1.8 - Focal Point and Emphasis

This print from the series The Life of John Brown by the African-American artist Jacob Lawrence depicts the abolitionist's band of followers training in preparation for their armed insurrection at Harpers Ferry. But which, if any, of the twelve figures in it is depicted as the most significant?

All figures

What is the name for the center of interest or activity in a work of art, often employed to draw the viewer's attention to the most important element in it?

Focal point

Which element of art is the primary means of establishing the focal point in this sixteenth-century Mughal Indian painting The Emperor Babur Overseeing His Gardeners?

Line

Which elements or principles of art are the primary means of drawing the viewer's attention to the focal point of the Baroque Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi's painting Judith Decapitating Holofernes?

Principles: contrast Elements: value, line

This painting by the sixteenth-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicts an episode from ancient Greek mythology. Where is the main subject of Bruegel's work?

Right below the big ship

Where is the focal point in this sixteenth-century Mughal Indian painting The Emperor Babur Overseeing His Gardeners?

The cross in the garden

What is the subject of this painting by the sixteenth-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder?

The fall of lcarus, the idea that life goes on

What is the focal point of this fifteenth-century devotional painting by Dieric Bouts of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary?

The girls face

Where is the focal point in the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Decapitating Holofernes?

The guys face thats getting murdered

Locate the focal point(s) in the Baroque Spanish artist Diego de Silva y Velázquez's painting Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), which depicts the King of Spain's daughter surrounded by various attendants.

The man on the left in black, the little girl middle, the girl second from the rightmost person little, the painting by the door, the man in the doorway

Locate the focal point(s) in the nineteenth-century Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige's "Riverside Bamboo Market, Kyōbashi."

The moon, man on the boat, bottom of the bridge in middle right

Vija Celmins purposefully did not create specific areas of emphasis in her photorealistic work Untitled (Ocean), because she wanted to illustrate the vast nature of the sea.

True

Which element of art is the primary means of establishing the focal point in the Baroque Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán's painting The Funeral of St. Bonaventure?

Value

How does Marc Chagall establish Icarus as the focal point of his painting The Fall of Icarus?

color, contrast, brushstrokes, placement

What is the name of the principle of art involved when an artist uses noticeably different dark and light values to create a focal point or area of interest in a work?

contrast

What type of directional line appears to impart the greatest degree of emphasis?

diagonal

What is the name for the principle of art that involves drawing attention to particular content?

emphasis

Which, if any, of these paintings employ(s) the technique of subordination deliberately to draw the viewer's attention away from a particular part of their composition?

gathered around campfire, two people

What associations does the Canadian-born artist Agnes Martin intend to convey by not providing any specific point of emphasis in her painting Starlight?

profound calm, harmony with the universe

The placement of elements within a composition in order to create multiple focal points is most closely associated with which principle of art?

rhythm

What type of emphasis is used in each of these twentieth-century sculptural works?

specific: swirl, wooden round broad: everything else

What is it called when emphasis is used to draw the viewer's attention away from a particular part of a composition?

subordination

Artists can use any of the elements of art in order to emphasize focal points in their work.

true