ART 101 Midterm 2 Review

Miniature

A very small copy, model, or painting

Asymmetrical Balance

Distribution achieved by arranging non-identical elements on both sides of an imaginary center line on the screen.

The Raisin Building (Fred and Ginger)

Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunic, 1992-1996. Also known as the "Dancing House". +/-, yin-yang, future/past.

Study of Human Proportion: Vitruvian Man. Embodies all principles of design: balance, emphasis, proportion, scale, rhythm, repetition, unity, and variety. Focal point is the naval. Each of the limbs appear twice, once touching the square (earth) and once the circle (heaven).

Leonardo da Vinci, 1492. Pen and Ink.

Joseph the Carpenter - La Tour

Light directs our gaze to the key point in the frame, to Jesus, holding the candle that seems to emanate divine light across the young face.

Public Figures, Do-Ho Suh

Scale and proportion. Depicts the little people behind the hero. The large pediment sits waiting for a hero, with about 600 small scale people, male & female of different sizes and ethnicity, carrying and holding it up, who would receive no recognition for their support of the hero who may one day sit atop it.

How does scale differ from proportion

Scale refers the dimensions of an art object in relation to the original object that it represents or in relation to the objects around it. Proportion, by contrast, refers to the relationship between the parts of an object and the whole, or between the object and its surroundings.

Postmodernism

1945 - Present. A general term used to refer to changes, developments and tendencies which have taken place in literature, art, music, architecture, philosophy, etc. in the post WWII era.

Barber Shop; Jacob Lawrence

1946. Repetition creates visual rhythm. Diamond shaped figures sitting in barber chairs, each with a different colored apron: Color and pattern of the left hand patrons apron is echoed in the color of shirts of two barbers on the right, while the color and pattern of the right hand patron's apron is repeated in the vest of the barber on the left. Capture the rhythm of life in Harlem.

Orange Crush - Larry Poons

1963. An example of afocal art where no single focal point demands attention any more than another and where there is no one place for the eye to rest.

Parsifal I - Anselm Kiefer

1973. White baby cradle in the attic. From a series of four paintings that illustrate Wagner's last opera, and the young hero Percival, whose mother tried to shelter him, but he became a knight in King Arthur's court whose task it was to recover from a magician Klingsor, the legendary spear that had been thrust into the side of Jesus on the Cross.Hitler was obsessed with owning the Spear of Destiny.

Variety

A principle of design that combines elements to provide interest in an artwork.

Still life with Lobster

Anna Vallayer-Coster, 1781. Ex: focal point. Creating contrast with light and color. By painting everything else greenish, she emphasized the lobster. An exercise in good taste.

WH Auden's Poem

As I walked out one evening: The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead.

Rose Window

Chartres Cathedral, 1215., a circular stained-glass window

Unity

Creating a sense of visual oneness in a work of art

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Hokusai, 1823-29. From the series, 36 views of Mount Fuji. Color woodcut.Ukiyo-e style. Manipulates scale to play with the viewer's expectations.

Emetic Fields

Ida Applebroog, 1989. Nostrum is medicine with emetic to induce vomiting. Trust we place mistakenly in those who say they will cure us of our ills. Balance of power, the surgeon and Queen Elizabeth.

The Seven Valleys and the Five Valleys

James Lavadour, 1988. Constantly negotiate the boundaries between realism and abstraction - between the landscape (Pacific Northwest) of his Native American heritage and his training as a contemporary artist. Variety and Unity.

Untitled Gouache on Paper - Ali

Laylah Ali, 2000. Famous for her brown skinned and gender neutral Greenheads. Denizens of the Third World. The horror of her images resides in her repetition.

Canon

Now lost text by sculptor Polyclitus (from the Greek word "kanon" or "rule") in which he described the perfect proportions for the human body.

Pollock and Tureen - Louise Lawler

Photo. 1984. Postmodernism idea where the photograph of a tureen and one of Pollacks paintings are simply transformed into decorative objects.

Actual Weight

Refers to the physical weight in pounds of an artworks materials.

Las Vegas Nevada

Robert Venuri writes about the collision of styles, signs, and symbols that marks the American "strip." Disorder is an order we cannot see. The strip declares that anything can be put next to anything else. Traditional art tends to exclude things that seem "unartful", whereas postmodernism lets everything in.

Focal Point

The center of interest on a page or set of facing pages, created by using color, contrast and proportion.

Rhythm

repetition of both shapes, patterns and colors in a work of art.

Bilateral symmetry

where there are minor discrepancies between one side and the other, the overall effect is still one of symmetry, the two sides seem to line up.

Parthenon

A large temple dedicated to the goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. It was built in the 5th century BCE, during the Athenian golden age. The sense of mathematical harmony was utilized by the Greeks in their architecture as well. Based on ratio's that can be expressed in algebraic formula x+ 2y + 1. 8 columns on the short end and 17 on the sides (2 x 8) + 1. Stylobate (platform). Represents Athena, not only beauty, but the ultimate wisdom of the universe. Sits "atop of the city".

Emphasis

A principle of design in which one element or a combination of elements create more attraction than anything else in a composition. The dominate element is the focal point in a composition and contributes to unity by suggesting that other elements are subordinate to it.

Proportion

A principle of design, proportion refers to the relationship between the parts of an object and the whole, or to the relationship between an object and its surroundings.

The Three Shades

Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917. Sits atop the "Gates of Hell". Though each appears to be a different figure, Rodin cast the same figure 3 times, arranging them in semicircle, but viewed from different angles, each appears unique. The figure of Adam to the left, echoes that of the Shades above the door. Formal repetition implies that Adam was not only the father of us all, but in sin, the very man who brought us to the gates of hell.

Gates of Hell with Adam and Eve Rodin

Auguste Rodin, 1880-1917. Based on the Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy and filled with nearly 200 figures who swirl in hellfire, reaching out as if attempting to escape the door. Rodin's famous Thinker sits atop the door, contemplating man's fate, and to each side of the door stand Adam and Eve. At the top are the Three Shades.

Design

Both a verb and a noun. A field of study and work within the arts, encompassing graphic, fashion, interior, industrial, and product design. To design something, the process is to organize the formal elements that we have studied in the last four chapters - line,space, light and color, texture, pattern, time and motion - into a unified whole, a composition or design.

Boston Common at Twilight

Childe Hassam, 1885-86. Asymmetrical balance. Central axis is to the left, much heavier than the empty park on the right.

Spoonbridge and Cherry

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, a giant spoon with a cherry that is also a fountain stretches across a small lake and it is a huge spoon. scale

Portrait of Queen Mariana

Diego Rodrigues de Silva Y Velazuqez, 1656.

Las Meninas

Diego Velaquez, 1656., Spanish for "The Maids of Honor," this Diego Velazquez masterpiece (1656) depicts Velazquez himself painting the king and queen of Spain as their daughter, Margarita, bursts in with her attendants. All the figures interact with one another and with the viewer in such interesting ways that this piece is still discussed and debated today. Competing points of emphasis, with most obvious being the infanta in the center with a light that shines brilliantly on her alone, and by implied lines created by the gazes of two maids surrounding her.

Philip IV, King of Spain

Diego Velazquez, 1652-53.

Polyclitus

Doryphoros, 450 BCE. 84". Marble Roman copy after the lost bronze original. The Greeks recognized perfect proportion in terms of the human body, harmonious and balanced, Polyclitus expressed them in the now lost canon (Rule). Perfection of this figure is based on the fact that each part of the body is a common fraction of the figures total height. Canon: Head 1/8; shoulders 1/4 of total height of body.

Symmetrical Balance

Elements of the design are centered or evenly divided both vertically and horizontally. When drawing a line down the center of ones body, each side would almost be a mirror reflection of the other. Leonardo's Study of Human Proportion.

Just in Time

Elizabeth Murray, 1981. Cup shaped canvas, a two panel abstract constructed of rhythmic curves, oddly and not quite evenly cut in half. Postmodern. Almost 9 ft. tall,

Coronation of the Virgin

Enguerrand Quarton, 1453-54. Almost perfect Symmetry.

Balance

Even distribution of weight in a composition. A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. There are three types of visual balance: symmetry, asymmetry, and radial.

Untitled Billboard

Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Large scale billboard designed to draw attention to the magnitude of global socio political crises. Installed 24 billboards across NYC with an image of an empty unmade bed, to evoke feelings of emptiness, loss, loneliness, and ultimately, death. Enormous scale was designed to suggest the enormity of the AIDS epidemic, and how it effected everyone in personal and private cost. Gonzales Torres would die of AIDS in 1996 when he was only 38.

Woman Holding a Balance

Johannes Vermeer, 1664. Jan Vermeer a perfect example of asymmetrically balanced composition whose subject is the balance between the material and spiritual worlds, where the center axis moves through the fulcrum of the scales that the women is holding. Areas of light and dark on each side balance the design. The woman in the process of weighing her jewelry scattered on the table before her. Behind her is a picture of Christ weighing the worth of all souls for entry into heaven. The viewer is invited to contemplate the two images in the painting and how they relate to the woman's life.

Visual Weight

The apparent heaviness or lightness of the shapes and forms arranged in the composition.

Mescalero Apache coiled basket

The center of the basket suggests that it was intended to hold the bounty of the universe - especially food. Early American arts are rare, b/c they are made from Natural grasses and fibers so susceptible to decay.

Radial Balance

The major components in a composition radiate out from a common central point, resulting in a kind of visual circulation. Radially balanced compositions may also be symmetrical or asymmetrical. Rose window and Apache basket.

The Principles of Design

Usually discussed in terms of the qualities of: balance, emphasis, proportion and scale; rhythm and repetition; and unity and variety.

Afocal

When an artist deliberately avoids emphasis, we say that it is:

Absolute symmetry

When each side of a work is exactly the same

Why do artists use repetition and rhythm?

When the same or similar elements are repeated over and over again in a composition, a visual rhythm is established. Artists often use rhythm in order to unify different elements of a work.

What is a focal point

Where artists employ emphasis in order to draw the viewers attention to one area of a work.

Example of Asymmetrical Balance

asymmetrical balance (unequal sides & shapes) - Woman holding a balance

Taj Mahal

commissioned in 1600's by Shah Jahan for a favorite wife, fusion of different art styles of different religions. Symmetrically balanced.

Scale

is the word we use to describe the dimensions of an art object in relation to the original object that it depicts or in relation to the objects around it. (Public figures and Spoon-bridge & cherry).

Repetition

often implies monotony. The same thing over and over again. When something is repeated over and over again... a certain "visual" rhythm occurs.