Readings

Gestalt is fairly simple to understand once you know what it inhabits. It is the way the mind works when we look at something, say a piece of art.

As we went over in class, Gestalt has four principles: closure, continuance, proximity, and similarity. But that is just the basics. There are visual elements that help work our mind to put pieces together like position, direction, and space.  I learned about these in past art classes, but never knew that all of this combined was Gestalt. The way things are placed; how far apart, where and the spaces in the shapes make your mind jump to different conclusions. Along with all of the placement and distance, there’s also depth. Good old depth perception can help communicate a meaning to someone. It helps organize space and set the relationship to objects.

When symmetry and asymmetry come into the picture, things twist around more. They usually go hand in hand with placement and proximity. But all of these things add up together to become the whole. The work of art that you look at and instantly recognize as something.

Now, the piece of art that you’re looking at… what is it called? How does it make you feel? The name of a piece can drastically change what your mood is. That’s why artists use intense names sometime, to give a hint of what you should be feeling. It’s like they’re overemphasizing something.  It’s done in the work too. Something could be too big or too small. Just enough that we catch it. Now if the art made you upset or indifferent, I wonder if the artist cares? I’m positive most do, I mean they’re displaying their artwork for all to see.  Some might not. They created it for their own purposes, not anyone else’s.  “Design is not just ornamentation…design fills practical needs.”(Principles of Form and Design). The art you see probably isn’t useful in basic needs.

Design can be created without any knowledge of what makes it. What does make up Design? Well there are conceptual elements, visual elements, relational elements, and practical elements. When I read through this I thought, you’re kidding me, this all looks like geometry to me. But it creates something more than that.  Conceptual is the basic point, line, plane, and volume. Like the parts making the whole. Now visual comes after you put the lines together.  It holds shape, size, color, and texture.  It’s a bit obvious what each means.  Relation ties back with what we learned about Gestalt. Direction, position, space and gravity.  They all come together to represent something. Practical Elements are something you can slap on a canvas. When you look at something or use something with design, it has representation; almost like a metaphor; meaning, and function. Meaning if it conveys something to you and function is well… if it has use.

Let’s go back to space. Positive and Negative space create form and so on in a domino effect kind of. You can’t have all the others without one. The forms that are created from positive and negative space react with each other in relationships.

Detachment, touching, overlapping, interpenetration, union, subtraction, intersection, and coinciding.  Before taking WASH I knew that these all existed but never really thought about how the interactions were and how they were made with all of the principles and characteristics of how a piece of art is made. It can be a bit overwhelming. Every little detail comes together to make a fantastic composition.