Art Appreciation: Understanding the Basics

Study Notes

Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and the artist gives us knowledge of nature's unrealized ends.
Art is a mediator of the unspeakable, and it searches for individualism.
Art is an expression of man's ideas, imagination, and emotions through the use of his body.

Refers to the distances or areas around, between, and within components of a piece.
Positive space refers to the subject of the piece itself.
Negative space refers to the empty spaces the artist has created around, between, and within the subjects.

Indicates direction, orientation, movement, and energy.
Vertical line represents power, strength, stability, simplicity, and efficiency.
Horizontal line creates an impression of serenity and perfect stability, rest, calmness, peace, and repose.
Jagged line shows violence, confusion, and conflict.
Curved line shows a gradual change of direction and fluidity and signifies subtle form.

An enclosed space, a bounded two-dimensional form that has both length and width.
Boundaries are defined by other elements of art such as line and space.
Organic shapes are based on natural or living forms and can be irregular.
Geometric shapes are based on measured forms.

Connotes something that is three-dimensional and encloses volume, having length, width, and height.
Geometric forms are mathematical, precise, and can be named, as in the basic geometric forms: sphere, cube, pyramid, cone, and cylinder.
Organic forms are free-flowing, curvy, sinewy, and are not symmetrical or easily measurable or named.

Produced when light, striking an object, is reflected back to the eye.
A sensation, a human reaction to a hue arising in part from the optic nerve, and in part from education and exposure to color.
Classification of colors:
- Primary colors: colors that cannot be formed from mixtures because they are pure colors (e.g. Red, Blue, and Yellow).
- Secondary colors: colors formed out of combination of two primary colors (e.g. Blue + Yellow = Green; Red + Blue = Violet; Red + Yellow = Orange).
- Intermediate colors: colors formed out of mixing one primary and one secondary (e.g. Yellow + Green = Yellow green; Red + Violet = Red violet; Red + Orange = Red orange).
Hue: refers to the names we assign a color.
Saturation: refers to the vividness of color.
Value: refers to the lightness or darkness of the color.

Used to describe the way a three-dimensional work actually feels when touched.
In two-dimensional work, such as painting, it may refer to the visual "feel" of a piece.