FREE online courses on the Art Appreciation Basics - Analyzing the subject
of a painting - Composition
Composition is about putting
things in the right place. Like the way you arrange the objects on your desk or
the furniture in your living room. Everything in art (as in life) has its own
color, weight, texture, etc. When you put these visual elements, together they
interact. For instance, colors may fight or harmonize (or both). A triangle
sitting on its base looks stable; turn it on its point and it looks unstable.
How the artist arranges the elements of color, shape, and size is a means of
expression, and in some ways is the heart of the exercise.
As you gather experience looking
at art, you'll become sensitive to what the artist is saying through
composition. You see that a mob scene with a hundred randomly scattered figures
isn't as strong as a mob scene with carefully composed groups of figures all
working together. You look at Leonardo's Last Supper and you'll note that the
disciples aren't just sitting at the table, they're clustered together in
groups. Christ is at the center, alone. His head is in the center of the
window behind him. All of the lines of perspective lead to him. These are just a
few of the compositional elements that make The Last
Supper a masterpiece.
Once you get the hang of
composition, not only will you actually be able to appreciate art more fully,
you'll probably get a hearty round of applause from the museum crowd, who by
this time will have tossed their rented cassette players to openly hang on your
every word.
