Basic Concepts in Painting and Sculpture

Basic Concepts in Painting and Sculpture Part 1



While the concepts I present here were not introduced by Ayn Rand, they
will be of use to any objectivist interested in aesthetics, and
interested in extending her principles of great literature to other
categories of fine art.

Composition

If you have
ever worked on a newspaper, you will know that the first rule is to use
the paper space wisely. A similar concept in fine art integrates this
component with a sense of "balance." If all the action is happening on
one side of the painting, it will feel like it is about to fall over on
that side. Is the painting bottom-heavy or top-heavy? Or are the
objects in the visual field (such as the front page of a newspaper, or
the canvas of a painting) well distributed to give a sense of balance?
Wise use of space and balance are called the composition.

This
is the first thing an artist should do when starting a work or art.
They may need to move into a position that distributes the visual
information wisely. They may need to add background material or
foreground material to get everything balanced. Have you ever wondered
why there is always a pair of slippers beneath a reclining female nude?
The artist is using them to add visual information in the immediate
foreground! Armed with this concept, you will be able to laugh and cry
at the lengths (or lack thereof) which the artist has taken to balance
the visual field.

A further consequence of this concept is how
the shapes of the objects line up with each other (like a puzzle piece)
or fail to do so. Although the objects exist in three-dimensional
space, we are considering how their visual information impacts the
two-dimensional plane of the board. In this way, a two dimensional
shape somewhere in the painting (such as a pattern on a floor or wall)
can interact with a three dimensional form.

Sometimes artists
use basic forms and echo them in different places in the visual field,
sometimes introducing variations like a fugue by Bach. A good example
of this type of compositional dance is Newberry's Blithe, where the two-dimensional tapestry behind the woman echoes the curves of her body.

The Three Pillars of Spatial Depth

If
you have ever looked at paintings from the Middle Ages, you will notice
how the figures and scenes are all "flat." Renaissance artists later
discovered how to project objects as human see them, where objects in
the distance get smaller on the horizon and get closer to the line of
sight as they move back in space. This is spatial depth due to perspective.

Another
way of creating spatial depth over long distances has to do with
atmospheric effects. An object in the distance, such as a building,
will have a shade of blue or gray because of all the air between the
viewer and the object. (Since we can see far-off objects with lower
focus, they are also slightly blurred.) This I call spatial depth due
to atmosphere.

There is a third, often overlooked,
aspect to spatial depth which works well over very short distances. It
has to do with contrast. For example, take a sheet of white paper and
draw a sharp black line. Next to it, draw a slightly fuzzier gray line.
In terms of spatial depth, the fuzzy gray line recedes behind the sharp
line. Even if you had one eye, you would be able to see the
three-dimensional space within the paper.

When using colors, this kind of depth gets exponentially harder to do. The artist has to create color contrasts to bring objects forward in space, and color transparencies to
push them back. Note that when I speak of transparency, I do not mean
that you can see through any objects in the painting to the forms
behind them, I mean that the colors are slightly blended together.
There is a complex vision science behind painting that experimentally
tests how different colors exist in space relative to one another. Some
colors have a larger span of space, other colors a shorter span.

This
prompts the question: how do you know if something is in the distance
or very close just due to color? You can't. Unless contrasts between
"bright and dark" accompany color contrasts, you could theoretically
reverse the distribution of all objects in the painting. This
bright-and-dark contrast is due to how we can perceive objects closer
to them with higher focus than objects further away. Higher focus leads
to more contrast between bright and dark areas. This effect is minute
enough to differentiate the spatial location of one finger from
another, and large enough to span large rooms and landscapes.

I
have heard from an authoritive source that there are only on the order
of two- hundred, artists in history who could use this last technique
of spatial depth. In my experience, I have seen it used in about ten or
fifteen artists, all but one of them recognized masters. Look for it in
Da Vinci, Rafael, Michelangelo, Reubens, Rembrandt, Valesquez, Vermeer,
the French Impressionists, Picasso, and Newberry.

Things get
even more complicated when you cast a light on the objects within the
painting, and you have to balance bright-dark contrasts, color
contrasts, and the gradual sweep of light from its source. Welcome to
the complex science, and inner madness, of being a painter.

Sweeping Forms

Have
you ever seen a sculpture that looks like it was about to move? You
feel like it might suddenly burst into motion if you turn your back. It
holds your eyes-- you watch it suspiciously and wait for something to
happen. Your eyes flow over the cascading muscles and limbs. And you
wonder what gives this piece its particular "umph."

The key to
understanding this effect is to locate pairs of eye-catching points--
such as the position of feet, the alignment of kneecaps, the location
of hands, the direction of fingers, the axes of the waist and chest,
the position of limb joints, the eyes, strands of hair-- and connect
them with a twisting, sweeping plane. The intensity of the plane may
vary across the figure(s) but usually it grows in a single direction of
movement. The twisting plane may expand along this line of intensity or
contract, depending on the pieces.

In every sculpture sits a plot-- a sequence of events which exist in time but
are held static in the bronze. The movement comes from the motion of
your eyes as they follow the striking features. In a split-second
glance, you will subconsciously experience the sweeping form without
being able to identify its direction consciously. But if you take your
time and carefully move your eyes over the piece, you can watch how the
sculpture builds up and explodes in a denouement, in a resolution of
interacting forms.

The form may be straight like an arrow, it
may be an upward spiral, it may be an arc or a loop-de-loop, but
whatever it's twist and direction-- the result is an anticipated
motion. You feel as if the sculpture is aimed and guided towards a
single direction and that, in a split-second, the figures are going to
move in that direction.

Is the figure stagnant or shimmering
with motion? Is the form falling towards the ground or launching into
the air? Is it retracting into a ball or exploding outwards? The power
and direction of a sweeping form play an important role in projecting
the theme. Like Ayn Rand's concept of a plot-theme, a sweeping form which integrates the action and exemplifies a theme is one of the highest marks of great sculpture




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