pictures that break composition rules

[Emil Schildt]

One of my old teachers said: "There are no rules.... Break them"...

[sun of sand]

I recall seeing some famous portraits with appendages cut off, perspective distortion, lines leading out of the frame, tops of heads cut off etc. Can you think of specific examples either from photography or painting that an art teacher may have scolded you for but nevertheless is famous?

Are you entirely sure this exact thread hasn't already hsppened

Deja vu from beginning but
Appendages cut off about sealed it
Positive its been done

[sun of sand]

Again
Cause I'm sure I'm right

There are no rules
They are guides
Helpful hints
Beginner exercises

The only rule
Balance


The striking non portrait is great because the composition is great
Its not a portrait
Its a composition of elements one of which happens to be the figure of a woman

F the entire roundness of the head were displayed it would subtract from the background etc

Appendages
No, they're not. They are merely shapes.

You could call it abstraction
Geometric abstraction

Callahansphoto with telephone out the head of Eleanor
Oopsies
Bad portrait
Its not really a portrait. Its a composition.

[paulr]

The only rule
Balance

I wouldn't even go that far. "Balance" is an esthetic value. Probably the central one of classicism. But most avant-garde movements have defined themselves in opposition to classicism, so in those esthetic worlds, off-balance is a more likely rule. In contemporary work, balance is more likely to be seen as one option among many.

[djdister]

Here's a hypothetical:

It is important to understand the rules of composition, before you set out to deliberately break them.

True or false?

[pdh]

The answer to that one rather depends on how wedded one is to orthodoxy and tradition.

In 1910, Hartmann was writing in Camera Work about the possibility of discovering ( creating?) new laws of composition ...

[evan clarke]

This whole thread is silly.

[pdh]

It is silly because ... ?

[Kirk Gittings]

I wouldn't even go that far. "Balance" is an esthetic value. Probably the central one of classicism. But most avant-garde movements have defined themselves in opposition to classicism, so in those esthetic worlds, off-balance is a more likely rule. In contemporary work, balance is more likely to be seen as one option among many.

"balance" is not necessarily symmetry.

[paulr]

"balance" is not necessarily symmetry.

Sure. My impression is that the classical ideal involved a sense of balance, which may or may not have involved symmetry. Symmetry is a geometric property; balance is a subjective one. I'd characterize it a sense that all the visual tensions are resolved, and so the elements of the image appear to be sitting comfortably within the frame.

This ideal of balance saw a lot of challenges during the Romantic era, and got blown off the wall in 20th Century. But not by everyone. The American formal modernists made pictures had ideas that strike me as classicist. Weston, for instance. His democratic subject matter was modern, but much of his sense of form, and his talk of ideal forms in nature, go straight back to ancient greece.