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Chapter 05
Principles of Design
5-1
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
Composition is the organization of lines, shapes, colors, and other art elements in a work of
art. More often applied to two-dimensional art; the broader term is design.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Recall how the principles of art and design are used in works of art
Topic: color
Topic: light
Topic: line
Topic: shape and mass
Topic: space
Topic: texture and pattern
Topic: time and motion
5-2
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
Texture and color are elements of art and design, not principles, which are guidelines for a
composition or design.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Recall how the principles of art and design are used in works of art
Topic: balance
Topic: color
Topic: emphasis and subordination
Topic: rhythm
Topic: scale and proportion
Topic: texture and pattern
Topic: unity and variety
3. Georgia O'Keeffe's Deer's Skull with Pedernal, which is set directly on the vertical axis,
utilizes ___________ balance.
A. asymmetrical
B. relieved symmetrical
C. radial
D. optimal
E. hierarchical
A symmetrical balance has a vertical axis down the center of the composition, with forms on
both sides of the axis corresponding to another in size, shape, and placement.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Learning Objective: Recall how the principles of art and design are used in works of art
Topic: Georgia O'Keeffe
Topic: balance
5-3
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
4. Drawing attention to an area by contrasting dark and light is one way of demonstrating
A. rhythm and texture.
B. scale and proportion.
C. emphasis and subordination.
D. symmetry and asymmetry.
E. None of these answers are correct.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how emphasis and subordination function in a work of art
Topic: emphasis and subordination
Topic: light
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
5-4
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
Oldenburg creates works that are radically large, almost like giants.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
7. Which ancient Roman's writings on architecture related the human body to geometric
shapes?
A. Marcus Aurelius
B. Augustus
C. Vitruvius
D. Vespasian
E. Livy
Vitruvius was a Roman architect who related the perfected male form to the perfect geometry
of the square and the circle.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Recall how the principles of art and design are used in works of art
Topic: scale and proportion
Topic: shape and mass
5-5
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
8. The Parthenon and the Modulor were both designed according to a ratio known as:
A. the vanishing point.
B. the true view.
C. the silver mean.
D. the golden section.
E. the central plan.
The golden section is a length of two unequal segments in which the smaller one has the
same ratio to the larger one as the larger one has to the whole.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: architecture
Topic: scale and proportion
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how rhythm functions in a work of art
Topic: rhythm
Topic: texture and pattern
5-6
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
10. By positioning the dark, dense image of death next to the billowing, light form
representing life, Gustav Klimt's painting Death and Life demonstrates artistic use of:
A. hierarchical scale.
B. symmetrical balance.
C. unity.
D. variety.
E. asymmetrical balance.
An asymmetrical balance has two sides that do not match, but the work still seems to be
balanced because of the placement of forms.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
Balance comes from the equal distribution of visual weight to either side of a felt or implied
center of gravity.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
Topic: emphasis and subordination
5-7
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
12. Rather than depend solely upon visual unity, an artist will sometimes create ________
unity by unifying the ideas in a work of art.
A. idealized
B. invisible
C. conceptual
D. ideological
E. symmetrical
Ideas are concepts, and unity can be achieved through any means as long as it creates a sense
of oneness, of things belonging together and making up a coherent whole.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how unity and variety function in a work of art
Topic: unity and variety
13. In a two-dimensional work of art that is balanced symmetrically, the implied center of
gravity is:
A. along the vertical axis down the center of the composition.
B. eliminated altogether.
C. along the horizon line.
D. at the focal point.
E. the midpoint of the golden rectangle.
Balance comes from the equal distribution of visual weight to either side of a felt or implied
center of gravity.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
5-8
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
14. The Thirteen-Diety Jnanadakini Mandala uses ________ to suggest that there is a hidden
order to the universe.
A. perspective
B. asymmetry
C. proportion
D. symmetry
E. the golden section
Cosmic order is the subject of this work of art, and to show the cosmic realm is logical and
orderly, a mandala diagram is used with clear geometry and symmetry.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
In this work, there is unity, but not visually. The unity comes from the ideas.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how unity and variety function in a work of art
Topic: unity and variety
5-9
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
16. The ancient Egyptians developed a standard set of proportions used to create images of
the "correct" or "perfect" human, as have many cultures both ancient and modern. This set of
proportions was created using:
A. rhythm.
B. form.
C. the golden mean.
D. the golden section.
E. a squared grid.
As evident in unfinished works, we can see that the ancient Egyptians started with grids with
each palm of the hand occupying one square of the grid.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
17. Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Deer's Skull with Pedernal is a prime example of:
A. symmetrical balance.
B. hierarchical scale.
C. informal balance.
D. linear perspective.
E. horizontal symmetry.
A symmetrical balance has a vertical axis down the center of the composition, with forms on
both sides of the axis corresponding to other each other in size, shape, and placement.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: Georgia O'Keeffe
Topic: balance
5-10
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
18. Pablo Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror explores the traditional theme of:
A. still life.
B. portraiture.
C. hierarchical scale.
D. vanitas.
E. the golden section.
Vanitas, coming from the Latin word for "vanity," explore the fleeting nature of earthly life
and happiness.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Define and recognize iconography
Learning Objective: Interpret how art explores the theme of human experience
Topic: Life and Death in Art
Topic: Pablo Picasso
Topic: iconography
Symmetrical balance is often used to express order, harmony, and authority. O'Keeffe's
Deer's Skull with Pedernal has a forceful, formal presence because of the symmetrical
balance.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: Georgia O'Keeffe
Topic: balance
5-11
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
Asymmetrical balance occurs when the two sides of a composition do not match, but yet
there appears to be a balance in the work.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
Balance comes from the equal distribution of visual weight to either side of a felt or implied
center of gravity.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Topic: balance
5-12
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
22. Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Banjo Lesson creates emphasis through:
A. size and placement of the figures.
B. directional lines of sight leading to a focal point.
C. contrasting values of dark skin against a pale background.
D. elimination of detail and bright colors in the background.
E. All of these answers are correct.
There are many ways to create emphasis, including size, placement, values, directional lines,
contrast, and subordination of the background.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Recall how the principles of art and design are used in works of art
Topic: emphasis and subordination
Topic: light
Topic: line
Topic: scale and proportion
23. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen created shock value through use of:
A. symmetry.
B. repetition.
C. scale.
D. abstraction.
E. variety.
Both Oldenburg and van Bruggen added a shock value to their works by overturning our
perception of scale as the measure of all things.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
5-13
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
Hierarchical scale is the use of scale to indicate relative importance. In the royal altar to the
hand, the king is at the center because he is the most important followed by his attendants.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
Topic: sculpture
25. The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius associated the perfected male form with the
perfect geometry of:
A. the square and rectangle.
B. the circle and square.
C. the triangle and circle.
D. the rectangle and triangle.
E. None of these answers are correct.
In Vitruvius' form, the figure stands inside a square defined by his height and the span of his
arms, and a circled centered at his navel.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
5-14
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 - Principles of Design
26. The use of scale to indicate relative importance is known as ________ scale.
A. proportional
B. hierarchical
C. golden
D. rhythmic
E. symmetrical
Hierarchical scale shows figures of greatest important in the center and usually in a larger
scale than the other figures.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: scale and proportion
27. The architect Le Corbusier designed the Modulor, a tool he used for calculating human
proportions, based upon:
A. pictorial space.
B. hierarchical scale.
C. the golden section.
D. visual weight.
E. informal balance.
The Modulor is based on two overlapping golden sections. The first extends from the feet to
the top of the head; the second extends from the navel to the tip of an upraised hand.
Bloom's: Understand
Learning Objective: Describe how balance functions in a work of art
Learning Objective: Describe how scale and proportion function in a work of art
Topic: Le Corbusier
Topic: balance
Topic: scale and proportion
5-15
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
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mouth, and the beautiful broad brow drooping with the weight of
thought, and yet with an eternal youth and freshness shining out of it
as from the morning forehead of a boy, are all remarkable, and their
harmony with each other in a placid tenderness not less so.
Mr. Lowell, in illustration, read from the “Man of Law’s Tale,” and
other of the poems.
VI
Chaucer had been in his grave one hundred and fifty years before
England had secreted choice material enough to produce another
great poet. Or, perhaps, we take it for granted that Nature
understands her own business too well to make such productions
cheap. Beauty, we know, has no charm like that of its eternal
unexpectedness, and the best delight is that which blossoms from a
stem of bare and long days.
Or is it that the spirit of man, of every race of men, has its fatal ebbs
and floods, its oscillations between the fluid ideal and the solid
matter-of-fact, so that the doubtful line of shore between is in one
generation a hard sandy actuality, with only such resemblances of
beauty as a dead sea-moss here and there, and in the next is
whelmed with those graceful curves of ever-gaining, ever-receding
foam, and that dance of joyous spray which knows not, so bright is it,
whether it be sea or sunshine.
Before the “Faëry Queene,” also, two long poems were printed and
popular—the “Mirror for Magistrates,” and “Albion’s England.” How
the first of these was ever read it is hard to conceive, unless we
accept the theory of some theologians that our earth is only a kind of
penal colony where men are punished for sins committed in some
previous state of existence. The other was the work of one Warner, a
conveyancer, and has a certain philological value now from its
abounding in the popular phrases of the day. It is worth notice, also,
as containing the most perfect example in the English language of
what is called a conceit. It occurs in his account of Queen Elinor’s
treatment of Fair Rosamond:
Which is nonsense and not poetry, though Dr. Percy admired it. Dr.
Donne, and the poets whom Dr. Johnson called metaphysical (as if
all poets are not so), is thought to be full of conceits. But the essence
of a conceit is not in a comparison being far-fetched,—the
imagination can make fire and water friendly when it likes,—but in
playing upon the meanings of two words where one is taken in a
metaphorical sense. This is a mark of the superficial mind always;
whereas Donne’s may be called a subterficial one, which went down
to the roots of thought instead of playing with its blossoms.
Not long after the “Faëry Queene” were published the “Polyolbion” of
Drayton, and the “Civil Wars” of Daniel. Both of these men were
respectable poets (especially Drayton), but neither of them could
reconcile poetry with gazetteering or chronicle-making. They are as
unlike as a declaration in love and a declaration in law.
This was the period of the Saurians in English Poetry, interminable
poems, book after book and canto after canto, like far-stretching
vertebræ, prodigious creatures that rendered the earth unfit for the
dwelling of Man. They are all dead now, the unwieldy monsters—
ichthyo-, plesio-, and megalosauri—they all sleep well, and their
huge remains are found imbedded in those vast morasses, the
“Collections of the Poets.” We wonder at the length of face and
general atra-bilious look that mark the portraits of that generation;
but it is no marvel when even the poetry was such downright hard
work. Poems of this sort might have served to while away the three-
centuried evening of antediluvian lives. It is easy to understand how
our ancestors could achieve great things when they encountered
such hardships for mere amusement. If we agree with Horace in
pitying the pre-Homeric heroes because they were without poets, we
may sincerely commiserate our forefathers of that generation
because they had them. The reading of one of these productions
must have been nearly as long a business as the taking of Troy, and
deserved a poet to sing it. Perhaps fathers, when their time on earth
was up, folded the leaf down and left the task to be finished by their
sons—a dreary inheritance.
Spenser was the pure sense of the Beautiful put into a human body
only that it might have the means of communicating with men. His
own description of Clarion, the butterfly in his “Muiopotmos,” gives,
perhaps, the best possible idea of his own character.
What poet has ever left us such a portrait of himself as this? In that
butterfly Spenser has symbolized the purely poetical nature. It will be
seen that there is no recognition of the moral sense whatever. The
poetic nature considered abstractly craves only beauty and delight—
without any thought beyond—
But how did it happen that this lightsome creature, whose only
business was
should have attempted in his greatest work to mix together two such
incoherent things as sermon and poem? In the first place, the age
out of which a man is born is the mother of his mind, and imprints
her own likeness more or less clearly on the features of her child.
There are two destinies from which no one can escape, his own
idiosyncrasy, and that of the time in which he lives. Or shall we say
that where the brain is in flower of its conceptions, the very air is full
of thought-pollen, or some wandering bee will bring it, we know not
from what far field, to hybridize the fruit?
In Spenser’s time England was just going through the vinous stage
of that Puritanic fermentation which became acetous in Milton, and
putrefactive in the Fifth Monarchy men. Here was one motive. But,
besides this, it is evident that Spenser’s fancy had been colored by
the Romances which were popular in his day; and these had all been
allegorized by the monks, who turned them into prose. The
adventure of the San Grail in the “Morte d’Arthur” reads almost like
an extract from the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Allegories were the fashion,
and Spenser put one on as he did a ruff, not because it was the most
convenient or becoming thing in the world, but because other people
did.
Spenser has characterized his own poem in the song which the
Sirens sing to Sir Guyon in the twelfth canto of the second book. The
whole passage also may be called his musical as distinguished from
his picturesque style.
In reading Spenser one may see all the great galleries of painting
without stepping over his threshold. Michael Angelo is the only artist
that he will not find there. It may be said of him that he is not a
narrative poet at all, that he tells no stories, but paints them.
I have said that among our poets Spenser stands for the
personification of the poetic sense and temperament. In him the
senses were so sublimed and etherealized, and sympathized so
harmoniously with an intellect of the subtlest quality that, with Dr.
Donne, we “could almost say his body thought.” This benign
introfusion of sense and spirit it is which gives his poetry the charm
of crystalline purity without loss of warmth. He is ideal without being
merely imaginative; he is sensuous without any suggestion of flesh
and blood. He is full of feeling, and yet of such a kind that we can
neither call it mere intellectual perception of what is fair and good
and touching, nor associate it with that throbbing warmth which leads
us to call sensibility by its human name of heart. In the world into
which he carries us there is neither space nor time, and so far it is
purely intellectual, but then it is full of form and color and all earthly
gorgeousness, and so far it is sensual. There are no men and
women in it, and yet it throngs with airy and immortal shapes that
have the likeness of men and women.
And to read him puts one in the condition of reverie—a state of mind
in which one’s thoughts and feelings float motionless as you may
see fishes do in a swift brook, only vibrating their fins enough to keep
themselves from being swept down the current, while their bodies
yield to all its curvings and quiver with the thrills of its fluid and
sinuous delight. It is a luxury beyond luxury itself, for it is not only
dreaming awake, but dreaming without the trouble of doing it
yourself; letting it be done for you, in truth, by the finest dreamer that
ever lived, who has the art of giving you all his own visions through
the medium of music.
VII
Between Spenser and Milton occurred the most truly imaginative
period of English poetry. It is the time of Shakspeare and of the other
dramatists only less than he. It seems to have been the moment in
which the English mind culminated.
It was during this lull, as we may call it, that followed the mighty day
of the Dramatists, that Milton was growing up. He was born in
London on the ninth of December, 1608, and was therefore in his
eighth year when Shakspeare died. His father was of a good family,
which still adhered to the Roman Catholic faith. What is of more
importance, he was disinherited by his father for having adopted
Puritan principles; and he was a excellent musician. Milton was very
early an indefatigable student, even in his twelfth year seldom
leaving his books before midnight. At the university he was
distinguished as a Latin scholar and writer of Latin verses. He was
intended for the Church, but had already formed opinions of his own
which put conformity out of the question. He was by nature an
Independent, and could not, as he says, “subscribe slave.”
Dr. Johnson sneers at Milton for having come home from Italy
because he could not stay abroad while his countrymen were
struggling for their freedom, and then quietly settling down as a
teacher of a few boys for bread. It might, with equal reason, have
been asked of the Doctor why, instead of writing “Taxation no
Tyranny,” he did not volunteer in the war against the rebel American
provinces? Milton sacrificed to the cause he thought holy something
dearer to him than life—the hope of an earthly immortality in a great
poem. He suffered his eyes to be put out for the sake of his country
as deliberately as Scævola thrust his hand into the flame. He gave to
freedom something better than a sword—words that were victories.