2/27/2024 0 Comments Geometric and organic artThe trees and people occupying the upper parts of the image are meant to be perceived as further from the viewer as compared to those trees, buildings and people located near the bottom of the painting. Notice the towers on the far left and right are sideways to the picture plane. While the overall image is seen from above, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to float in mid air. It’s composed from a number of different vantage points (as opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the picture plane. Examine the miniature painting of the Third Court of the Topkapi Palace from fourteenth-century Turkey to contrast its pictorial space with that of linear perspective. Even after the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally use a flatter pictorial space, relying on overlapping, size differences, or vertical placement of components in a two-dimensional work of art. The perspective system is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the “truth,” that is, an accurate, clear rendition of observed reality. As relatively spare as the left side of the work is, the artist crams the right side with hard-edged and organic shapes and forms in a complex play of positive and negative space. Caillebotte includes the little metal arm at the top right of the post to direct us again along a horizontal path, now keeping us from traveling off the top of the canvas. In the midst of this visual recession a lamp post stands firmly in the middle to arrest our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. The figures are deliberately placed to direct the viewer’s eye from the front right of the picture to the building’s front edge on the left, which, like a ship’s bow, acts as a cleaver to plunge both sides toward the horizon. The artist’s composition, however, is more complex than just his use of perspective. View Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how two-point perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene. Two-Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. You can see how one-point linear perspective is set up in the examples below: The innovation of linear perspective, an implied geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords us the accurate illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the use of a horizon line and vanishing point(s). Remember that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space as a window to view realistic subject matter through, and through the subject matter they present ideas, narratives and symbolic content. ![]() There are many ways for the artist to present ideas of space. Many artists are as concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, color or form. Art responds to all of these kinds of space. Pictorial space is flat, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Humans categorize space: there is outer space, that limitless void we enter beyond our sky inner space, which resides in people’s minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important but intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets too close. Space is the empty area surrounding or between real or implied objects. The sculpture sets implied lines in motion as the figures writhe in agony against the snakes. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, being strangled by sea snakes sent by the goddess Athena as wrath against his warnings to the Trojans not to accept the Trojan horse. Can you identify more implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are found in three-dimensional artworks, too. ![]() Implied lines can also be created when two areas of different colors or tones come together. By visually connecting the space between the heads of all the figures in the painting we have a sense of jagged implied line that keeps the lower part of the composition in motion, balanced against the darker, more static upper areas of the painting. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita-the blonde central figure in the composition-from the meninas, or maids of honor, to the left and right of her, are implied lines. Implied lines are those created by visually connecting two or more areas together. How many other actual lines can you find in the painting? The edge of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an actual line, as are the picture frames in the background and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures’ dresses. ![]() CC BY-SAĪctual lines are those that are physically present.
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