Often when I'm looking at certain works of master painters, I feel an impish smile creep onto my face because I see where the master comes close to defying a compositional principle, especially one that our teachers shook their fingers in our faces about. It's that emphasis on "follow the rules" that has always rubbed me the wrong way. Master painters work the principle rather than follow it as a rule. Every single composition principle is a cause/effect action, not a rule to be followed. FAMILIAR "RULE": NEVER PLACE AN IMAGE IN THE CENTER As a principle, this concept might better be stated: To keep balance throughout the painting and insure our images are a part of the whole piece, we can place an image in the center if we offset it with other images or visual elements. Look what Rockwell did in The Art Critic. The guy's legs are directly aligned with the left side of the picture frame behind him, right in the middle of the canvas. But the tilt of his body and the strong value contrast of the portrait he's examining pull our attention away from the
center towards the left. Then, the tilt of the huge brush pointing to the dark painting on the upper right function to balance that. Although I think this scheme would have worked better without the extreme emphasis of angled floor pattern, Rockwell has humorously teased the center placement "rule". In The Scythers, NC Wyeth (Andrew's father) teases the never-center "rule" by placing two people on either side of the center. The angle tilts and the location of the girl keep our eyes exploring the whole scene rather than getting stuck
in the center. And then there's Bouruereau's The Little Knitter. She sits right in the center of his composition, but he balances that with the plant on the left and the strong emphasis of her seat on the right. He uses those angular positions of
her garment on both sides and the tilt of her knees and feet to pull our attention away from the center. Sargent does a fun thing, teasing the never-center "rule" in his The Little Fruit Seller. He has negotiated the center on both sides of it, similar to what NC Wyeth did, but a bit cleverer. There are dozens of examples by master painters where the center placement is teased. Knowing how composition works enables the master painters to do that. Fortunately, these composing principles are accessible to all of
us. We can easily learn how to use them when we approach them as cause/effect actions rather than rules. Enjoy a fun-filled weekend! 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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