sandr037

One of the easiest ways to test an image for compositional strength is to use Photoshop to desaturate and contrast the painting so as to see only the essential elements and their relationships.   If you have an iPhone you can do the whole process in seconds using the camera and filters. By doing this you are reducing the painting to large areas of black and white, with minimal gradation in between. Renaissance painters called this effect “Chiaroscuro”, which means literally “light-dark” in Italian.  Early photography often created this effect due to the inconsistency of the chemical process. This photograph of Yvonne de Quievrecourt from 1914 shows (accidently I would guess) a wonderful strength and focus on the upper body and face, while giving only an impression of the dress. If the face had been lost in a light background, it would have been obvious at a glance. Painters of the late Renaissance preferred the heightened drama of strong lights and darks. The Supper at Emmaus...

This image (filtered for contrast and color) caught my eye a few days ago. Eakins’ painting The Gross Clinic came to mind, as did other group portraits. But…. It was nothing so important artistically, Or historically for that matter… It was simply a photo of soldiers carrying a body on a stretcher in China after a landslide (WSJ Jan 12/13).   Funny how a photograph of an activity which happens hundreds of times a day around the world became imprinted on my mind.   It is essentially an unrecognizable light spot on a dark background.   Nothing that important, but to my eye and brain it was something worth spending some time with. Portraits are the most obvious examples of the light spot grabbing your attention.   I have always liked Titian’s The Young Englishman , in part because it resembles a friend from my younger days, but also because of the scattered light spots.   It happens that Titian’s style of portrait painting became the standard for the next 400 yea...

A couple of summers ago a part of my neighborhood lost power.   There was no moon and the darkness was absolute.   Looking down the street was like looking into a black hole; it was spooky.   I kept staring into the blackness searching for the houses and trees I knew were there. We are naturally afraid of darkness, but we are also fascinated by it.   There must be something in the seeming nothingness.   We think that an unlighted area must contain some hint to its contents so that the human brain can go to work creating a reality.   The lack of all information is profoundly unsettling. The Horsehead Nebula is a classic example of an imperfect silhouette that provides a reality through its limited illumination and translucence.   Seen directly through a telescope it is pure black, but in long, multiple exposure photographs some detail of its structure can be seen, and the awesome reality imagined.    In painting you are bound to run across a ...