WHAT IS A PAINTING: VISUAL POETRY & MUSIC

WHAT IS A PAINTING: VISUAL POETRY & MUSIC
Introduction Composition is a complex topic and involves everything you need to know in
order to make a painting “work”. Many textbooks treat the subject too narrowly,
focusing on the small details of composition but at the same time missing the
“big picture”. The first big picture thing you need to understand is the difference
between the “poetry” and “music” of a painting. Most (but not all) great
paintings have both poetry and music.
Poetry The poetry of a painting is what the artist is trying to communicate to the viewer
through his or her painting, and the emotion that is elicited from the viewer. This
is the intellectual concept of the painting that arises from the illusion created by
the painting. The degree of representation of the subject and the illusion that is
created, varies from pure abstraction, in which the image bears no direct
resemblance to any recognizable subject, to pure naturalism in which the artist
has made the image as close as possible to the actual appearance of the subject.
To include a poetic element, a painting needs to:
1. represent, resemble, or at the very least suggest something, however abstract
that representation may be, and
2. focus that illusion into some idea or concept (often something to do with
human emotions).
Music The music of a painting is its sensuous, non-intellectual part. It derives from the
physiological pleasure the human brain gets from making visual order out of the
visual chaos of nature. The artist translates nature’s complexity into a rhythm of
simpler shapes, colors, and values and at the same time creates color harmony
from the kaleidoscope of often inharmonious colors that are found in nature.
This is done by selectively choosing what to paint and by using the appropriate
colors to achieve that harmony. The music works in two ways:
1. when the painting is seen from a far distance, and
2. when it is seen from a near distance. The near music derives from how the
paint has been applied to the painting and in the rhythm and shapes of the
brushwork.
Definition of painting You can therefore define a painting as visual poetry combined with visual music
and created using a painting process. One interesting use of this model of a
painting is to help place contemporary work and the great changes that painting
went through during the 20th century (from abstract art to photo realism, and
conceptual art) into a much broader and more understandable historical context.
Edition 2.0 www.VirtualArtAcademy.com ©2008 Barry John Raybould
Design & Composition Unit One 2
WHAT IS A PAINTING: VISUAL POETRY & MUSIC (CONTINUED)
Definition of painting
Diagram
The above diagram shows the four quadrants that make up the visual music and
poetry of a painting.