Rhythm in Art

Kandinsky would have liked this painting.

As with music, rhythm is an important element in visual art. In this painting by Arlene Tarpey, we see the repetition of circular and elliptical shapes. There are three patterns: the literal statement of bicycle wheels, the row on top of distinct circles, and the row at the bottom of ellipses in a blur. Your eye goes round and round, but, because of the variations in the pattern, never gets bored. It’s hard not to get entranced. The composition as a whole sweeps the attention upward, to the upper right corner because that’s where the human figure is—always a trump card in any visual work—and also because of the small red collage, way in the corner. What is that? Can’t tell, it’s too small and it’s just a scrap. But we can make out that it shows the rhythm of a set of vertical lines. Voila, a reinforcement of the work’s theme, this time in counterpoint: linear vs. circular. If this little red patch had circles in it, that wouldn’t work, would be boring, too much of the same. The black vertical lines echo the rhythm motif and at the same time provide counterpoint.
Arlene Tarpey, mixed media (acrylic, pastel, collage on paper), ~16″x20″

Now let’s flip it horizontally (in Photoshop).

Oooo, totally different feeling!  In which version is she going faster?  When she’s going towards the left or to the right?

Kandinsky didn’t talk about this left-right business and I don’t know what the musical analogy for the left-right flip would be.  But in image making, left and right are weighty issues, as you can see from this example. 

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Stage Set with Circular Forms, Part 3

When you’re drawing the stuff of still life, there will be no hurt feelings. No box, bottle or drapery rag will accuse you of being shallow or insensitive or getting the proportions wrong. Not only is this, then, an invitation to scribble away with abandon and produce new, improved markmaking, but it’s also an opportunity to see form, i.e., to go for abstraction. This is what happened with Maggy’s Stage Set with Circular Forms.
I find this drawing daring and exhilarating. Notice the tilted round container at lower left: it’s the only thing drawn with the illusion of three-dimensionality. All its shadows and reflected light are academically correct so that it looks convincing in the classical sense. Everything else in this composition is texture and a play on forms.
The z-curve as a suggestion of drapery exists in its own abstract world. You want to be reminded of drapery? Fine. But this line asserts itself for its own pleasure and as a counterpoint to the rectilinearity on the other side.
It may seem simple. How hard can it be to put an s-curve on a piece of paper! Well, not physically, that’s nothing. But to be so in tune with your drawing that you can see that this z-curve in that part of the drawing will be just right, for that you need to be having a good day at your drawing board.
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What’s the Question?

The difference between an image and a snapshot documentation of an object is that the image triggers questions in your mind that go beyond the factual.  When you look at this drawing you don’t just say, I know the name of that plant.  Yes, it’s a variegated philodendron.  If documentation and naming were the point of this exercise, you would move on.  But you don’t.  You keep looking at this thing.  You don’t really know why.  It’s just that the image—that’s what it is—puzzles you, raises questions that you can’t even articulate.  So here you are, you keep looking.

• You’ll never be able to answer the question of why that leaf at the lover left is sticking up out of nowhere.  But it’s perfect there.
• Why is the horizon line that defines the black background on the top pointed instead of straight?  It was probably inspired by the corner of the room, though that was cluttered with easels.  It’s an invention of the artist/student and it’s just right.
• Why did Linné draw the plant full of leaves on the left and bare-stemmed on the right?  He certainly didn’t see that.  Another invention.

All three inventions create tension and counterpoint.  The viewer is suspended (like a gymnast) by the ropes of these dynamics.  Questions will form in the mind, but their grammar will disintegrate.  That’s how art works.

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Choice of Subject

In the 15^th and 16^th century, if you wanted to make it as an artist, you had to be good at painting flesh: muscles and bosoms, etc.  In the 19^th century we got into landscapes.  In the 20^th, we expected to be surprised and even shocked and we now take it for granted that art gives us something new, a new perception.

Here are a couple of drawings from a still life set up that offered all sorts of subjects, including  an apple  nicely poised next to a pitcher.  But the pitcher-apple  combination is a trope in still life studies.  It’s more exiting to draw…a garden hose. That is, if you see a coiled up garden hose as an interesting subject.  Seeing is the first step and it can take students many months, even years, to experience the pleasure of shapes in banal objects and then to summon the courage to draw something so banal.  And then to have the skill to make a compelling drawing of …a garden hose.

Another exiting take of the still life is this one, showing the studio stools underneath.  They provide a severe counterpoint to the rolling hills of drapery.  They also allow a peek of the drapery completely in shadow—another counterpoint to the drapery on top.  There’s drama in this drawing. When you choose to include the underside of the “real” subject, you don’t have to know exactly how this will work out.  You just have to have a feeling for the not-so-given, the not-so-obvious, the not-so-comfortable.  This makes you a modern artist.

(Click to enlarge the images.)

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