sections 1.1 line shape and the principle of contrast and 1.2 form volume mass and texture just as music has notes and Dynamics and language has grammar and vocabulary so too art has a set of elements and principles elements are the vocabulary and principles are the grammar with rules to explain how things are organized two-dimensional art relies primarily on line and shape to govern it and that's where we're going to start chart today lines are some of the earliest forms of human expression as we can see here 2D art is kind of remarkable in that those lines and shapes give the illusion of depth rather than actual physical depth in most cases lines are the most basic or Essential Elements an artist uses to organize their view of the world here we see the Nazca Lines by an unknown artist or artists from anywhere between 500 B C to 500 AD in Peru the nzca lines show us an interesting use of line because they show us figures like monkeys or spiders but they're so big that you really only get a sense of what you're looking at from a great distance they're also considered both a drawing and an engraving as they're scraped into a landscape like a cut these lines Define the outline of the shapes only geometrically a a line is that which has length but no breadth or width however practically in art there are an infinite number of types and varieties of line we can have lines that Define the boundaries between shapes or planes lines can direct our eye to look at something and lines can convey a sense of movement or energy and with that we can divide lines based on type we have contour lines and implied lines we can talk about lines in terms of function they can direct the viewer's gate or communicate an idea and we can talk about lines in terms of what they express they can regulate and control they can express freedom and passion and they can be regular or irregular contour lines suggest a volume and space with visual cues but don't necessarily give us a full outline here we see two works by hre matis we'll start with the left his blue nude number two from from 1952 which is a gouache on paper wash is like um an opaque watercolor and you can see this in the M na in Paris this is a good example of contour lines because we see a woman um seated here um in kind of a contorted position and the lines left by negative space help us to see where the Contours of her body are we can also look at the woman seated in an armchair from 1942 which is a pen and ink on paper in a private collection this one is quite fresh and relaxed in his use of line his art possesses a Simplicity and a directness which puts you at ease as if you're sitting with her we can very clearly see the type of dress she's wearing the details of the chair in which she sits and the style of her hair and jewelry all just suggested by a few concise lines implied lines are Illusions and they give us the impression of a line without continuous marks artists may use dots dashes words or receding objects all to give us this impression here we see Gom opos the calram of a lover from Cal's poems of peace and War written between 1913 and 1916 the artist here uses words to outline a sketch of his lover the words both depict this person in words and in image the top of the Hat even asks Recon do you recognize yourself in poetry of verse and line we can also see implied line in George s's very famous which is a massive pointalism whose lines are really made solely of dots of paint there isn't a single painted line in this work and if you've seen it in the Art Institute of Chicago you'll know what a map Mastery that really is directional lines communicate to us as viewers a sense of movement and where we should look James Allen's etching the connectors uses directional lines to show us to look up and to look at the height of these two workers first we see the girder and then down we are reinforced in that by the lines of the buildings in the background sometimes the lines take you to many places in a piece of art which gives you a sense of dynamism in movement so we may look diagonally up first from the left lower corner and then we may look down we may be taken to the background of the buildings and get a sense of the dizzying height at which these two men take on their work communicative lines both guide our eyes and suggest particular feelings these are often used in advertising for that reason vertical lines give us a sense of strength and energy horizontal lines suggest calmness or passivity and diagonal lines suggest action motion and change here we have the FedEx Express logo and the Nike logo what do their lines convey FedEx with its primarily horizontal motion conveys that it's moving right it's going to get your package from point A to point B with great calmness there's going to be no chaos no tossing of packages no stomping of packages right we also see the hidden Arrow which helps suggest that forward motion of the delivery service then looking at Nike's logo this is primarily a diagonal motion it gives us a sense of action like a runner sprinting off the blocks it gives us a sense of change as well from point A to point B moving so quickly that it's just a blur all of these are characteristics that both of these companies want us to understand about their product look also at Vincent Vanos the bedroom from 1888 what kinds of lines do you think he uses here and what might that convey a lot of people will see the vertical lines in the bed in the doors in the corners in the table and the chairs but then they notice these slightly off-kilter diagonal lines which give us a sense of unease here this is not a place of rest for the artist it's a place of unease discomfort um and something deeper going on another type of line is a line that regulates and controls something these often give us a sense of accuracy and tend to be used in things like sketches and blueprints or technical drawing that must be very precise here we see British sculptor Barbara Hepworth using regulated lines in the preliminary drawings used for sculptures they are crisp and give us a sense of the sensations Hepworth wants to convey in her work lines to express Freedom or passion are kind of the opposite side of the coin they tend to be wild and irregular or chaotic and accidental they're kind of like a child scribbling with a crayon these wild lines express feelings that are difficult to verbalize or articulate French artist Andre Masson um took this to an extreme with his automatic drawing done between 1925 and 1926 and this was achieved after days without food or sleep so think of this as extreme sleep deprivation when we look at his use of line we see some some shapes which could be familiar a lot of people see hands and feet noses a heart uh Ball moving at great speed some people see music notes as well but they are free they vary in width as well there's nothing regular or geometric about them at all this is true stream of consciousness of the pen on the paper another example of an artist working with lines to express freedom is Georgiana hton with glory be to God from 1864 this is watercolor and gouache on paper which is then laid on board um and it's in Melbourne Australia Howton saw her very Freel looking painting as being systematically organized by spiritual forces Beyond her control so when she was painting it was not her painting but it was some sort of spirit moving through her to move the brush on the page to create these beautiful free lines and curves finally we can characterize lines as regular or irregular and often many works of art will contain both of these types here we see George Bellow's Woodstock Road from Woodstock New York in 1924 done in black crayon on woven paper here crayon is not like a child's crayon this is something called a con crayon which is an artist tool we'll talk about in unit 2 compare the regularity of the man-made structures so the houses and the barn with the irregularity of the natural structures the fields the trees the clouds all of these are different types of lines some regulate and control some Express Freedom some are regular and some are irregular and very organic in their description shape is kind of The Next Step along from line and is a two-dimensional area defined by lines or suggested by other changes such as changes in color or Texture we can have strict geometric shapes or looser organic shapes in a piece of art here is Miriam Shapiro's baby blocks from 1983 which is a collage on paper we see she uses a number of different types of shapes to suggest the beauty and changes that occur in childhood you see the actual children's blocks in the background these are very geometric and then in the foreground we see more organic shapes we see flowers we see children's clothing we see leaves all of these come together to create a portrait of childhood and what perhaps her children may have been like contrast is often used to define shapes and is defined as when an artist uses two different states of an element so you can have positive space which is filled in and negative space which is left blank for example here is El lit's beat the whites with the red wedge from 1919 which is a lithograph um and it's held in the Russian State library in Moscow there is a clear difference between positive space and negative space here and the positive space of this huge red wedge poking into the white gives us a clear theme of The bolik Red Army over um other forces another example of an artist who uses positive and negative space so contrast in a really interesting way is mcer this is Sky and water number one from 1938 and it's a wood cut if you begin at the top you'll notice the positive space are these birds in flight and then they become a little bit more nebulous and we can't really tell what the negative space is between them at the top as we move towards the middle there's a clear distinction between positive and negative space with positive being birds and negative being fish then we continue towards the bottom and our eye is taken down to the fish which had occupied um a negative space and now kind of occupies this strange midg ground it's not necessarily a negative space because it is drawn in but it definitely has less um than the the fully positive space of the black water around it really interesting um visual illusions that he creates now the next section takes us on to three-dimensional works of art and these unlike two-dimensional Works have a physical depth and place in space they possess four visual elements form volume mass and texture form applies to an actual three-dimensional object like a pyramid here we see the Pyramid of Giza or like the Great Sphinx in the foreground the form of an object can evoke other memories and associations from other objects in the world so we might see a little pyramidal block and immediately think of the Great Pyramid or another pyramid structure um we've had experience with geometric forms are easily expressed in words or with mathematical equations they are regular and include things like cubes spheres cylinders cones prisms and pyramids David Smith's QB number 19 from 1964 is made of geometric figures welded together in angular relationships this gives us a real energy and dynamism in this p which is enhanced by the burnish surfaces we see a clear difference between industrial versus natural forms the whole effect of this geometric um sculpture is one of peril is it going to fall is it going to collapse all of these structures seem to be balanced on a single line or a single point on their surface which makes it very exciting to look at visually organic forms like organic shapes are irregular and unpredictable we see these most often in works of art that depict living things so here are two examples of the same subject on the left we have an unknown artists rotken P from around 1300 which is done in painted limewood and on the right we have Michelangelo's famous P from 1499 sculpted in Marble both show organic form in the human body and the draped fabric covering them one is of a much more Gothic style the rotkin P it looks a little bit more disproportionate versus Michelangelo sculpture which is beautifully in proportion and we can even see the musculature and veins of the figure shown three-dimensional Works can also have differing degrees of depth and can go from anything like a relief sculpture to sculpture in the round relief projects a from a sort of mix between 2D and 3D so they are mounted on a wall or a flat surface and they project from them out into our space You can have anything from what's called a b relief which is a very low relief to a high relief which almost looks like a fully three-dimensional sculpture here we have an unknown artist Imperial procession from the r AIS AUST from 13 BC this is the um Augustine altar of Peace in Rome this would be considered a relatively low relief because the figures don't stick out too far from the background a sculpture that's in the round is fully three-dimensional and can usually be viewed from all sides artists must consider how viewers will interact with the sculpture from all angles and viewpoints are they going to look at it from above From Below is it going to be viewed from eye level this creates a lot of visual interest for the viewer they get to see so many planes and angles of the surface and they often get to see different moments of his story unfolding as they walk around a sculpture a very good example is an unknown artist Aphrodite crouching at her bath also called Le's Venus which is a 2 Century ad Roman copy of a Greek original there aren't many Greek original sculptures which still exist which is why in a lot of cases throughout this course you'll see that we're looking at Roman copies of them the Romans love to take from other cultures here we can see many different points at the story of Aphrodite being caught um bathing she's covering her nudity with her arms and she's crouching down her expression even seems to change as we walk around the sculpture and we can see her body fully we can see the folds in her legs we can see the curve of her back as she leans over to cover herself we can see her hairstyle from several different views and again her hands beautifully posed all of this is meant to be viewed the sculpture the sculptor excuse me wanted us to see this another concept we need to think about with three-dimensional works is volume volume is the amount of space that something takes up it can be totally filled like the Venus that we just looked at the Aphrodite or it can be implied open volume like Ralph helmi and Stuart skater's Ghost Rider from 1994 which is made of little cast metal heads from history you can see in the close-up view some of the little heads from Easter Island you can see a bust of a Roman Patricia all of which are suspended to create the shape of a human head when viewed mass in three-dimensional Works suggests a solid volume that occupies space every um substance in the world has mass and our perception of the mass of an object is based on our experience with other large and small heavy and light objects so if we pick up a piece of stone we expect it to be heavy because perhaps we've held Stone before and stone is heavy if we pick up a feather we expect it to be light because feathers are light so all of that goes back to our experiences and our perceptions here we see this MCH head from between 1 1200 to 900 BC in verac Cruz Mexico just looking at this we expect this to have an incredible Mass because of its size and because of the fact that it's made out of stone and it does these things are huge and we'll look at them later in unit three now texture is the last thing we're going to discuss um about three-dimensional Works texture is how we describe the tactile sensation of the surface of an object so it's what it feels like and it can be suggested or something that you can actually touch and feel here we see the artist Anish kapur's cloudgate from 2004 which is made of stainless steel and you can find it in the Millennium Park Chicago this is colloquially referred to as the bean because of its shape it looks like a bean it has a highly reflective surface we know it's made of steel thus we expect it to be smooth we also expect it to change temperature if it's a hot day it might feel hot if it's winter in Chicago it's going to feel cold right because of our experiences with how metal feels when it is at different temp temperatures this type of work almost invites us to go touch it which the artist actually wants us to do he wants us to physically interact with it and it might it would have been much less inviting if it had had a rough or sharp looking texture subversive texture contradicts our ideas about what texture we expect from an object we expect that a teacup for example should be smooth should be cool to the touch or hot to the touch if it actually has tea or coffee inside it right however surreal sculpter Mar oppenheim made the ob in 1936 which is a fur covered cup saucer and Spoon to give a really unexpected experience to the viewer people either love this or they hate it they think it's fascinating or it's disgusting because you think about putting tea in this fur covered cup the fur is going to get wet and sticky possibly from the honey or the sugar it's going to feel strange if you try to drink from it um it's going to get soggy as you try to stir it with the spoon all of these are subversive textures which are quite fascinating and bring us an entirely different experience of an object that we may be used to in our everyday lives