Since over 300 years BC, artists have been fascinated with an
aesthetic mystery. Spiritual teachers call it the space between, mathematicians call it ratio,
musicians call it the musical interval. Tradition has it that Leonardo was the first to call it the golden section. Several other labels have surfaced for it--the golden ratio, the golden mean, the divine proportion. To the painter, it's both the golden rectangle and the golden mean or ratio. To simplify, all rectangles contain within two squares, one within each side of the rectangle. The amount of space added to either square determines the rectangle's ratio (length to width). A golden rectangle is the only
one whose rectangle within replicates the overall rectangle's ratio, and subsequent smaller rectangles continue to replicate that ratio to infinity. The ratio is 1 to .618∞ (most often shown without the infinity symbol). Early cultures, especially early Greeks, discovered that ratio to be dynamic and aesthetically pleasing, if not perfect proportion. Consequently, many artists still rely on it for placing and spacing their images. It's a ratio that is
repeated throughout nature, including within the human body. (There are volumes about it online, even efforts to make it a myth.) Neoclassicist French painter Jacques Louis David used it to place his major images in Death of Socrates. Enjoy a weekend of perfect ratios!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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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
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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