I hope you enjoy new take on a subject I addressed four years ago. Does every painting need a focal point? Not always, say some professionals, but others consider it an absolute requirement. In fact, many artists take focal points for granted as dogma, including them in a
composition without thought for whether the intention of the painting might need such a thing. One interesting fact is that I have six professional textbooks on design and composition and not one of them mentions focal points. So, from where did that notion come and why has it taken such a hold in our painting
culture? Let's define focal
point. Google it and we get the following: - A focus; a point at which rays of light or other radiation converge
- The center of any activity
- A feature that attracts particular
attention
As regarding painting, focal point is an area of emphasis around which the rest of a painting is centered or something in strong contrast that pulls the viewer's eye into the
painting. With these definitions in mind, where is the focal point in this John Singer Sargent masterpiece, Cashmere? I have heard heated arguments about Sargent's focal point in this painting. Fact is, there isn't one. Sargent has constructed a composition where the emphases are in progressing degrees so that the viewer's eye is interested in moving within the whole piece without being confused about where to look.
Sometimes a
master artist will have other intentions and abandon the focal point altogether. Consider the paintings below, all different in genre or style, all considered master paintings within their particular genres. None of them has a focal point. We’re all familiar with the work of action painter, Jackson Pollock. Because of the nature of his painting process—distributing drips and splashes with repeated movement throughout the canvas—Pollock’s later work does not have a focal point. Instead, we are engaged by the endless maze of paint, a pattern created by movement A different kind of intention—that of repeating a single image with variations set in a tic-tac-toe grid—is found in Andy Warhol’s Marilyn, another work where there is not a single focal point. In his later work, Claude Monet's intention was to explore the effects on a single subject in changing light at various times of the day, change of weather and seasons throughout a series of paintings. We can't
pinpoint exactly when the dogma of focal point began. We do know that many master paintings' goal is to have the painting centered around a single subject. Leonardo's Last Supper is a good example of this, and certainly all portrait paintings are. But rather than a focal point being an absolute necessity, shouldn't whether to use it be determined by the intention of the
painting? Many will teach you that you must have a focal point because without doing so, your piece will lack direction and viewers won't have any area on which to focus. That is simply not
true. It is not the focal point that gives direction to a painting, but how it is composed. OUR MASTER ARTSTS ARE OUT TEACHERSIf we study how the master artists composed their paintings, we will discover that, even though some will include a focal point, it is how areas of emphasis are arranged that keeps the viewer engaged, not whether the piece has a focal point. Emerging painters should beware of dogma. If a teaching opens up your creative process, then it's something to explore, but if it limits your creativity, beware. Enjoy a fun weekend of creative growth! During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
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