Principles of Design Repetition, Variety, Rhythm, Symmetrical Balance, Asymmetrical Balance, Scale, Proportion,

Emphasis, and Unity

Repetition

The image on the left is by artist Donald Judd, made in the 1970s. This type of art was called minimalism.

Repetition involves the repetition of one shape or object.

Note Andy Warhol’s painting One Hundred Soup Cans form the 1960s. This was called Pop Art ( for art that used imagery from popular culture including advertising). The repeated forms can be the can shapes, the gold logo, the white and red of the labels- there is a lot of repetition.

Variety

Variety concerns variations on a theme. In the case of these chairs made by famous designers, the chairs are the theme and the chair shape is the visual theme. So a theme can be conceptual ( an idea) and/ or visual.

Rhythm

Even if you do not know anything about the idea of rhythm in art, you know enough about rhythm in music to see it in both of Bridget Riley’s paintings. They both contain repetition and variety. In the painting on the left, the stripes are repeated and the different colors of the stripes are variety. Together it creates a rhythm. On the right the black lines repeat themselves but vary in thickness and in length ( variety) .

Rhythm

This photograph shows rhythm through the repetition of the shapes the water makes on the sand and the people on the beach.The variety is in the increasingly smaller shapes of both, as they move back in space.

MC Escher’s print shows a constantly shifting orientation in space. The repetitions are in the stairs and arches of the doors, as well as the people. The variety is in the sizes and orientations of all of those.

Extreme Variety

American painter Jackson Pollack, an Abstract Expressionist, made this painting in the 1950s. Note the photograph on the left of Pollack in action. In fact his work was referred to as Action Painting. This is an example of extreme variety. The common characteristic is that they are all long drips of paint.

Symmetrical Balance

Symmetrical Balance involves a balanced composition. If the image or object is bisected by an imaginary line ( in this case indicated by a red line) each side is a mirror image of the other side.

This is a sculpture of an ancient Egyptian king from Thebes.

Symmetrical Balance

This is the statue of Abraham Lincoln, made by Daniel Chester French, around 1922. It stands 19ft tall. The camera angle on this sculpture is slightly off center. This makes for a more interesting image. The sculpture ( object) itself is symmetrically balanced as it was bisected by a line, one half of the sculpture mirrors the other. Notice that one hand is closed in a fist , the other is open.

Asymmetrical Balance

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo , fresco painted 1511, Vatican City, Italy. This fresco when bisected by an imaginary line , one side is different from the other, YET, our eye moves from one side to the other in an even way, thus it is asymmetrical but balanced.

Asymmetrical Balance

Laocoön and His Sons , Ancient Greece, artist unknown, 160-20 BCE ( dates are uncertain)

Notice how the large empty space, on the right, balances out all of the action of the father’s body and arm, on the left side.

Asymmetrical Balance

Georgia O’Keefe, painting , 1930’s – 70’s; This painting is clearly asymmetrically balanced; the left side has the flower and the landscape is slightly higher than the right side. The image would be less visually interesting otherwise

Rhythm

Bridget Riley , British artist, painting made in 1960’s , It belonged to the movement in art called Op Art ( for Optical )

This is an example of rhythm as it includes variety ( squares and rectangles) and repetition . It certainly vibrates our eye as we look at it.

Rhythm

Ishtar Gate 575 BCE - Gate to Babylon ordered built by King Nebuchadnezzar in honor of the Assyrian Goddess Ishtar.

There is rhythm in a couple of ways. The bricks themselves make a repetitive pattern ( there is variety in the way they are stacked).

Then there is the rhythm of the repetition of the animals as well as the patterns. There is variety in the kinds of animals and the shapes and colors of the bands of pattern around the edges.

EmphasisThis is a painting by Jasper Johns. It was made around the 1950’s to 1960’s

The concentric circles, and the strongly contrasting yellow and blue color, of the target emphasize the blue dot in the middle.

Emphasis

This painting was also made by Jasper Johns. Artists often work in a series; developing work that is exploring a common theme , either aesthetic or conceptual.

In this case he is playing with the concept of emphasis. Notice that all of the same information , from the last painting is there. Except there has been one subtle ( seemingly unnoticeable ) element added; the orange faces, cast from life (meaning a real person’s face).

The faces become the emphasis because it has the most detail and because human beings are conditioned to respond to faces, from birth. Our eye is thus drawn to them, more than the target.

Proportion Proportion deals with the idea of the relationship of the individual parts to the whole body.

The prehistoric Woman of Willendorf on the far left , has oversized body parts except for her arms which are disproportionately small and thin.

Giacometti’s figures ( near left) are unusually elongated and thin as if being viewed from a great distance.

Scale

Notice the Lincoln Memorial on the left. The entire structure is a symbol of power as well as a commemoration of President Abraham Lincoln. The door way is unusually large to function only as an entry way. It is that large to allow the exhibit of the large sculpture within as well as to welcome visitors as a symbol of the values of the culture ; power and democracy.

Scale

Scale deals with the size of an object, artwork, or work of architecture in relationship to an established norm. On the left is a large scale sculpture ( about 20 ft tall) by artist, Ron Mueck. On the right is what looks like a miniature version of a city. It is in fact a faked miniature city through the use of camera angles and Photoshop.

Proportion and Scale

“The Parthenon attains a harmony that nearly surpasses understanding. The structure's pleasing proportions derive from the ratio 9:4, a mathematical ideal that informs the relationships of length to width, width to height, and the space between columns as compared to their diameters. the Parthenon attains a harmony that nearly surpasses understanding. The structure's pleasing proportions derive from the ratio 9:4, a mathematical ideal that informs the relationships of length to width, width to height, and the space between columns as compared to their diameters.”

The building sits on a cliff above Athens and employs hierarchical scale in the sense that it is huge and designed to worship or honor the goddess Athena ( goddess of war and intelligence). Built in ancient Greece , fifth century BCE.

Unity

Unity is the underlying structure that makes the art or object seem complete or whole.

Almost all artwork or design has unity because the artist instinctively seeks it.

This Islamic art tile shows unity through the repetition of color ( blue, green, yellow, and white) and shape ( flowers of different sizes that are repeated in a pattern). Pattern ( which contains rhythm ) generally unifies a work, as seen here.

Unity

This is a painting by American artist, Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, from 1942. Unifying characteristics, here, are the rectangles of the windows, both the large ones of the diner, and the smaller ones of the buildings behind it. The use of the colors red and green, on the buildings as well as in the diner itself, also unifies the work.

It could also be argued that the frame of any painting unifies it by describing the image’s borders.