Assignment 6 - Solution
Visual harmony and balance as a rule
Varieties of Visual Experience
By Edmund Burke Feldman
No matter what its purpose, the elements of an artwork are organized to be seen. The
purpose of a chair is to support someone and to be seen. The purpose of a poster is to
persuade people and to be seen. Better said, a poster must be seen before it can
persuade. Works of art have one common goal over and above their personal, social, or
physical goals. That goal might be called organization for visual effectiveness, or design.
Design is a process which is common to the creation of all works of art. For that reason,
we make no distinction in this book between the design of paintings or sculptures and
die design of useful objects like chairs or posters or book jackets. Sometimes, the word
design is restricted to the creation of utilitarian objects, while the creation of "nonuseful" objects like pictures and statues is called composition—a more "artistic" process.
But for our purposes design applies to any art object, regardless of its maker, its
material or its use why?
1. Because the useful objects of the past often become the "useless" objects of the
present. The status of the object may change but its visual organization remains the
same.
2. Because so-called useless objects (pictures, statues, decorative objects) have a
purpose. Although it is not necessarily a physical purpose: they function by being seen.
3. Because design, regardless of purpose, is the artist's chief way of controlling what we
see.
By insisting that design is a process common to all works of art, and by refusing to set up
a hierarchy of art objects—calling some fine art and others applied or minor art—we
gain certain advantages. We avoid being embarrassed by history, as when a fertility
figure becomes a "fine-art" object in a culture that employs modern medicine instead of
magic. We avoid classification problems, such as how to distinguish between the
physical usefulness, the psychological expressiveness, and the aesthetic value of stained
glass in a Gothic cathedral. We recognize the power of all kinds of images: the Brooklyn
Bridge is symbolically potent even though it was meant to carry travelers across a river.
There must be a visual reason, a design reason, for that symbolic power.
As soon as materials are formed and assembled, they become a visual organization that
succeeds or fails because of the way its elements work together. All works of art exhibit
certain patterns of working together—patterns sometimes called "principles" of design.
These principles are based mainly on the way people see effectively. In a sense, the socalled principles of design are the result of long-term trial and error.
The habit of reading from left to right, or top to bottom, or right to left may produce
differences in the way we look at images. But everyone has to measure size
relationships, the distance between objects, and the speed of moving objects. Our
binocular vision and perceptions of color, size, shape, brightness, texture, and depth
confer more uniformity than diversity on our seeing. Because of that perceptual
uniformity we can speak of design elements and principles as if they applied to
everyone. In fact, as languages go, the language of vision may be the best we have for
communicating the unity of the human species.
1) Congruity or agreement exists among the elements in a design; they look as
though they belong together, as though some visual connection beyond mere
chance has caused them to come together.
a) Balance
b) Harmony
c) Continuity
2) If the same ten cars are wearing the same color you would group them because
of...
a) Similarity
b) Proximity
c) Balance
3) Cover for the Beatles' album Hard Day's Night uses the principles of
a) Composition
b) Radial balance
c) Similarity
4) The Hero MotoCorp Logo is an example of
a) Proximity
b) Closure
c) Symmetry
5) Walter Gropius (Director of the Bauhaus), his office carpet, designed by Gertrud
Arndt has been created using
a) Visual Climax
b) Proximity
c) Similarity
d) All of the above
e) None of the above
6) An unified visual design can have more than one focal points
a) True
b) False
7) Focal points can be created using
a) Dominance
b) Contrast
c) Proximity
d) All of the above
e) None of the above
8) Thomas Eakins. The Agnew Clinic. 1889 uses
a) Proximity to create balance
b) Isolation to create hierarchy of emphasis
c) Law of closure
9) Progressive rhythm involves contrast and asymmetry, plus an inconsistency of
change. Thus the viewer's expectation is aroused in terms of a balance and
contrast.
a) True
b) False
10) The rhythm involves repetition, but repetition of a shape that changes in a
regular manner. There is a feeling of a sequential pattern.
a) Alternating rhythm
b) Progressive rhythm