Some
Principles of
Design
Some
PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
REPETITION
VARIATION
CONTRAST
BALANCE – symmetry/asymmetry
EMPHASIS - accent
ECONOMY
PROPORTION
SCALE
Repetition in Art
Creates visual rhythm
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Rhyme in poetry
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much with Us”
(1807)
Alliteration & assonance in poetry
TO THE STONE-CUTTERS
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Robinson Jeffers, 1924
Andy Warhol,
Orange Disaster
No. 5, 1963
Eadweard Muybridge, photographer
Some repetition in music
PHILIP GLASS
EINSTEIN ON THE
BEACH
(an opera)
Monet Poplars . . .
Monet Poplars . . .
Monet Poplars . . .
Charles Demuth,
The Figure 5 in
Gold, 1928
Cimabue,
Madonna
Enthroned,
1280-90
TEXTBOOK p. 185
VARIATION:
the alliance between repetition and surprise
The extensive poem, moreover, satisfies another
two-fold requirement, one that is closely related to
the rule of variety within unity: repetition and
surprise. Repetition is a cardinal principal in poetry.
Meter and its accents, rhyme, the epithets in
Homer and other poets, phrases and incidents that
recur like musical motifs and serve as signs to
emphasize continuity. At the other extreme are
breaks, changes, inventions - in a word, the
unexpected. What we call development is merely
the alliance between repetition and surprise,
recurrence and invention, continuity and
interruption.
Octavio Paz, “Telling and Singing” in The Other Voice
The Four
Evangelists, from
the Gospel Book
of Charlemagne,
early 9th century
TEXTBOOK p. 135
dancers
CAILLEBOTTE, Gustave
Paris: A Rainy D ay, 1877, Oil on canvas, 83 1/2 x 108 3/4"
CONTRAST
Martin Munkacsi
Black Boys on
the Shore of
Lake Tanganyika
(1931)
photograph
Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace (detail)
Japan, Kamakura period, second half of the 13th Century
Handscroll; ink and color on paper
16 1/4 x 275 1/2 in.
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with
Two Figures), 1971
Contrasts & Oppositions in Hockney’s Portrait
of an Artist
• Diagonal/horizontal
• Straight/curved lines
• Air/water/Earth fire?
• Natural/artificial
• Clothed/(nearly) naked
• Tint/shade (light/shadow)
• colors
What is the psychological relationship
between the two men? Which of them is the
“artist” in the title? Is it two sides of one
person, the “artist”?
Degas Waiting
Contrasts in Degas’s Waiting (1882, pastel)
WHITE – BLACK
COLOR – NO COLOR
OPEN – CLOSED
YOUNG – OLD
PERFORMER – SUPPORTER
BUSY – EMPTY
INWARD GAZE – OUTWARD GAZE
organizational contrast –
TWO GIRLS FISHING
just variation?
John Singer Sargent, 1912
(American, b.1856, d.1925) 22 x 28 1/4 in. (55.9 x 71.8 cm)
organizational contrast
A and Not A
EMOTIONAL CONTRAST
A
A
A
A
A
in tension with Not A
in conflict and struggle with Not A
completed by Not A
united with Not A
in harmony with Not A
Broad, plain areas contrast
with tangle of fingers
Rogier van der Weyden
Netherlandish, 1399/1400 - 1464
Portrait of a Lady, c. 1460
oil on panel, painted surface: 34 x 25.5 cm (13 3/8 x 10
1/16 in.) panel: 37 x 27 cm (14 1/16 x 10 5/8 in.)
Winslow Homer
American, 1836 - 1910
Right and Left, 1909
oil on canvas, 71.8 x 122.9 cm (28 1/4 x 48 3/8 in.)
White-on-white,
but what animal
nature lurks?
James McNeill Whistler
American, 1834 - 1903
Symphony in White, No. 1: The
White Girl
1862
oil on canvas, 213 x 107.9 cm
(83 7/8 x 42 1/2 in.)
Appropriate
clothes?
John Singer Sargent
American, 1856 - 1925
Nonchaloir (Repose), 1911
oil on canvas, 63.8 x 76.2 cm (25 1/8 x 30 in.)
Gilbert Stuart
American, 1755 - 1828
The Skater (Portrait of
William Grant), 1782
oil on canvas, 245.5 x 147.4
cm (96 1/4 x 58 in.)
Stately, stable figure –
on skates!
BALANCE
symmetry
EQUILIBRIUM
TEXTBOOK
p. 192
Leonardo da Vinci, Proportions of the
Human Figure (“Vitruvian Man”)
Shiva, bronze temple sculpture, Chola Era (9th-13th C.), South
India
Durer
Dancing Peasants
1514
Master of the Saint Lucy
Legend
Bruges, active c. 1480 - c.
1510
Mary, Queen of Heaven,
c. 1485/1500
oil on panel, painted
surface: 199.2 x 161.8 cm
(78 7/16 x 63 3/4 in.)
Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939
Alfred Sisley, The Chemin de By through Woods at RochesCourtaut, St. Martin's Summer, 1880
Assymetical
balance?
Assymetical
balance?
H. H. Richardson
1880-1883
Crane Memorial Public Library
Quincy, Massachusetts
Assymetical
balance
in music?
A concerto
sets a soloist
or small
group of
soloists
“against” an
orchestra
EMPHASIS
accent
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with
Two Figures), 1971
not a good example of
EMPHASIS
Andy Warhol,
Orange Disaster
No. 5, 1963
ECONOMY
limitation of a composition to a few
essential elements; usually a voluntary
constraint that is part of the creative
process
SPECIFIC TO AN INDIVIDUAL WORK,
NOT THE GENRE , TYPE OR MEDIUM
Examples in music: deriving everything from a single
theme (musical idea), limiting the number of pitches,
type of instrument, etc.
Steve Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood, Clapping
Music, or other pieces
DC Meckler, Bliss (1999)
Morton Feldman, Three Voices (1982)
ECONOMY – very little suggests a lot
Picasso, Femme
Picasso, Guernica, 1937
p. 410
PROPORTION
PROPORTION
PROPORTION
Leonardo: The Last Supper, 1498
Diego Rivera, The Flower Carrier, 1935, 48x48 in.
Joseph Mallord William Turner
British, 1775–1851. Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying,
Typhoon Coming On), 1840
Shahn, Ben, Vacant Lot, 1939
Watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on plywood panel, 19 x 23 in
Carlo Crivelli
Venetian, c. 1430/1435 - 1495
Madonna and Child Enthroned
with Donor, 1470
tempera on panel, painted surface:
125.3 x 50.7 cm (49 5/16 x 19 15/16
in.) including unpainted margins:
129.5 x 54.4 cm (51 x 21 7/16 in.)
donor
Proportion in music
A matter of time, usually lots of time.
Example: 3 Beethoven string quartets (Op 59,
1, 2 & 3). Each in 4 movements.
No. 1 – BIG 1st mvt
No. 2 – nervous 1st mvt, BIG 2nd mvt
No. 3 – BIG finale (4th mvt)
SCALE
SCALE - the size of a work compared to the
environment: miniature, human, monumental. The
term can also apply to musical works, although it has
an entirely different meaning than “musical scale.” (“A
symphony is a large-scale musical work when
compared to a song.”)
Claes Oldenburg, Knife Ship I, 1985
Vinyl-covered wood, steel, and aluminum with motors, dimensions variable,
maximum height 31 feet 8 inches x 40 feet 5 inches x 31 feet
6 inches.
Miniature
Leaf from Futuh al-Haramain (Description of
the Two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina),
mid-16th century; Ottoman, 8x5 in.
a bit bigger . . .
Some examples of time scales in music
Less than a minute -
Miniatures – Chopin, Webern, Schoenberg
Pop songs – 3-6 minutes
Early symphonies – 25-35 minutes
Later symphonies – 45 min - 1 hr
Longest – Mahler – 1 ½ hrs
Short opera – 2 hours
Average opera – 3-4 hours (including intermissions)
Long opera – 5 hours
Longest traditional opera – Wagner’s RING – 18 hours
Robert Motherwell, Elegy for the Spanish
Revolution No. 34, 1953-54
Georgia O’Keefe on scale & flowers:
Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so
small—we haven’t time—and to see it takes
time, like to have a friend takes time. . . . So
I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what
the flower is to me—but I’ll paint it big. . . . I
will make even busy New Yorkers take time
to see what I see of flowers.
Geogia O'Keeffe
American, 1887–1986,
White Rose with
Larkspur, No. 2,
1927, Oil on canvas;
40 x 30 in.
Geogia O'Keeffe
Jimson Weed
70x84 in
Scale has to do with the size of the work itself
Some
PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
REPETITION
VARIATION
CONTRAST
BALANCE – symmetry/asymmetry
EMPHASIS - accent
ECONOMY
PROPORTION
SCALE
George Bellows
American, 1882 - 1925
Both Members of This Club, 1909
oil on canvas, 115 x 160.5 cm (45 1/4 x 63 1/8 in.)