VISUAL POWERS

Painting awakens our visual senses so as to make us see color, shape, light, and form in new ways. Painters such as Siqueiros, Goya, Cézanne, Gentileschi, Neel, and virtually all the painters illustrated in this book make demands on our sensitivity to the visual field, rewarding us with challenges and delights that only painting can provide. But at the same time, we are also often dulled by day-to-day experience or by distractions of business or study that make it difficult to look with the intensity that great art requires. Therefore, we sometimes need to refresh our awareness by sharpening our attention to the surfaces of paintings as well as to their overall power. For example, by referring to the following Perception Key we may prepare ourselves to look deeply and respond in new ways to some of the paintings we considered in earlier chapters.
PERCEPTION KEY Our Visual Powers

1. Jackson Pollock, The Flame (Figure 3-3). Identify the three major colors Pollock uses. How do these colors establish a sense of visual rhythm? Which of the colors is most intense? Which most surprising?
2. Suzanne Valadon, Reclining Nude (Figure 2-16). Examine the piece of furniture, the sofa, on which Valadon’s nude reclines. What color is it? Why is it an effective
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   contrast to the nude? What are the designs on the sofa? What color are the lines of the designs? How do they relate to the subject matter of the painting?
3. Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning (Figure 1-6). What are the most important colors in the painting? How do they balance and complement each other? Why does Hopper limit the intensity of the colors as he does? What is the visual rhythmic effect of the patterns formed in the windows of the second floor? Are any two windows the same? How does Hopper use unexpected forms to break the rhythm of the first level of shops? What emotional qualities are excited by Hopper’s control of the visual elements in the painting?
4. Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (Figure 2-4). How many colors does Cézanne use in this painting? Which color is dominant? Which figure in the painting is most dominant? How do the most important lines in the painting direct your vision? Describe the way your eye moves through the painting. How does Cézanne use line and color to direct your attention?
   Our point is that everyday life tends to dull our senses so that we do not observe our surroundings with the sensitivity that we might. For help we must go to the artists, especially the painter and the sculptor—those who are most sensitive to the visual appearances of things. Their works make things and their qualities much clearer than they usually appear. The artist purges from our sight the films of familiarity. Painting, with its “all-at-onceness,” more than any other art, gives us the time to allow our vision to focus.
   THE MEDIA OF PAINTING
   Throughout this book we will be talking about the basic materials and media in each of the arts, because a clear understanding of their properties will help us understand what artists do and how they work. The most prominent media in Western painting—and most painting in the rest of the world—are tempera, fresco, oil, watercolor, and acrylic. In early paintings the pigment—the actual color—required a binder such as egg yolk, glue, or casein to keep it in solution and permit it to be applied to canvas, wood, plaster, and other substances.
   Tempera
   Tempera is pigment bound by egg yolk and applied to a carefully prepared surface like the wood panels of Cimabue’s thirteenth-century Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels (Figure 4-1). The colors of tempera sometimes look slightly flat and are difficult to change as the artist works, but the marvelous precision of detail and the subtlety of linear shaping are extraordinary. The purity of colors, notably in the lighter range, can be wondrous, as with the tinted white of the inner dress of Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned (Figure 4-2). In the fourteenth century, Giotto achieves an astonishing level of detail in the gold ornamentation below and around the Madonna. At the same time, his control of the medium of tempera permitted him to represent figures with a high degree of individuality and realism, representing a profound change in the history of art.
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FIGURE 4-1
Cimabue, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels. Circa 1285–1290. Tempera and gold on wood, 12 feet 7¾ inches × 7 feet 4 inches. Uffizi, Florence. Cimabue’s painting is typical of Italian altarpieces in the thirteenth century. The use of tempera and gold leaf creates a radiance appropriate to a religious scene.
©Alinari/Art Resource, NY

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FIGURE 4-2
Giotto, Madonna Enthroned. Circa 1310. Tempera and gold on wood, 10 feet 83?16 inches × 6 feet 83?8 inches. Uffizi, Florence. Giotto, credited with creating a realistic portrayal of figures from nature in religious art, lavishes his Madonna Enthroned with extraordinary detail permitted by the use of tempera and gold leaf. Giotto was one of Florence’s greatest painters.
©Scala/Art Resource, NY
The power of these works, when one stands before them in Florence’s Uffizi Galleries, is intense beyond what can be shown in a reproduction. Cimabue’s painting is more than twelve feet tall and commands the space as few paintings of the period can. The brilliance of the colors and the detail of the expressions of all the figures in the painting demand a remarkable level of participation. By comparison, the Giotto, only a few years later, uses contrasting colors to affect us. But Giotto’s faces are more realistic than Cimabue’s, marking an important shift in Renaissance art. Giotto achieves an illusion of depth and a sense that the figures are distinct, as if they were portraits.
Fresco
Because many churches and other buildings required paintings directly on plaster walls, artists perfected the use of fresco, pigment dissolved in lime water applied to wet plaster as it is drying. In the case of wet fresco, the color penetrates to about
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FIGURE 4-3
Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, detail. Circa 1508–1512. Fresco. Michelangelo’s world-famous frescoes in the Sistine Chapel have been cleaned to reveal intense, brilliant colors. This detail from the ceiling reveals the long-lasting nature of fresco painting. The period 1508–1512 marks the High Renaissance in Italy.
©Killer Stock Inc./Getty Images
one-eighth of an inch and is bound into the plaster. There is little room for error because the plaster dries relatively quickly, and the artist must understand how the colors will look when embedded in plaster and no longer wet. One advantage of this medium is that it will last as long as the wall itself. One of the greatest examples of the use of fresco is Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, on the ceiling of which is the famous Creation of Adam (Figure 4-3).
Oil
Oil painting uses a mixture of pigment, linseed oil, varnish, and turpentine to produce either a thin or thick consistency, depending on the artist’s desired effect. In the fifteenth century, oil painting dominated because of its flexibility, the richness of its colors, and the extraordinary durability and long-lasting qualities. Because oil paint dries slowly and can be put on in thin layers, it offers the artist remarkable control over the final product. No medium in painting offers a more flexible blending of colors or subtle portrayal of light and textures, as in Parmigianino’s The Madonna with the Long Neck (Figure 4-4). Oil paint can be messy, and it takes sometimes months or years to dry completely, but it has been the dominant medium in easel painting since the Renaissance.

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FIGURE 4-4
Parmigianino, The Madonna with the Long Neck. Circa 1535. Oil on panel, 85 × 52 inches. Uffizi, Florence. Humanistic values dominate the painting, with recognizably distinct faces, young people substituting for angels, and physical distortions designed to unsettle a conservative audience. This style of oil painting, with unresolved figures and unanswered questions, is called Mannerism—painting with an attitude.
©Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
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FIGURE 4-5
Winslow Homer, Sketch for “Hound and Hunter.” 1892. Watercolor on wove paper. 1315/16 × 1915/16 inches. Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel. Accession No. 1975.92.7. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Although a mixed-media composition, Sketch for “Hound and Hunter” is dominated by watercolor. An apparently unfinished quality imparts a sense of energy, spontaneity, and intensity, typical of Homer’s work.
Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Watercolor
The pigments of watercolor are bound in a water-soluble adhesive, such as gum- arabic, a gummy plant substance. Usually watercolor is slightly translucent so that the whiteness of the paper shows through. Unlike artists working with tempera or oil painting, watercolorists work quickly, often with broad strokes and in broad washes. The color resources of the medium are limited in range, but often striking in effect. Modern watercolor usually does not aim for precise detail. In his Sketch for “Hound and Hunter” (Figure 4-5), Winslow Homer delights in the unfinished quality of the watercolor and uses it to communicate a sense of immediacy. He controls the range of colors as a way of giving us a sense of atmosphere and weather.
Acrylic
A modern synthetic polymer medium, acrylic is fundamentally a form of plastic resin that dries very quickly and is flexible for the artist to apply and use. One advantage of acrylic paints is that they do not fade, darken, or yellow as they age. They can support luminous colors and look sometimes very close to oil paints in their

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FIGURE 4-6
Morris Louis, Beta Lambda. 1961. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 8 feet 73?8 inches × 13 feet 4¼ inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gift of Mrs. Abner Brenner. Object number 428.1983. The painting reveals the fluid qualities of acrylics, essentially sensuous color permitted to radiate through a range of tones. Its size, more than 8 by 13 feet, intensifies our reaction to the shapes the colors take.
©2017 Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Rights Administered by Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, All Rights Reserved. Photo: ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
final effect. Many modern painters use this medium. Morris Louis’s Beta Lamda (Figure 4-6) is a large abstract painting whose colors suggest a range of intensities similar to what we see in oil paintings.
The ease of using acrylic shows in the fluidity of the lines of stark colors balancing a huge open space of uncolored canvas. This painting was done in Louis’s small dining room, but its size is such that only a few spaces can exhibit it. In viewing, one is captured by its gigantic presence. The triangular forms that dominate give the color a power that seems to radiate from the wall. Louis was a colorist experimenting with acrylic up to his death only a year after this painting was finished.
Other Media and Mixed Media
The great Japanese artist Hokusai was prominent in the first half of the nineteenth century in the medium of woodcuts, using ink for his color. The process is extremely complex, but he dominated in the Edo period, when many artists produced brilliantly colored prints that began to be seen in Europe, especially in France, where the painters found great inspiration in the brilliance of the work. The Great Wave, his most famous work (Figure 4-7), is from his project, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Here the mountain is tiny in comparison with the roiling waves threatening even smaller figures in two boats. The power of nature is the subject matter, and the respect for nature may be part of its content.
The dominant medium for Chinese artists has been ink, as in Wang Yuanqi’s Landscape after Wu Zhen (Figure 4-8). Modern painters often employ mixed media, using duco and aluminum paint, house paint, oils, even grit and sand. Andy Warhol used acrylic and silk-screen ink in his famous Marilyn Monroe series. Some basic kinds of prints are produced by methods including woodcut, engraving, linocut, etching, drypoint, lithography, and aquatint.
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FIGURE 4-7
Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849). Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei). Circa 1830–1832. Polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper; 101?8 × 1415?16 inches (25.7 × 37.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
Source: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975/The Metropolitan Museum of Art
PERCEPTION KEY The Media of Painting

1. Compare the detail of tempera in Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned with the radiance of color in Parmigianino’s oil painting The Madonna with the Long Neck. What differences do you see in the quality of detail in each painting and in the quality of the color?
2. Compare the color effects of Hokusai’s The Great Wave woodblock print with the colors in Winslow Homer’s Sketch for “Hound and Hunter.” What seem to be the differences in the treatment of color?
3. Contrast the effect of Homer’s watercolor approach to nature with Wang Yuanqi’s use of ink. Which communicates a sense of nature more readily? In which is nature the most evident subject matter? Compare the formal structure of each painting.
4. Compare the traditional fresco of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam with Leonardo’s experimental fresco of the Last Supper (Figure 3-1). To what extent does Michelangelo’s use of the medium help you imagine what Leonardo’s fresco would have looked like if he had used Michelangelo’s technique?
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FIGURE 4-8
Wang Yuanqi, Landscape after Wu Zhen. 1695. Hanging scroll; ink on paper, 42¾ × 20¼ inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr. Typical of many of the great Chinese landscape scrolls, Wang Yuanqi uses his brush and ink prodigiously, finding a powerful energy in shaping the rising mountains and their trees. The presence of tiny houses and rising pathways to the heights places humanity in a secondary role in relation to nature and to the visual power of the mountain itself.
Source: Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988/The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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ELEMENTS OF PAINTING
The elements are the basic building blocks of a medium. For painting they are line, color, texture, and composition.* Before we discuss the elements of painting, consider the issues raised by the Perception Key associated with Frederic, Lord Leighton’s painting Flaming June (Figure 4-9).
PERCEPTION KEY Flaming June
The subject matter of this painting is sleep itself. But it is also a painting with intense sensuous content. We respond to it partly because it is so vivid in color.

1. What powerful ideas does sleep imply?
2. What does the painting tell us about the pleasures of watching a beautiful woman sleeping? How difficult is it for you to imagine this a nymph rather than a living woman?
3. Comment on the color in this painting. In most visions of sleeping figures the tones are dampened, sometimes dark, as one would expect in a nighttime vision. In what ways does the astounding contrast between sleep and the brilliance of the color affect your sense of what the subject matter is? How does it contribute to your efforts to decide on the content of the painting?
4. How does the clarity of the line in this painting help you understand its significance?
5. Compare Flaming June with the paintings by Giorgione (Figure 2-9), Tom Wesselmann (Figure 2-13), and Philip Pearlstein (Figure 2-18). All are slumbering women. What makes the concerns of Leighton different from those of the other painters?
   Line
   Line is a continuous marking made by a moving point on a surface. Line outlines shapes and can contour areas within those outlines. Sometimes contour or internal lines dominate the outlines, as with the robe of Cimabue’s Madonna (Figure 4-1). Closed line most characteristically is hard and sharp, as in Lichtenstein’s Hopeless (Figure 2-7). In the Cimabue and in Leighton’s Flaming June, the line is also closed but somewhat softer. Open line most characteristically is soft and blurry, as in Renoir’s Bather Arranging Her Hair (Figure 2-10).
   PERCEPTION KEY Goya, Leighton, and Cézanne
6. Goya used both closed and open lines in his May 3, 1808 (Figure 2-3). Locate these lines. Why did Goya use both kinds?
7. Does Leighton use both closed and open lines in Flaming June?
8. Identify outlines in Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire (Figure 2-4). There seem to be no outlines drawn around the small bushes in the foreground. Yet we see these bushes as separate objects. How can this be?
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FIGURE 4-9
Frederic, Lord Leighton, Flaming June. Circa 1895. Museo de Arte Ponce, Puerto Rico. Oil on canvas. 47½ × 47½ inches. Leighton was near the end of his career when he did this painting. He was an admirer of classical figures, such as Michelangelo’s sculpture of Night in the Medici Tombs, which inspired the pose in this painting. He is said to have compared this figure with the sleeping naiads and mythic nymphs of classical literature. He aimed at a perfection of the figure as well as of the clothing.
©Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Line can suggest movement. Up-and-down movement may be indicated by the vertical, as in Parmigianino’s The Madonna with the Long Neck (Figure 4-4). Lateral movement may be indicated by the horizontal and tends to stress stability, as in the same Parmigianino. Depending on the context, however, vertical and horizontal lines may appear static, as in Wesselmann’s Study for Great American Nude and Lichtenstein’s Hopeless. Generally, diagonal lines, as in Cézanne’s Mont Sainte- Victoire, express more tension and movement than verticals and horizontals. Curving lines usually appear softer and more flowing, as in Leighton’s Flaming June.
Line in Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (Figure 4-10) can also suggest rhythm and movement, especially when used with vibrant colors, which in this painting are intended to echo the neon lights of 1940s Broadway. Mondrian lived and worked for twenty years in Paris, but in 1938, with Nazis threatening war, he moved to London. In 1940, with the war under way, he went to New York. He was particularly attracted to American jazz music. He arrived in New York when the swing bands reached their height of popularity and he used his signature grid style in Broadway Boogie Woogie to interpret jazz visually. The basic structure is a grid of vertical and

FIGURE 4-10
Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie,1942–1943. Oil on canvas, 50 × 50 inches (127 × 127 cm). Given anonymously. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
horizontal yellow lines—and only vertical and horizontal lines. On these lines, and between these lines, Mondrian places patterns of intense blocks of color to suggest the powerful jazz rhythms he loved so much. Even the large “silent” blocks of white imply musical rests.
An axis line is an imaginary line that helps determine the basic visual directions of a painting. In Goya’s May 3, 1808, for example, two powerful axis lines move toward and intersect at the white shirt of the man about to be shot: Lines of the rifles appear to converge and go on, and the line of those to be executed moving out of the ravine seems to be inexorably continuing. Axis lines are invisible vectors of visual force. Every visual field is dynamic, a field of forces directing our vision, some visible and some invisible but controlled by the visible. Only when the invisible lines are basic to the structuring of the image, as in the Goya, are they axis lines.
Since line is usually the main determinant of shapes, and shapes are usually the main determinant of detail, regional, and structural relationships, line is usually fundamental in the overall composition—Willem de Kooning’s Woman I (Figure 4-11) is an exception. Here lines and colors seem to perform the same kind of operation on the canvas.
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FIGURE 4-11
Willem de Kooning, American, born in the Netherlands. 1904–1997. Woman I, 1950–1952. Oil on canvas, 6 feet 3⅞ inches by 58 inches (192.7 × 147.3 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. At more than six feet high, Woman I has a huge physical impact on the viewer. De Kooning worked on this painting for quite a while, beginning with sketches, then reworking the canvas again and again. He is said to have drawn inspiration from female fertility goddesses as well as images of dark female figures in literature and myth.
©2017 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: ©Peter Horree/Alamy
Examine the lines in de Kooning’s Woman I. Critics have commented on the vigor with which de Kooning attacked the canvas, suggesting that he was working out psychological issues that bordered on misogyny. We cannot know if that was the case, but we can see how the lines—vertical, horizontal, lateral—all intersect to produce an arresting power, completely opposite of the power of Leighton’s Flaming June.
By way of contrast, Cézanne’s small bushes in Mont Sainte-Victoire are formed by small, juxtaposed, greenish-blue planes that vary slightly in their tinting. These planes are hatched by brushstrokes that slightly vary the textures. And from the
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center of the planes to the perimeters there is usually a shading from light to dark. Thus emerges a strong sense of volume with density. We see those small bushes as somehow distinct objects, and yet we see no separating outlines. Colors and textures meet and create impressions of line. As with axis lines, the visible suggests the invisible—we project the outlines.
In the Asian tradition, the expressive power of line is achieved generally in a very different way from the Western tradition. The stroke—made by flexible brushes of varying sizes and hairs—is intended to communicate the spirit and feelings of the artist, directly and spontaneously. The sensitivity of the inked brush is extraordinary. The ink offers a wide range of nuances: texture, shine, depth, pallor, thickness, and wetness. The brush functions as a seismograph of the painter’s mind.
The brushwork in Wang Yuanqi’s painting (Figure 4-8) varies with the tone of the ink. The rising forms of the mountains are made with a broad brush, almost translucent ink-tone, with intense, dark dots implying the vegetation defining the top of each ridge. The manmade structures in the painting are made with a smaller brush, as in the curved bridge at the lower right of the painting. The rooftops and buildings in the mid portion of the painting on both the left and right use a small brush with strong lines, like those of the trees in the mid foreground. The leaves of the nearest trees and bushes are deep-tone dark ink produced by chopping strokes, sometimes known as the ax-cut. The painting demands that our eyes begin with the trees in the foreground, then rise inexorably upward following the rising nearby mountains, leading us to the smooth, distant higher mountains that have no vegetation.
PERCEPTION KEY Line

1. Which of the paintings in this chapter have the most vigorous line? How does the line in these paintings interact with color?
2. When does the color in the painting actually constitute line? How can color do the work of line?
3. Try drawing a copy of one of these paintings using only the line of your pencil or pen. What do you learn about how the artist used line to clarify his subject matter?
4. Compare the brushwork of Cézanne and Wang Yuanqi with the brushwork of Frederic Leighton and Willem de Kooning.
   Color
   Color is composed of three distinct qualities: hue, saturation, and value. Hue is simply the name of a color. Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. Their mixtures produce the secondary colors: green, orange, and purple. Further mixing produces six more, the tertiary colors. Thus, the spectrum of the color wheel shows twelve hues. Saturation refers to the purity, vividness, or intensity of a hue. When we speak of the “redness of red,” we mean its highest saturation. Value, or shading, refers to the lightness or darkness of a hue, the mixture in the hue of white or black. A high value of a color is obtained by mixing in white, and a low value is obtained by mixing in black. The highest value of red shows red at its lightest; the lowest value of red shows red at its darkest. Complementary colors are opposite
   highest value of red shows red at its lightest; the lowest value of red shows red at its darkest. Complementary colors are opposite
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   each other—for example, red and green, orange and blue. When two complements are equally mixed, a neutral gray appears. An addition of a complement to a hue will lower its saturation. A red will look less red—will have less intensity—by even a small addition of green. And an addition of either white or black will change both the value and the saturation of the hue.
   Texture
   Texture is the surface “feel” of something. When the brushstrokes have been smoothed out, the surface is seen as smooth, as in Wesselmann’s Study for Great American Nude. When the brushstrokes have been left rough, the surface is seen as rough, as in van Gogh’s The Starry Night (Figure 15-4) and Pollock’s The Flame (Figure 3-3). In these two examples, the textures are real, for if—heaven forbid!—you were to run your fingers over these paintings, you would feel them as rough.
   Distinctive brushstrokes produce distinctive textures. Compare, for example, the soft hatchings of Valadon’s Reclining Nude (Figure 2-16) with the grainy effect of most of the brushstrokes in Wang Yuanqi’s painting (Figure 4-8). Sometimes the textural effect can be so dominant that the specific substance behind the textures is disguised, as in the background behind the head and shoulders of Renoir’s Bather Arranging Her Hair.
   PERCEPTION KEY Texture
5. In what ways are the renditions of textures an important part in Willem de Kooning’s Woman I?
6. Suppose the ultra-smooth surfaces of Wesselmann’s nude had been used by Neel. How would this have significantly changed the content of her picture?
   Neel’s nude would be greatly altered, we believe, if she had used textures such as Wesselmann’s. A tender, vulnerable, motherly appearance would become harsh, confident, and brazen. With the de Kooning, the vigor of the painting would have lost power if the texture were smooth. De Kooning’s constant attack at the canvas, and his overpainting, produces a unique texture.
   The medium of a painting may have much to do with textural effects. Tempera usually has a dry feel. Watercolor naturally lends itself to a fluid feel. Because they can be built up in heavy layers, oil and acrylic are useful for depicting rough textures, but of course they can be made smooth. Fresco usually has a grainy, crystalline texture.
   Composition
   In painting or any other art, composition refers to the ordering of relationships: among details, among regions, among details and regions, and among these and the total structure. Deliberately or more usually instinctively, artists use organizing principles to create forms that inform.
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   Principles Among the basic principles of traditional painting are balance, gradation, movement and rhythm, proportion, variety, and unity.
   • Balance refers to the equilibrium of opposing visual forces. Leonardo’s Last Supper (Figure 3-1) is an example of symmetrical balance. Details and regions are arranged on either side of a central axis. Goya’s May 3, 1808 (Figure 2-3) is an example of asymmetrical balance, for there is no central axis.
   • Gradation refers to a continuum of changes in the details and regions, such as the gradual variations in shape, color value, and shadowing in Siqueiros’s Echo of a Scream (Figure 1-2).
   • Movement and rhythm refers to the way a painting controls the movement and pace of our vision. For example, in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (Figure 4-3), the implied movement of God from right to left establishes a rhythm in contrast with Adam’s indolence.
   • Proportion refers to the emphasis achieved by the scaling of sizes of shapes—for example, the way the large Madonna in the Cimabue (Figure 4-1) contrasts with the tiny prophets.
   • Unity refers to the togetherness, despite contrasts, of details and regions to the whole, as in Picasso’s Guernica (Figure 1-4).
   • Variety refers to the contrasts of details and regions—for example, the color and shape oppositions in O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (Figure 4-12).

FIGURE 4-12
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1930. Rust Red Hills, 1930. Oil on canvas, 16 × 30 inches. Sloan Fund Purchase. Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University. O’Keefe found the American West to be a refreshing environment after living for years in New York. This is a study of hills that fascinated her near her home in Abiqui, New Mexico, where she painted many landscapes such as this.
©2017 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: ©Fine Art Images/Heritage/The Image Works
ERCEPTION KEY Principles of Composition
After defining each principle briefly, we listed an example. Go through the color photographs of paintings in the book and select another example for each principle.
Space and Shapes Perhaps the best way to understand space is to think of it as a hollow volume available for occupation by shapes. Then that space can be described by referring to the distribution and relationships of those shapes in that space; for example, space can be described as crowded or open.
Shapes in painting are areas with distinguishable boundaries, created by colors, textures, and usually—and especially—lines. A painting is a two-dimensional surface with breadth and height. But three-dimensional simulation, even in the flattest of paintings, is almost always present, even in de Kooning’s Woman I. Colors when juxtaposed invariably move forward or backward visually. And when shapes suggest mass—three-dimensional solids—depth is inevitably seen.
The illusion of depth—perspective—can be made by various techniques, including setting a single vanishing point, as in Leonardo’s Last Supper (Figure 3-2), in which all lines in the painting seem to move toward Jesus’s head. The vanishing point in Figure 4-17, Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, is in the upper right corner, in which figures seem to recede into darkness. Many techniques, such as darkening and lightening colors, will help give the illusion of depth to a painting.
PERCEPTION KEY Composition
Choose four paintings not discussed so far and answer the following questions:

1. In which painting does color dominate line, or line dominate color?
2. Which painting is most symmetrical? Which most asymmetrical?
3. Which pleases your eye more: symmetry or asymmetry?
4. In which painting is the sense of depth perspective the strongest? How does the artist achieve this depth?
5. In which painting is proportion most important?
6. Which painting pleases you the most? Explain how its composition pleases you.
   THE CLARITY OF PAINTING
   The Swing (Figure 4-13), Fragonard’s painting of young libertines, seems to be the picture of innocent pleasures, but the painter and his audience knew that he was portraying a liberal society that enjoyed riches, station, and erotic opportunity. This painting has been considered one of the Wallace Collection’s masterpieces.
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FIGURE 4-13
Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing. 1776. Oil on canvas, 35 × 32 inches. The Wallace Collection, London. This famous painting seems at first glance to be a picture of young people at play, emulating innocent children. But the eighteenth-century audience read this as a libertine and his mistress. The swing was a code for the sexual freedom of the privileged “playmates” in the painting.
©Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy
PERCEPTION KEY The Swing

1. What are the most contrasting colors in this painting? Which character is most highlighted by color? What does the color imply?
2. How is nature portrayed in the painting? What colors and contrasts seem most expressive of nature’s powers?
3. Why is the richness of the garden the best locale for this scene? What do the lovers have in common with the garden?
4. One of the men on the ground is a clergyman. One is the woman’s lover. Which is which? How does the use of color clarify the relationship?
5. The bough and leaves above the woman are mysteriously shaped. In what sense may it be a comment on the relationship of the woman and her lover?
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   This painting was commissioned by a French baron who explicitly asked Fragonard to paint the woman as a portrait of his mistress. The baron is himself highlighted by color at the lower left looking up the skirts of his mistress. The painting established a clarity of the relationships of the figures to the eighteenth-century viewer, and of course to the characters portrayed. The figure of the man in the lower right is a clergyman who may be hopeful that the baron will marry his mistress.
   The small stone sculptures are classical figures, a Cupid on the left and putti in the lower center. The overabundance of the leaves and trees implies a fruitfulness and an erotic quotient illustrated by the castoff slipper and the baron’s recumbent posture.
   This painting has a special clarity because it is something of an allegorical representation of erotic play. Audiences today would not necessarily be aware of the specifics of the relationship of the man on the lower left with the woman on the swing. However, a careful analysis of the details of the painting—the pink dress, the man looking up her skirt, the overabundance of the vegetation, and the Cupid with his finger to his lips—and the richness of the coloration point to erotic play and erotic joy.
   THE “ALL-AT-ONCENESS” OF PAINTING
   In addition to revealing the visually perceptible more clearly, paintings give us time for our vision to focus, hold, and participate. Of course, there are times when we can hold on a scene in nature. We are resting with no pressing worries and with time on our hands, and the sunset is so striking that we fix our attention on its redness. But then darkness descends and the mosquitoes begin to bite. In front of a painting, however, we find that things stand still, like the red in Siqueiros’s Echo of a Scream (Figure 1-2). Here the red is peculiarly impervious and reliable, infallibly fixed and settled in its place. It can be surveyed and brought out again and again; it can be visualized with closed eyes and checked with open eyes. There is no hurry, for all of the painting is present, and under normal conditions it is going to stay present; it is not changing in any significant perceptual sense.
   Moreover, we can hold on any detail or region or the totality as long as we like and follow any order of details or regions at our own pace. No region of a painting strictly presupposes another region temporally. The sequence is subject to no absolute constraint. Whereas there is only one route in listening to music, for example, there is a freedom of routes in seeing paintings. With The Swing (Figure 4-13), for example, we may focus on the overhanging trees, then on the figure on the lower left, and finally on the woman in her pink dress. The next time, we may reverse the order. “Paths are made,” as the painter Paul Klee observed, “for the eye of the beholder which moves along from patch to patch like an animal grazing.” There is a “rapt resting” on any part, an unhurried series, one after the other, of “nows,” each of which has its own temporal spread.
   Paintings make it possible for us to stop in the present and enjoy at our leisure the sensations provided by the show of the visible. That is the second reason paintings can help make our vision whole. They not only clarify our world but also

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may free us from worrying about the future and the past, because paintings are a framed context in which everything stands still. There is the “here-now” and relatively speaking nothing but the “here-now.” Our vision, for once, has time to let the qualities of things and the things themselves unfold.
ABSTRACT PAINTING
Abstract, or nonrepresentational, painting may be difficult to appreciate if we are confused about its subject matter. Since no objects or events are depicted, abstract painting might seem to have no subject matter: pictures of nothing. But this is not the case. The subject matter is the sensuous. The sensuous is composed of visual qualities—line, color, texture, space, shape, light, shadow, volume, and mass. Any qualities that stimulate our vision are sensa. In representational painting, sensa are used to portray objects and events. In abstract painting, sensa are freed. They are depicted for their own sake. Abstract painting reveals sensa, liberating us from our habits of always identifying these qualities with specific objects and events. They make it easy for us to focus on sensa themselves, even though we are not artists. Then the radiant and vivid values of the sensuous are enjoyed for their own sake, satisfying a fundamental need. Abstractions can help fulfill this need to behold and treasure the images of the sensuous. Instead of our controlling the sensa, transforming them into signs that represent objects or events, the sensa control us, transforming us into participators.
Moreover, because references to objects and events are eliminated, there is a peculiar relief from the future and the past. Abstract painting, more than any other art, gives us an intensified sense of here-now, or presentational immediacy. When we perceive representational paintings such as Mont Sainte-Victoire (Figure 2-4), we may think about our chances of getting to southern France sometime in the future. Or when we perceive May 3, 1808 (Figure 2-3), we may think about similar massacres. These suggestions bring the future and past into our participation, causing the here-now to be somewhat compromised. But with abstract painting—because there is no portrayal of objects or events that suggest the past or the future—the sense of presentational immediacy is more intense.
Although sensa appear everywhere we look, in paintings sensa shine forth. This is especially true with abstract paintings, because there is nothing to attend to but the sensa. What you see is what you see. In nature the light usually appears as external to the colors and surface of sensa. The light plays on the colors and surface. In paintings the light usually appears immanent in the colors and surface, seems to come—in part at least—through them, even in the flat, polished colors of a Mondrian.
In Arshile Gorky’s Untitled 1943 (Figure 4-14), the light seems to be absorbed into the colors and surfaces. There is a depth of luminosity about the sensa of paintings that rivals nature. Generally the colors of nature are more brilliant than the colors of painting, but usually in nature the sensa are either so glittering that our squints miss their inner luminosity or so changing that we lack the time to participate and penetrate. To ignore the allure of the sensa in a painting, and in turn in nature, is to miss one of the chief glories life provides. It is especially the abstract painter—the shepherd of sensa—who is most likely to call us back to our senses.
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Study the Gorky. Then reflect on how you experienced a sense of the rhythms of your eyes as you moved across and through the painting, aware of the various shapes and their colors. The rhythmic durations are “spots of time”—ordered by the relationships between the regions of sensa. Compare your experience of this painting with listening to music. What music might be “illustrated” by this painting?

FIGURE 4-14
Arshile Gorky, Untitled, 1943–1948. Oil on canvas, 54½ × 64½ inches. The power of Gorky’s red is dominant in the painting. The interruptions of the indefinite dark-colored objects offer a contrast that makes the red even more powerful. A close look at the painting shows the levels of color in the brushstrokes that reveal layers of color beneath the surface. We see yellows and light blues and tints of gray, but they all make us aware of the sensa that clarify our understanding of Gorky’s red.
©2017 The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase, Contemporary Arts Council Fund
INTENSITY AND RESTFULNESS IN ABSTRACT PAINTING
Abstract painting reveals sensa in their primitive but powerful state of innocence. This makes possible an extraordinary intensity of vision, renewing the spontaneity of our perception and enhancing the tone of our physical existence. We clothe our visual sensations in positive feelings, living in these sensations instead of using them as means to ends. And such sensuous activity—sight, for once minus anxiety and eyestrain—is sheer delight. Abstract painting offers us a complete rest from practical concerns. Abstract painting is, as Matisse in 1908 was beginning to see,
an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.1
PERCEPTION KEY de Kooning, Gorky, and O’Keeffe

1. De Kooning’s Woman I (Figure 4-11) is, we think, an example of timelessness and the sensuous. O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (Figure 4-12) also emphasizes the sensuous, especially the rich reds, browns, and blue. What makes one painting presumably more timeless?
2. Examine the sensa in the O’Keeffe. Does the fact that the painting represents real things distract you from enjoying the sensa? How crucial are the sensa to your full appreciation of the painting?
3. What difference do you perceive in de Kooning’s and Gorky’s treatment of sensa?
4. Look at the Gorky upside down. Is the form weakened or strengthened? Does it make a difference? If so, what?
   Gorky’s Untitled 1943 (Figure 4-14) is characterized by a color field that has been worked over and over. It is essentially red, but a close look will show that there are levels of red, layers of red. And the painting seems to have a range of floating objects that, when taken symbolically, seem to impersonate ideas or messages. All the symbols have been connected to what the Dallas Museum calls a special language of Gorky’s own. In this way the expression is not of abstract ideas but of concrete color, of the sensa that Gorky moves through the painting’s plane. Nothing specific is represented in this painting, but instead color is itself presented. It is for us to enjoy and to respond to in a fundamental way without the imposition of meaning or ideas. Ironically we call this abstract art as a way of contrasting it with representational art. But abstract art is not abstract—it presents to us the concrete material of sensory experience. We see concrete color and form, and that may be the most profound aesthetic purpose of painting.
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   REPRESENTATIONAL PAINTING
   In the participative experience with representational paintings, the sense of here-now, so overwhelming in the participative experience with abstractions, is somewhat weakened. Representational paintings situate the sensuous in objects and events. A representational painting, like an abstraction, is “all there” and “holds still.” But past and future are more relevant than in our experience of abstract paintings because we are seeing representations of objects and events. Inevitably, we are at least vaguely aware of place and date; and, in turn, a sense of past and future is a part of that awareness. Our experience is more ordinary than it is when we feel the extraordinary isolation from objects and events that occurs in the perception of abstract paintings. Representational paintings always bring in some suggestion of “once upon a time.” Moreover, we are kept closer to the experience of every day, because images that refer to objects and events usually lack something of the strangeness of the sensuous alone.
   Representational painting furnishes the world of the sensuous with objects and events. The horizon is sketched out more closely and clearly, and the spaces of the sensuous are filled, more or less, with things. But even when these furnishings (subject matter) are the same, the interpretation (content) of every painting is always different.
   COMPARISON OF FIVE IMPRESSIONIST PAINTINGS
   From time to time, painters have grouped themselves into “schools” in which like-minded artists sometimes worked and exhibited together. The Barbizon school in France in the 1840s, a group of six or seven painters, attempted to paint outdoors so that their landscapes would have a natural feel in terms of color and light, unlike the studio landscapes that were popular at the time. Probably the most famous school of art of all time is the Impressionist school, which flourished between 1870 and 1905, especially in France. The Impressionists’ approach to painting was dominated by a concentration on the impression light made on the surfaces of things.
   PERCEPTION KEY Comparison of Five Impressionist Paintings
5. In which of the following paintings is color most dominant over line? In which is line most dominant over color? How important does line seem to be for the impressionist painter?
6. In terms of composition, which paintings seem to rely on diagonal lines or diagonal groups of objects or images?
7. Comment on the impressionist reliance on balance as seen in these paintings. In which painting is symmetry most effectively used? In which is asymmetry most effective? How is your response to the paintings affected by symmetry or asymmetry?
8. If you were to purchase one of these paintings, which would it be? Why?
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FIGURE 4-15
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise. 1873. Oil on canvas, 19 × 24 inches. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. This painting gave the name to the French Impressionists and remains one of the most identifiable paintings of the age. Compared with paintings by Ingres or Giorgione, this seems to be a sketch, but that is the point. It is an impression of the way the brilliant light plays on the waters at sunrise.
©Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (Figure 4-15) was shown at the first show of the impressionist painters in Paris in 1874, and it lent its name to the entire group. The scene in Sunrise has a spontaneous, sketchy effect, the sunlight breaking on glimmering water. Boats and ships lack mass and definition. The solidity of things is subordinated to shimmering surfaces. We sense that only a moment has been caught. Monet and the Impressionists painted, not so much objects they saw but the light that played on and around them.
Edouard Manet was considered the leader of the impressionist group. His striking painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Figure 4-16) is more three-dimensional than Monet’s, but the emphasis on color and light is similar. In this painting the Impressionists’ preference for everyday scenes with ordinary people and objects is present. Details abound in this painting—some mysterious, such as the legs of the trapeze artist in the upper left corner.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s joyful painting (Figure 4-17) also represents an ordinary scene of people dining on a warm afternoon, all blissfully unaware of the painter. The scene, like many impressionist scenes, could have been captured by a camera. The perspective is what we would expect in a photograph, while the cut-off elements of people and things are familiar from our experience with snapshots. The use of light tones and reds balances the darker greens and grays in the background. Again, color dominates in this painting.
Childe Hassam was well known for his cityscapes, particularly for his colorful views of New York and Paris. But he also spent summers in the New England countryside, capturing moments such as Summer Evening (Figure 4-18),

FIGURE 4-16
Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 1881–1882. Oil on canvas, 37¾ × 51¼ inches. Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. Typical of impressionist paintings, this one has for its subject matter ordinary, everyday events. Viewers may also surmise a narrative embedded in the painting, given the character in the mirror, not to mention the feet of the trapeze artist in the upper left.
©The Samuel Courtauld Trust/The Courtauld Gallery/Art Resource, NY
recollecting an ordinary evening in New Hampshire. The sharp, diagonal figure of a woman is presented in contrast to the strong, horizontal lines of the window. Hassam creates a relaxed moment, a sense of the ordinary in life, by avoiding any studied traditional composition. He seems to depend upon a photographer’s “trick” called the “rule of thirds,” by placing the figure in the right third of the composition and placing the lower horizontal of the window one-third of the way up from the bottom of the canvas. By avoiding traditional centrality of organization, Hassam produces a painting that echoes a photograph, as if doing little more than recording a simple moment.
Mary Cassatt’s sister Lydia is also posed in a sharp diagonal in Autumn (Figure 4-19). Cassatt’s intense autumn colors create a brilliance almost unexpected. For most
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FIGURE 4-17
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party. 1881. Oil on canvas, 51 × 68 inches. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Renoir, one of the greatest of the Impressionists, portrays ordinary Parisians in Luncheon of the Boating Party. Earlier painters would have seen this as unfit for exhibition because its subject is not heroic or mythic. The Impressionists celebrated the ordinary.
©Album/Art Resource, NY

FIGURE 4-18
Childe Hassam, Summer Evening. 1886. Oil on canvas, 12⅛ × 20⅜ inches. Florence Griswold Museum. The softness of both color and line implies a muted moment. Childe Hassam studied and painted in France and New York, but this scene commemorates a visit to New Hampshire. It has some of the influence of photography—an off-the-cuff pose, the figure and window both cut off—a characteristic of much impressionist painting. Hassam was considered an American Impressionist and famously connected with the Old Lyme, Connecticut, painters from the 1880s to the 1920s.
Courtesy of the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT
people autumn suggests a duller pallette and a more somber mood. Lydia is dressed very warmly in a bulky but cheerful coat, with a warm hat and gloves, and while her expression is calm and perhaps enigmatic, she is restful in the midst of an explosion of colors. In this painting, line may be less significant in terms of composition than the vitality of the brushstrokes that seem to attack the canvas. The deep, resonant colors suggest the ripening of autumn vegetables and fruits characteristic of harvest time.
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FIGURE 4-19
Mary Cassatt, Autumn (Profile of Lydia Cassatt). 1880. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia shared an apartment in Paris. Lydia frequently modeled for her. This scene is rich with autumn colors set in a Parisian garden.
©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY
FOCUS ON The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Historically, groups of painters have gathered together to form a “school” of painting. They are like-minded, often young and starting out, and usually disliked at first because they produce a new, unfamiliar style. The Impressionists in France faced a struggle against prevailing taste but eventually were accepted as innovative and marvelous. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is such a school. In 1848 in England, Henry Wallis (Figure 4-20), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Figure 4-21), Arthur Hughes (Figure 4-22), and William Holman Hunt (Figure 4-23), along with a few other painters, began having monthly meetings to discuss their ideas. They felt that followers of Italian Renaissance painter Raphael (1483–1520) had moved painting in the wrong direction, toward a realistic portrayal of life. Instead, they vowed to return to some of the medieval styles, those characterized by Giotto’s use of tempera (see Figure 4-2), although they used oil paint and watercolor. Much of their subject matter was spiritual and religious. 1848 was a year of revolutions in Europe, and the Pre-Raphaelites felt they were revolting against corruption and immorality in modern life.
The first paintings Rossetti and others exhibited included the letters “PRB,” signaling their association, which at the time was a secret society. Their first

FIGURE 4-20
Henry Wallis, The Death of Chatterton. 1855–1856. Oil on canvas, 23¼ × 36 inches. Tate Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Charles Gent Clement 1899. Reference N01685. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was a romantic figure. At age seventeen he committed suicide after having been rejected by critics. He had written a book of poems in a medieval style and passed them off as authentic relics. John Ruskin, a great writer and critic, praised the painting as “faultless and wonderful.”
©Peter Barritt/Alamy

FIGURE 4-21
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine. 1874. Oil on canvas, 49.3 × 24 inches. Tate Britain, London. Rossetti painted this many times in different tonalities. This version was the last he did, for a client, and soon after Rossetti died. The model was Jane Morris, a favorite of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Proserpine was taken to Hades to be wife to Pluto. Her mother, Ceres, asked Jupiter to let her go and he agreed as long as she did not eat of the fruit of Hades. But she ate one pomegranate seed and was lost forever.
©Art Collection/Alamy
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FIGURE 4-22
Arthur Hughes, April Love. 1855–1856. Oil on canvas, 35 × 19½ inches. Tate Gallery, London. The rich color of the young woman’s gown contrasts with the green leaves (ivy?) and the bark of the trees. She looks down to the fallen petals, and the man behind her seems a vague presence. The scene is spring and the lovers have found a quiet grotto in which to talk. Hughes married the model for this painting, and it may be a tribute to their love.
©Tate, London/Art Resource, NY
paintings were not well received. Their purposes, however, were stated clearly by William Michael Rossetti, who explained the aims of the brotherhood: to have genuine ideas, to study nature very closely, to respond deeply to medieval and renaissance art, to produce excellent pictures.

FIGURE 4-23
William Holman Hunt, Awakening Conscience. 1853. Oil on canvas, 30 × 22 inches. Tate Gallery, London. This is another painting like Fragonard’s The Swing, in that it needs to be “read” by the viewer. Because the standing woman has no wedding ring, it is clear that she is the young man’s mistress. The awakening conscience is her becoming aware that she must change her ways and become “respectable.” She is inspired by nature as she looks out the window to a brilliant spring garden—visible in the mirror behind her. The room is full of symbols: The music on the piano is a Tom Moore melody, “Oft in the Stilly Night”; the cat is toying with a bird; the man’s tossed off glove on the floor suggests her future; the tangled skein of wool in the lower right implies disorder.
©Christophel Fine Art/UIG/Getty Images
The result of their efforts is a style that is deeply sensuous, with rich color; subject matter connected with religion, myth, and literature; and careful attention to the smallest details of nature. Their style is rich with the sensa that we see in abstract painting, but it includes a narrative that explores a moral issue.
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Typical of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s approach to nature, the details of the leaves and the fallen petals are extraordinary. But the young woman’s gown is portrayed with a richness that, in the dark corner these two have found, radiates so powerfully that it seems to be a source of illumination. The detail of her scarf is also notable. Only the young man remains a mystery, although the bright floral opening in the distance implies a bright future.
These paintings have a wide variety, yet they all present a richness of sensa, profound colors that dominate the composition. Their narratives are romantic and their attention to detail roots us in the worlds they portray. They are fascinating in that they are often profoundly sensuous at the same time that they seem to reject sensuality and praise morality. We see this particularly in The Awakening Conscience. In the case of The Death of Chatterton, Wallis reminds us how fragile the life of the artist can be and pictures Chatterton as a victim of a world that did not appreciate his gifts. We are meant to be moved by the death of a youth, and most of Wallis’s audience were indeed moved. In the case of Rossetti’s Proserpine, the colors are deep and dark, suitable for a view of Hades, and the portrait of Proserpine is haunting.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began with a small group of painters in the 1840s, but it left its mark on painting because its style was modern even as it declared that it was looking backward to the Renaissance. They achieved their success in part because of their subject matter and in part because they produced intense visions in brilliant color and appealed to our sense of emotional understanding.
PERCEPTION KEY The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

1. Which of these paintings is most dominated by detail? How does color control the detail?
2. In which of the portraits is the facial expression most mysterious?
3. What do these paintings reveal about their subject matter? With which of the paintings do you find it easiest to participate?
4. In which painting does line play the most important role? In which does color play the most important role?
5. Which painting has the most complex composition? Which has the simplest?
6. Which painting tells you the most about the painter’s personality? Which is most psychologically revealing?
7. Which of the paintings has the most original composition?
8. Using one of these paintings, block out the most important shapes and analyze the effectiveness of its composition.
   FRAMES
   Photographs of paintings, as in this book, usually do not include their frames, the exceptions being Figures 4-1, 4-2, and 4-10. In general, it seems obvious that a “good” or appropriate frame should harmonize and enhance rather than dominate the picture. For example, the frame of the Cimabue delicately picks up the colors and lines of the Madonna’s throne. Furthermore, an appropriate frame usually should separate the picture from its surroundings, as again with the Cimabue. Sometimes the artist doesn’t bother with a frame.
   EXPERIENCING Frames
9. What importance does the frame have for our enjoyment of a painting?
10. Giotto’s frame is plainer than Cimabue’s. But would a more decorative frame be appropriate for the Giotto?
11. The fresco on the ceiling of the Sommaria Chapel in Castel Capuano (Figure 4-24) is an extreme example of the domination of frames. What is the relationship of the frames in this ceiling to the paintings they support?
12. If the frames in the Sommaria Chapel ceiling rise to the level of artifacts, what might be their artistic function? How do you react to them?
    Sometimes a frame overwhelms a painting, and sometimes paintings have no frames, as in almost all of Mondrian’s paintings. The consensus seems to be that a frame is valuable when it complements the painting, either by establishing its preciousness—as in the ordinary gold frame—or by establishing its shape and purpose, as in the case of the Giotto and Cimabue frames. Neither is very ornate; both are sufficient and useful. Clearly the fact that almost all the paintings illustrated in this book lack frames tells us something about the frame’s ultimate worth. Yet all museums include frames for most of the paintings represented here. Frames stabilize the canvas, establish the period and value of a painting, and set it off from the wall. They also “finish” the painting—almost like the final chord of a great symphony or the closing of the final curtain on a play. They say “the end.”

FIGURE 4-24
Fresco on the ceiling of the Sommaria Chapel, in Castel Capuano, Naples, Campania, Italy, 16th century.
©DeAgostini/Getty Images
The fresco on the ceiling of the Sommaria Chapel in Naples is an example of frames that rise to the level of artifacts in themselves. The paintings in the center of the ceiling portray religious themes, as in the Ascension of Christ in the center. But the paintings themselves are overwhelmed by the frames. As a result, we look at the ceiling and respond to the astounding detail in the frames: their intersection and symmetry, their brilliance and harmony. One comes to the chapel not just to see the paintings, but to marvel at the decorative elements. The frames take on a value similar to architecture (of which they are clearly a part). In this case it would not be difficult to imagine the ceiling with no paintings at all, but merely frames. If that were the case, would we be correct in describing them as frames—since all they would frame is empty space? Or would we consider them as sculptural elements?
When you next go to a gallery or museum to see paintings, take time to examine the frames and decide what their value is to the paintings themselves. Find one example of a good relationship between painting and frame, and one poor relationship. What makes you decide one way or the other?
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SUMMARY
Painting is the art that has most to do with revealing the sensuous and the visual appearance of objects and events. Painting shows the visually perceptible more clearly. Because a painting is usually presented to us as an entirety, with an all-at-onceness, it gives time for our vision to focus, hold, and participate. This makes possible a vision that is both extraordinarily intense and restful. Sensa are the qualities of objects or events that stimulate our sense organs. Sensa can be disassociated or abstracted from the objects or events in which they are usually joined. Sensa and the sensuous (the color field composed by the sensa) are the primary subject matter of abstract painting. Objects and events are the primary subject matter of representational painting.

*Light, shape, volume, and space are often referred to as elements, but strictly speaking, they are compounds.
1Source: Matisse, “Notes of a Painter,” La Grande Revue, December 25, 1908.