Art Appreciation: Understanding the Basics

Definition of Art

• 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.

Characteristics of Art

• Man-made
• Unique
• Aesthetics

Types of Art

• Painting
• Sculpture
• Architecture
• Literature
• Music

Elements of Art

Space

• 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.

Line

• 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.

Shape

• 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.

Form

• 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.

Color

• 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.

Texture

• 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.