One could argue that she is in fact "looking" into the frame, as it appears she is thinking about the possibility of someone over her shoulder. To me, that is why the image works.Originally Posted by Randy
One could argue that she is in fact "looking" into the frame, as it appears she is thinking about the possibility of someone over her shoulder. To me, that is why the image works.
Someone would have to ridiculously pedantic, and probably from another century, to say no. Which is why calling anything like this a "rule" is just confusing.
My dad's boss in advertising, the late David Ogilvy, had all kinds of guidelines for making an ad work. But he yelled at employees who called them rules:
"Tools, not rules, you fools!"
Those old rules of composition could be useful as diagnostic tools. If an image doesn't seem to work (let's leave aside for know what that might mean), then you can use these tools to help figure out why.
There's also a more sophisticated way to think about them. These rules were established during the Renaissance, based largely on the way art from 2000 years earlier looked. The neo-classical and renaissance esthetics were about solidness, stillness, balance, and calm: all compositional tensions resolved.
In the 21st century, we're past the time when people assumed art had to have those qualities. But we can use the old rules as tools. If we know, for example that person on the edge of the frame looking into the picture gives a sense of stillness and balance, then we can likewise use that information to create a bit of tension: have her face the other way.
This isn't "breaking a rule" except in the most pedantic sense. It's just using what we've learned about how pictures work. Using that knowledge to make a picture work the way you want it to.
[edited to add]
There are parallels in music with the rules of harmony that came out of the baroque period. Following them helped make music that was satisfying, by the standards of tension and resolution that defined the esthetics of the period. But by modern times, composers figured out that you could play any note against any chord, and you could do it effectively if you understood the tension you'd create, and where it was trying to resolve. The old rules could still help you understand those tensions. But they no longer told you what to do with them.
My gosh, this brings back the memories of scholarly tomes which, regardless of the authors' fine efforts, just annoy the hell out of me largely because they are so easy to refute in order to make more scholarship! I tend to a somewhat scientific approach regarding visual processing unavailable to the language center.
One part of a theory that still makes me wince is like something from Dead Poets Society. The author claimed (or cited, I cannot remember) how the upper part of a picture represents the ideal, and the lower the real, for example a picture with billowing clouds over an ordinary landscape. He went on to claim that the left section is fact, the right supportive materials. I wish he were my art instructor so that I could so easily mess with his head, or whatever that lump was behind his eyes.
Then there is a book first written as a thesis of a theory of the language (not mathematically) and impression conferred by shapes. I'm saved from recalling the title and author by my hostility.He began by claiming that symmetry says nothing interesting because it has no history, for example, a soft-drink can. A crushed can, however, does say something because its new shape indicates history, an incident.
Enough. I must rush off to my monthly probation appointment. Should have never given a history to that bloke's head.
.
Rules, rules, bad or good rules... Things I have to mention that worth to mention are the books of Kandinski about how colors, shapes, lines and forms works in a canvas relate to each other, or taking a picture upside down as Cartier-Bresson usually did to see if it stands.
If a picture is composed with visual elements, and these elements can be reduced to it's simplest forms, it's a matter of artistic taste, a pint of intelligence and some knowledge to start to figure out the prime forces which drives those elements inside the frame. I remember the old adagio of Edward Weston: the best composition is the strongest.
Cheers,
Renato
Except "Christina's World" wasn't about some chippie wearing advertising.
Sure it ain't.
I live about 10-15 miles away from the location of the painting and it's a popular activity for local people to go to the site and spoof the painting in some silly way with a friend and a camera. I've seen a variety of spoofs.
Not Christina, but ... spoof ....
Why don't you read about Christina and the making of the picture. Its easy to draw facile (and erroneous) conclusions.
I know about the creation of Chistina's World and respect it always, have since I was much younger. It is a wonderful painting in so many respects.
I gather you are objecting to the commercial marque of my photo.
Yes, I agree with you, but commercialism was not the intent.
It was something about the era in which it was made.
Best,
Jac
Last edited by Jac@stafford.net; 8-Jul-2015 at 15:58.
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