Composition-More
zi...@interport.net
Check out the Vermeer section on Golden Means.
Rembrandt on dramatic lighting. De Hooch on
vanishing point.
The important thing, which no one who does not have a painterly
understanding of composition will not make sense out of is this: Why
does Rembrandt spot the dramatic lighting so that the lights are in
those particular points nad notin others? Why are the shoadows where
they are? If you understand forming, then you can go on to
understanding "dramatic lighting". If you don't, who cares aboutyour
dramatic lighting-it doesn't make pictorial sense. You are nothing but
an illustrator.
Vermeer may be someone whom it is possible to place on a procrustean
bed of Golden Section, but it is very doubtful that he actually used
the system. He comes out of Rembrandt by way of Karel Fabritius. AND
he understood this kind of composition inspades. Although the ones in
the Hague and elsewhere looked a lot better until they were just over
cleaned.
De Hooch was a great painter. Do you really think that many of his
paintings have mcuh use for a vanishing point? Take the one at the
Getty for example, would it make much difference if the vanishing
poiint was somewhere else? The lights and darks are what is most
important. It is a very dramatic composition in my terms, not in
perspectival ones.
Sounds like this book is a how to for amateurs which misses the point.
Gabriel
Melanie Lamm
In article <65a257$ohj$1...@broadway.interport.net>,
zi...@interport.net wrote:
>Sounds like this book is a how to for amateurs
>which misses the point.
How many times do we have to go through this? This
book is a small, illustrated example-laden "textbook"
for popular consumption --
using famous paintings to illustrate the principles
of composition by explaining how each painter used
them.
It is a book of famous paintings explained in detail.
It is not a book geared for amateur painters, although
the concepts are essential to understanding the history
of art, and eventually, one's own art.
If you don't understand this, don't post anymore
speculations about the book until you've read it.
>Vermeer may be someone whom it is possible to
>place on a procrustean bed of Golden Section, but
>it is very doubtful that he actually used
>the system.
You obviously don't know anything about Vermeer.
Read the book. Also, Mondrian copied the Golden
Proportions of Vermeer, but abstractified them.
P.S. After you finish reading the book, please
write shorter (and fewer paragraphs). If you can't
express yourself in shorter sentences per paragraph
then it gets boring to read your posts since all
you're doing is commenting on a book you haven't read.
zi...@interport.net
lamm...@widenet.com (Melanie Lamm) wrote:
>In article <65a257$ohj$1...@broadway.interport.net>,
>zi...@interport.net wrote:
>>Sounds like this book is a how to for amateurs
>>which misses the point.
>How many times do we have to go through this? This
>book is a small, illustrated example-laden "textbook"
>for popular consumption --
>using famous paintings to illustrate the principles
>of composition by explaining how each painter used
>them.
>It is a book of famous paintings explained in detail.
>It is not a book geared for amateur painters, although
>the concepts are essential to understanding the history
>of art, and eventually, one's own art.
>If you don't understand this, don't post anymore
>speculations about the book until you've read it.
>>Vermeer may be someone whom it is possible to
>>place on a procrustean bed of Golden Section, but
>>it is very doubtful that he actually used
>>the system.
Dear Ms. Lamm:
We are in strong disagreement about many things it seems. But I am not
telling you to stop posting on this or any other subject. Nor am I
telling you except in so far as I disagree with you that you don't
understand this or that. Nor will I say so to you.
Let us see where we agree and disagree.
It is possible to lay golden section lines over many different
paintings. This does not mean that, in fact, the artist used golden
section in constructing. Do the golden sectionlines actually line up,
with exactitude with the largest and most important axial lines? [all
two dimensionm surfaces can be considered to have at least the obvious
two axes, I am sure you will agree].
But they don't happen to work perfectly with Vermeer.
They do work, even giving a whirling series of rectangles in some
Poussins. But please remember, you will find that in my corner of the
art world, artists do not believe that you can construct a composition
with golden section lines. You may construct with axes which make
tensions which open up the space. The proportions must be found, not
preconceived. Sometimes it might be a golden section.
I don't believe that there is any one who has ever claimed that
Mondrian derives from study of Vermeer. There are people who have
noticed a resemblance after the fact.
I did not know Mondrian, but I got awfully close. I studied with
Burgoyne Diller, his best and closest American follower, and with
Harry Holtzman, his heir, and earlier the man who brought him to the
US and supported him. I was also friendly for many years, taught as a
colleague and later hired Ilya Bolotowsky to teach for me.
The basic start for Mondrian, into pictorial construction of the
painterly variety should be looked for in his cubist paintings. Now I
enjoy a great deal in the earlier work, but it does not fully read.
The earlier work is the work he did in the Netherlands. There is no
trace of an influence of Vermeer in it. He is influenced by Toorop,
his teacher [a radical art nouveau artist] and by Max Hodler, also in
some measure within the art nouveau movement although there is some
thing else to him, more than merely art nouveau or even radical art
nouveau. Hodler wrote a truly important essay in 1888 which I believe
he labeled "On Parallelism", which had a pofound effect on Mondrian.
After cubism, I can see the effect both in Mondrian's painting and in
his writing about his painting. Hodler said [paraphrase] That the in
single tree could stand for the whol forest and the single horizontal
[horizon?] could stand for the whole of the land. Mondrian later says
that the vertical stands for life and the horizxontal for death and
that his paintings had to be balanced to express their relationship
and order. But we are still not up to axial lines constructing a
space.
Mondrian's grid, though, is not formalist, but metaphoric. Within this
metaphoric system, he composes and constructs with the new found
syntax of cubism. It is through his study of cubist painters' work and
his own work which came out of cubism that Mondrian discovered how to
use bits of horizontal and vertical lines to open up the space while
keeping the tension of the surface. But it was, impelled by his post
Hodler ideation, that he invented his abstract style. This is
Mondrian. He did not abstract Vermeer, nor come out of Vermeer. But he
may very well have admired the construction in Vermeer, although that
name was not one of the names his students and friends remembered him
as uttering, and to the best of my knowledge, it does not appear in
his writings.
It is true though, and here we agree, that Vermeer's spatial
organization is tied to a profound understanding and ability to
construct picture plane relationships and that he very typically uses
vertical and horizontal lines as a major part of his construction.
ANd that we may connect in our minds, the kind of construction we
admire in him with that we admire in Vermeer. But it is a long
stretch to link them causally.
I do think, though that anyone who reads Mondrian [I do not say or
imply that you do] as if he were merely a great formalist painter,
misses the boat. The paintings are meant to move us and make us feel
calmed and ordered, so that we can live an orderly life. We are meant
to be taken into this new world of balance and away from the world of
transitory and unbalanced experiences. But the balance here is not
just a formal balance, but a balance of eros and thanatos in
ourselves.
Why do I call this a book for amateurs? Because it seems to fully
disregard the kind of knowledge which painters must have. Not of
specific pictorial devices, but of forming. Information is no
substitute for deep understanding. It also does not seem to be aware
of the tremendous change in art which came about in this century. The
climax to the whole Burkean tradition including Kant, the Barbizon
school, Courbet, Redon, Seurat and Klee. This century, finally we read
form metaphorically. The author of the book reads form as technique.
As to what I mean by forming? The best place to read about it is in
Meyer Schapiro's book on Cezanne. But it should be mentioned that much
of what Schapiro finds very special about Cezanne, is found in
different forms throughout the tradition of painting. Cezanne, after
all, did not see himself as a radical, but as someone returning to the
true verities of pictorial construction, now, after impressionism,
which had in many cases tried to ignore them [especially in Monet ]
but to do this with the new impressionist palette[as well as many
other differences].
But he did want to connect with Poussin, Claude and Chardin among
others.
Also from the chapter headings, it would seem that the book is itself
formalist and unaware of the metaphoric readings of form to be found
in many artists. Thus compositional devices may be well described, but
motivations and emotive results are not.
Are you aware that the essays by the English statesman, Burke on the
Sublime and the Beautiful had a profound effect on both landscape
painting of the 19th century and on twentieth century radicalism? He
ties all of his compositional devices to emotive states. He is the
ultimate source for the conscious awareness of this today.
Both Mondrian and Barnett Newman come out of Burke.
Gabriel
Ps You might read an old article by Robert Rosenblum called "The
Painters of the New Sublime."
Andrew Werby
If you understand forming, then you can go on to
> understanding "dramatic lighting". If you don't, who cares about your
> dramatic lighting-it doesn't make pictorial sense. You are nothing but
> an illustrator.
[And then, in "yet more", I thought for a moment there was going to be an
explanation- but no, just another digression...]
>
> As to what I mean by forming? The best place to read about it is in
> Meyer Schapiro's book on Cezanne. But it should be mentioned that much
> of what Schapiro finds very special about Cezanne, is found in
> different forms throughout the tradition of painting. Cezanne, after
> all, did not see himself as a radical, but as someone returning to the
> true verities of pictorial construction, now, after impressionism,
> which had in many cases tried to ignore them [especially in Monet ]
> but to do this with the new impressionist palette [as well as many
> other differences].
>
> Ps You might read an old article by Robert Rosenblum called "The
> Painters of the New Sublime."
[Come on, Gabriel, you've been trashing some artists because they didn't
understand this special concept of "forming", and exalting others because
they seem to have achieved it; although "formalist" is one of your dirty
words. Why don't you just cut loose with an explanation of what the heck
you're talking about here, without referring us to musty old articles and
texts? Do you think you could express in your own words what this "forming"
means to you, without going off into another long rambling sermon about
Mondrian, Hans Hoffman, et al or copping out with another recommended
reading list? I'm starting to wonder if this is something you even
understand yourself.Is it one of those things that you recognize when you
see it, but can't quite pin down? I don't have any problem with that, if
this is the case, but then could you stop saying things like "he doesn't
meet my requirements for forming" and just say "I don't like it", like the
rest of us?]
UNITED ARTWORKS- CUSTOM SCULPTURE SERVICE
Art Items in Many Media
Useful Resources, Technical Tips
and a Custom Artisan's Referral Network
Ruth Marler
In article <658jk4$gs_...@news.primenet.com>, Melanie Lamm
<lamm...@widenet.com> writes
>
>How many times do we have to go through this? This
>book is a small, illustrated example-laden "textbook"
>for popular consumption --
>using famous paintings to illustrate the principles
>of composition by explaining how each painter used
>them.
>
>It is a book of famous paintings explained in detail.
What is the title, author, publisher etc of book?
--
*******************************************************************
from Ruth Marler in Hampton, Middlesex, UK
ru...@lamerton.demon.co.uk OR k97...@kingston.ac.uk
Looking for surname WIDDOWS anywhere for one-name study
email address for one-name study: wid...@lamerton.demon.co.uk
In order to foil bulk emailers, my "reply to" email address is incorrect.
To REPLY to me, please remove the "xxx" from the beginning of
my email address in "reply to" header.
*******************************************************************
Melanie Lamm
>Kent, Sarah.
> Title: Composition / Sarah Kent.
> Edition: 1st American ed.
> Publisher: London ; New York : Dorling Kindersley, 1995.
> Description: 64 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm.
> Title-Series: Eyewitness art
>ISBN: 1-56458-612-X
>
>This book is a study of great paintings
>throughout history from the pov of the framing.
>
>Chapters:
>
>Composing a Picture
>Canvas Shape
>Leading the Eye
>Placing the Figure
>Symmetry/Asymmetry
>Sacred Geometry
>Triangular Designs
>Curvilinear Compositions
>Dramatic Diagonals
>Shaped Paintings
>The Horizon
>The Vanishing Point
>Moving the Horizon
>Golden Section
>Eye-to-Eye Contact
>Sequence of Events
>Depicting an Episode
>Painting as Theater
>Light and Tone
>Color and Form
>Landscape as Theater
>Composing with Light
>Pure Color
>Using Photography
>Depicting Motion
>Double Images
>The Role of Chance
>Breaking the Frame
>Glossary
>Featured Works
In article <5v5TsBAS...@lamerton.demon.co.uk>,
Gnash
>It is possible to lay golden section lines over many different
>paintings. This does not mean that, in fact, the artist used golden
>section in constructing. Do the golden sectionlines actually line up,
>with exactitude with the largest and most important axial lines? [all
>two dimensionm surfaces can be considered to have at least the obvious
>two axes, I am sure you will agree].
>The basic start for Mondrian, into pictorial construction of the
>painterly variety should be looked for in his cubist paintings
This is obvious misinformation! Before you link words like 'painterly' with
Mondrian's pictorial construction, think. Do his constructions fit any of
the 'painterly' values as identified by Heinrich Wolfflin, the man who
coined the term?
1. The gradual depreciation of line; mere visual appearance abandoning
'tangible' design.
2. The development of plane to recession; empasising depth. The diagonal,
relations forwards and backwards, avoiding horizontals and verticals. (!!!!)
3. Open form. Not self-contained. Loose form. Not contained within the
frame.
4. Unity of design without the mutltiplicity of parts (so evident in
Mondrian). A subordination, to one dominant, of all other elements.
5. Things accessible to plastic feeling and representation of things as they
look. Explicit clarity versus relative clarity.
If Mondrian does not fit the category, don't use it!
>The paintings are meant to move us and make us feel
>calmed and ordered, so that we can live an orderly life.
The essence of the painterly picture is restlessness, not calm; inconstancy
and movement not order!
If you see these things in Mondrian, do not fool yourself, he is Linear not
Painterly.
Painterly was coined to identify a style. Not all so-called painterly
painters fit the category well, but they do not fulfil the oppposite
category (linear) exactly and still get labelled 'painterly'!
Gnash
Gnash
zi...@interport.net wrote in message <65a257$ohj$1...@broadway.interport.net>...
>De Hooch was a great painter. Do you really think that many of his
>paintings have mcuh use for a vanishing point? Take the one at the
>Getty for example, would it make much difference if the vanishing
>poiint was somewhere else? The lights and darks are what is most
>important. It is a very dramatic composition in my terms, not in
>perspectival ones.
Quote: Vermeer by Arthur K Wheelock
"De Hooch based his representations of this interior (The Bedroom -
Washington DC and Maternal Duty - Amsterdam) upon a firm scientific
foundation: the laws of linear perspective. He effectively integrated a
SINGLE VANISHING POINT perspective system within his naturalistic scene and,
in doing so, he followed the example of the most influential early 17th
century perspective theorist, Jan Vredeman de Vries."
Gnash
Marilyn
zi...@interport.net wrote:
- a lot of stuff about composition -
I can't believe I started this thread - and I have missed a lot, not
having time to check the ng.
Throw away all the theory and rely on instinct, it is part of the
nature of the visual artist to have an "eye" for composition.
The theory is only a back-up.
Tell me I am being simplistic but, hey, at least it is readable.
At least I don't go on and on and on...
Bye now,
Marilyn