I hope you enjoy this refurbished post from September, 2017
There was a time in our history of visual art when variations of values were used primarily for showing the effects of a light source. But the early
Abstractionists broke wide open the whole concept what values do. Rather than being a tool to interpret forms' relationship to their light source, value became a tool for creating the visual structure of a painting.
Early on into the movement, when Abstractionists were beginning to break away from imagery altogether, a scene like this...
...might have looked something like this.
Its value structure looks like this:
Value became a design element rather than describing one. As the Abstract movement progressed, images
became less important and eventually totally disappeared. If an image stimulated an idea, not much evidence of it remained. Instead, its shapes or colors or values became the content.
At the height of Abstractionism, the value structure of our image might have been broken into degrees of value
arranged into ordered parts, placed to guide the eye throughout a design. They, not the image, along with the other visual elements, become the subject matter.
As abstraction took on more expression, degrees of value took on the role of a guide in visual movement rather than
design structure. Among many options, our image might have taken a zig-zag expression like this, again leading the eye throughout the piece, but with emphasis more on movement than on order.
For a time, Abstractionism and Expressionism removed all semblance of imagery. The visual elements became
either the subject matter or vehicles for communicating an intellectual idea, a felt emotion or a concept. Value tended to act as the element that created the visual structure, if indeed there was one.
The felt sensation of swirling in space might have been interpreted something like this.
Today, artists who prefer abstraction to realism still use value as a tool with which to organize how the eye moves throughout the
painting. Their movement has influenced realistic painters to consider the same role of value in their work. Today, we are aware that the value structure is of upmost importance.
But, we must not neglect that it is the light source itself that causes those relationships and variations we see among values. It is the light source that creates values, after all.
Abstractionism --An art movement that began in Europe during the late 19th century, using the visual language as its
content. Creating visual order is the major concern, with little or no visual references in the work.
Expressionism--An art movement originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists create towards
emotional experience rather than objective reality.
Abstract Expressionism-- A merging of the two movements.
Enjoy a Light Filled Weekend!
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