation of fruit appears haphazard, but Monet purposely sets almost of it on the top half of the canvas to achieve a lighter visual weight. He balances the darker basket of fruit with the white of the tablecloth, fifty-fifty placing a few smaller apples at the lower right to complete the limerick.

Monet and other Impressionist painters were influenced by Japanese woodcut prints, whose flat spatial areas and graphic color appealed to the artist's sense of blueprint.

Claude Monet, Still Life with Apples and Grapes, 1880, oil on canvass. The Art Institute of Chicago. Licensed under Creative Commons

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

Hiroshige, Shinagawa on the Tokaido, ukiyo-e print, afterwards 1832. Licensed under Artistic Eatables

In Henry Moore's Reclining Figurethe organic course of the bathetic figure, potent lighting and precarious rest obtained through asymmetry make the sculpture a powerful example in iii-dimensions.

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

Radial residual suggests movement from the heart of a composition towards the outer border—or vise versa. Many times radial balance is some other form of symmetry, offering stability and a signal of focus at the center of the composition. Buddhist mandala paintings offer this kind of balance well-nigh exclusively. Similar to the scroll painting we viewed previously, the epitome radiates outward from a primal spirit figure. In the example below there are half dozen of these figures forming a star shape in the heart. Here we have accented symmetry in the composition, yet a feeling of movement is generated by the concentric circles within a rectangular format.

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

Raphael's painting of Galatea, a sea nymph in Greek mythology, incorporates a double gear up of radial designs into 1 limerick. The first is the swirl of figures at the bottom of the painting, the second being the 4 cherubs circulating at the top. The entire work is a current of figures, limbs and unsaid motion. Discover too the stabilizing classic triangle formed with Galatea's head at the apex and the other figures' positions inclined towards her. The cherub outstretched horizontally along the lesser of the composition completes the second circumvolve.

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

Within this discussion of visual balance, there is a relationship betwixt the natural generation of organic systems and their ultimate class. This human relationship is mathematical besides as aesthetic, and is expressed as the Golden Ratio:

Here is an example of the golden ratio in the form of a rectangle and the enclosed spiral generated past the ratios:

The golden ratio. Image from Wikipedia Commons and licensed through Creative Commons

The natural world expresses radial residual, manifest through the gilt ratio, in many of its structures, from galaxies to tree rings and waves generated from dropping a stone on the h2o's surface. Yous can run into this organic radial construction in some natural systems by comparing the satellite image of hurricane Isabel and a scope prototype of spiral galaxy M51 below.

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

A snail shell, unbeknownst to its inhabitant, is formed by this same universal ratio, and, in this case, takes on the green tint of its surroundings.

Epitome by Christopher Gildow. Used with permission.

Environmental artist Robert Smithson created Spiral Jetty,an earthwork of rock and soil, in 1970. The jetty extends almost 1500 feet into the Great Common salt Lake in Utah every bit a symbol of the interconnectedness of our selves to the residuum of the natural earth.

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

Repetition

Repetition is the use of two or more similar elements or forms within a composition. The systematic organization of a repeated shapes or forms creates design.

Patterns create rhythm, the lyric or syncopated visual outcome that helps bear the viewer, and the artist's idea, throughout the piece of work. A simple only stunning visual blueprint, created in this photograph of an orchard past Jim Wilson for the New York Times, combines color, shape and direction into a rhythmic period from left to correct. Setting the composition on a diagonal increases the feeling of move and drama.

The traditional fine art of Australian aboriginal culture uses repetition and blueprint almost exclusively both as ornamentation and to give symbolic pregnant to images. The coolamon, or carrying vessel pictured beneath, is made of tree bark and painted with stylized patterns of colored dots indicating paths, landscapes or animals. You tin see how fairly simple patterns create rhythmic undulations beyond the surface of the piece of work. The design on this detail piece indicates it was probably made for ceremonial apply. We'll explore aboriginal works in more depth in the 'Other Worlds' module.

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

Rhythmic cadences accept complex visual course when subordinated by others. Elements of line and shape coalesce 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 two rhythmic beats here, that of the water flowing downstream to the left and the fish gracefully jumping against it on their way upstream.

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

The textile medium is well suited to incorporate blueprint into fine art. The warp and weft of the yarns create natural patterns that are manipulated through position, color and size by the weaver. The Tlingit culture of littoral British Columbia produce spectacular ceremonial blankets distinguished by graphic patterns and rhythms in stylized creature forms separated past a hierarchy of geometric shapes. The symmetry and loftier contrast of the pattern is stunning in its effect.

Scale and Proportion

Scale and proportion show the relative size of one form in relation to another. Scalar relationships are often used to create illusions of depth on a two-dimensional surface, the larger form existence in front of the smaller one. The scale of an object can provide a focal point or emphasis in an image. In Winslow Homer's watercolor A Good Shot, Adirondacks the deer is centered in the foreground and highlighted to clinch its identify of importance in the limerick. In comparison, there is a small puff of white smoke from a rifle in the left center groundwork, the simply indicator of the hunter'due south position. Click the image for a larger view.

Scale and proportion are incremental in nature. Works of fine art don't always rely on large differences in scale to make a strong visual impact. A good case of this is Michelangelo'due south sculptural masterpiece Pieta from 1499 (below). Hither Mary cradles her dead son, the two figures forming a stable triangular composition. Michelangelo sculpts Mary to a slightly larger calibration than the dead Christ to give the fundamental figure more significance, both visually and psychologically.

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

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

American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his married woman Coosje van Bruggen create works of common objects at enormous scales. Their Stake Hitchreaches a total height of more than 53 feet and links two floors of the Dallas Museum of Fine art. As big as it is, the work retains a comic and playful character, in role because of its gigantic size.

Emphasis

Accent—the area of master visual importance—can be attained in a number of ways. We've just seen how it can be a part of differences in scale. Emphasis tin can as well be obtained past isolating an area or specific discipline matter through its location or color, value and texture. Main accent in a composition is usually supported by areas of lesser importance, a hierarchy within an artwork that's activated and sustained at different levels.

Like other artistic principles, emphasis tin be expanded to include the main idea independent in a work of art. Let's wait at the post-obit piece of work to explore this.

Nosotros can clearly decide the figure in the white shirt equally the main accent in Francisco de Goya's painting The Third of May, 1808below. Even though his location is left of center, a candle lantern in front of him acts as a spotlight, and his dramatic stance reinforces his relative isolation from the rest of the crowd. Moreover, the soldiers with their aimed rifles create an unsaid line betwixt them selves and the figure. In that location 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 emphasis by including the afar church and its vertical towers in the background.

In terms of the idea, Goya'south narrative painting gives witness to the summary execution of Castilian resistance fighters by Napoleon's armies on the night of May iii, 1808. He poses the effigy in the white shirt to imply a crucifixion every bit he faces his own death, and his compatriots surrounding him either clutch their faces in atheism or stand stoically with him, looking their executioners in the eyes. While the carnage takes identify in front of us, the church stands dark and silent in the distance. The genius of Goya is his ability to direct the narrative content by the emphasis he places in his composition.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The 3rd of May, 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas. The Prado Museum, Madrid. This image is in the public domain

A second instance 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 ways. First, 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 out against the lite background, their tail feathers mimicked by the nearby leaves. The convoluted treatment of the rocky outcrop keeps information technology in competition with the pheasants equally a focal point, merely in the terminate the pair of birds' color wins out.

A final example on emphasis, taken from The Fine art of Burkina Fasopast Christopher D. Roy, University of Iowa, covers both design features and the idea behind the art. Many world cultures include artworks in ceremony and ritual. African Bwa Masks are big, graphically painted in black and white and usually attached to fiber costumes that cover the head. They draw mythic characters and animals or are abstract and have a stylized face with a tall, rectangular wooden plank attached to the top.* In any manifestation, the mask and the dance for which they are worn are inseparable. They become part of a customs outpouring of cultural expression and emotion.

Fourth dimension and Motility

One of the problems artists confront in creating static (atypical, stock-still images) is how to imbue them with a sense of fourth dimension and motion. Some traditional solutions to this problem utilise the use of spatial relationships, peculiarly perspective and atmospheric perspective. Scale and proportion can too be employed to show the passage of time or the illusion of depth and movement. For case, as something recedes into the background, information technology becomes smaller in scale and lighter in value. Also, the same figure (or other grade) repeated in different places within the aforementioned image gives the effect of movement and the passage of time.

An early example of this is in the carved sculpture of Kuya Shonin. The Buddhist monk leans forwards, his cloak seeming to move with the breeze of his steps. The figure is remarkably realistic in style, his head lifted slightly and his mouth open. Half dozen small figures emerge from his mouth, visual symbols of the chant he utters.

Visual experiments in motion were first produced in the middle of the 19^th century. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge snapped black and white sequences of figures and animals walking, running and jumping, then placing them side-past-side to examine the mechanics and rhythms created past each activeness.

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

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

Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending a Staircase from 1912 formally concentrates Muybridge's idea into a single prototype. The figure is abstruse, a result of Duchamp's influence past cubism, merely gives the viewer a definite feeling of movement from left to right. This piece of work was exhibited at The Armory Prove in New York Urban center in 1913. The bear witness was the starting time to exhibit modern art from the United States and Europe at an American venue on such a large scale. Controversial and fantastic, the Armory prove became a symbol for the emerging mod art movement. Duchamp'southward painting is representative of the new ideas brought forth in the exhibition.

In 3 dimensions the event of movement is achieved past imbuing the subject area matter with a dynamic pose or gesture (recollect that the utilise of diagonals in a composition helps create a sense of movement). Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture of David from 1623 is a study of coiled visual tension and motion. The creative person shows united states of america the effigy of David with furrowed brow, fifty-fifty bitter his lip in concentration as he eyes Goliath and prepares to release the rock from his sling.

The temporal arts of film, video and digital projection past their definition evidence movement and the passage of time. In all of these mediums we watch as a narrative unfolds before our eyes. Film is substantially thousands of static images divided onto one long roll of flick that is passed through a lens at a certain speed. From this appliance comes the term movies.

Video uses magnetic tape to achieve the same effect, and digital media streams millions of electronically pixilated images across the screen. An example is seen in the work of Swedish Artist Pipilotti Rist. Her large-scale digital work Pour Your Trunk Out is fluid, colorful and absolutely arresting as it unfolds across the walls.

Unity and Variety

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

We can view Eva Isaksen's piece of work Orange Calorie-free beneath to see how unity and variety work together.

Eva Isaksen, Orangish Light, 2010. Print and collage on sail. 40" x 60." Permission of the artist

Isaksen makes use of well-nigh every chemical element and principle including shallow space, a range of values, colors and textures, asymmetrical residuum and different areas of accent. The unity of her composition stays stiff by keeping the various parts in check against each other and the space they inhabit. In the terminate the viewer is caught up in a mysterious world of organic forms that bladder across the surface like seeds being caught past a summer cakewalk.

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

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