Resources for Chapter 6 —
Composition
Canon 1D series
Flagship model of the Canon digital SLR line.
dpreview.com/reviews/CanonEOS1DSMarkIII/
www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image-Quality-Database/Canon/EOS-1Ds-Mark-III
canon.com
Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889)
Chemist who developed important theories about color interaction, and was
considered the founder of French colorism. He also devised a color wheel
of primary and secondary colors showing color opposites. One of his discoveries
was that two colors juxtaposed, slightly overlapping or very close together,
would combine to give the appearance of another color when viewed from
a distance. This led to Chevreul's Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colors,
published in 1839. He also observed that bright edges seem to exist between
adjacent strips of identical colors with different intensities. Chevreul
advised artists that they should not just paint the color of the object
being depicted, but rather they should add colors and make appropriate
adjustments to achieve a harmony. It seems that the harmony Chevreul
wrote about is what Seurat came to call 'emotion'. Georges Seurat and
Paul Signac developed the pointillist technique based largely on his
principles.
perceptualstuff.org/chevreul.html
The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors
and Their Applications to the Arts by M. E. Chevreul and Faber Birren, Schiffer Publishing, 1987
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)
Baudelaire described him as "the last of the great artists of the
Renaissance and the first modern." Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes
and his study of the optical effects of color profoundly shaped the work
of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists
of the Symbolist movement.
eugenedelacroix.org/
getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=408
Delacroix by Barthelemy Jobert, Princeton University Press, 1998
Delacroix: The Late Work by Vincent Pomarde, Arlette Serullaz, Joseph J.
Rishel, and Louis-Antoine Prat, Thames & Hudson, 1998
William Eggleston
The man who brought color to art photography. While attending college in
1958, Eggleston got his first camera — a Leica, photography took root,
and he was introduced to Abstract Expressionism. A year later, he was
profoundly inspired by Cartier-Bresson's "The Decisive Moment" and
Walker Evans' "American Photographs." He taught at Harvard
in 1973 and 1974, where he discovered and fell in love with dye transfer
printing. He prepared his first portfolio of 14 pictures in 1974, and
two years later, Eggleston's solo show at MoMA was accompanied by the
book William Eggleston's Guide. It was only the second time that the
museum had exhibited color photographs, and the era's most important
institution in photography had embraced color photography.
egglestontrust.com
cheimread.com/artists/william-eggleston/
whitney.org/www/eggleston/index.jsp
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008,
The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2008
William Eggleston's Guide [Facsimile] by John Szarkowski and William Eggleston,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002
Fibonacci (1170-1250)
Perhaps more correctly called Leonardo of Pisa, Fibonacci is a shortening
of the Latin "filius Bonacci" (the son of Bonaccio), which
he used in the title of his book Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculating).
The book introduced the Hindu-Arabic place-valued decimal system and
the use of Arabic numerals into Europe, replacing the Roman numeral system.
In the book he describes the sequence of numbers that would bear his
name and uses them to solve a problem about calculating the number of
rabbits in a field. About 600 years later, French mathematician Edouard
Lucas (1842-1891) found new applications for the series and named them
Fibonacci numbers.
http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/fibo.html
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FibonacciNumber.html
The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers by Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann,
Prometheus Books, 2007
Fibonacci's Liber Abaci translated by L E Sigler, Springer Verlag, 2002
Leonardo of Pisa and the New Mathematics of the
Middle Ages by J. Gies,
F. Gies, Crowell press, 1969
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Known first and foremost for Faust, and one of Germany's greatest men of
letters, Goethe was also a scientist who found Newton's color theories
lacking. He developed his own theory of color based around a systematic
study the physiological effects of color. His observations on the effect
of opposed colors led him to be the first to propose a symmetric arrangement
of the color wheel. Goethe published his Theory of Colours in 1810, and
considered it his most important work. Artists, psychologists, and psychotherapists
have found practical applications of his theories, and several, including
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, have developed theories and philosophies
of color based on his work.
Theory of Colours, Dover Publications, 2006
Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists
From 1874 to 1886, a group of artists exhibited together in Paris, independently
of the Salon. They called themselves " Société Anonyme des Artistes,
Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs" (the Anonymous Society of Artists,
Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers), but were dubbed the Impressionists
because newspaper critic Louis Leroy mistook Monet's painting "Impression:
Sunrise" to mean they were only painting impressions or sketches.
They broke with tradition and established styles, and incorporated new
technology and ideas, including Chevreul's discoveries about color interaction
and new synthetic pigments. The best known of the French Impressionist
painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro,
Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, Frédéric Bazille,
Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne. The movement was centered in France, though
there are a few impressionist painters, such as American Mary Cassatt,
who were not French.
Chevreul, Ogden Rood and David Sutter wrote treatises on color, optical effects and perception that translated the scientific research of Helmholtz and Newton into a more accessible form. Ogden Rood’s book, Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry, acknowledged the different behaviors exhibited by colored light (now known as additive color) and colored pigment (now known as subtractive color). Rood analyzed the effects of mixing together and juxtaposing material pigments, based on the work of Helmholtz, and pointed out that the juxtaposition of primary hues next to each other would produce a far more intense and pleasing color than the corresponding result of mixing paint.
These discoveries led Delacroix to experiment with broken tones to obtain vibrant and luminous colors, and Georges Seurat and Paul Signac to develop pointillism, the foundation of Neo-Impressionism. The art critic Félix Fénéon coined the term "Neo-Impressionism" to describe the paintings of Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, and his son Lucien Pissarro, at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886.
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm
the-artists.org/artistsbymovement/Impressionism/
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/seni/hd_seni.htm
Impressionism by Karin H Grimme and Norbert Wolf, Taschen, 2007
Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet
and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt by Jeffrey Meyers, Harcourt, 2005
Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society by Robert L. Herbert,
Yale University Press, 1991
Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte by Robert L. Herbert, University
of California Press, 2004
André Kertész (1894-1985)
One of the most inventive, influential, and prolific photographers in the
medium's history. He was an originator of important ideas on photographic
composition who is also known for his funhouse mirror distorted nudes
of the 1930s and his extended study of Washington Square Park in New
York. Kertész also pioneered the photo essay. His work inspired Man Ray,
Brassai, Moholy Nagy, Berenice Abbott, and Cartier-Bresson.
staleywise.com/collection/kertesz/kertesz.html
www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2005/kertesz/kertesz_ss1.shtm
photographersgallery.com/by_artist.asp — Click on André Kertész
in the list at the bottom of the page.
Andre Kertesz by Noel Bourcier, Phaidon Press, 2006
Andre Kertesz by Sarah Greenough, Robert Gurbo, and Sarah Kennel, Princeton
University Press, 2005
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
Best known for his late work involving elaborate compositions made up of
horizontal and vertical lines and fields of color that he called Neo-Plastic.
His early work progressed from landscapes to still-life, through Dutch
Impressionism, to Symbolism. In 1909 and 1910, he experimented with Pointillism
and by 1911 had begun to work in a Cubist mode. World War I compelled
him to move back to Holland, where he further reduced his colors and
geometric shapes and formulated his non-objective Neo-Plastic style.
In 1917, Mondrian became one of the founders of De Stijl. World War II
forced Mondrian to move to London in 1938 and then to settle in New York
in October 1940. In New York, he joined American Abstract Artists and
continued to publish texts on Neo-Plasticism. The architecture of the
city triggered a further evolution in his late style.
guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_112_0.html
oberlin.edu/amam/Mondrian.htm
Complete Mondrian by Marty Bax, Lund Humphries Publishers, 2002
Piet Mondrian: 1872-1944; Structures in Space by Susanne Deicher, Taschen,
2000
Nikon D3X
Flagship model of the Nikon digital SLR line.
dpreview.com/reviews/NikonD3X/
dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image-Quality-Database/Nikon/D3X
nikon.com
Nude, 1936 by Edward Weston
geh.org/taschen/htmlsrc8/m197400670005_ful.html
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
His painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte launched
Neo-Impressionism. It was a reaction to impressionism and was based upon
much of the same scientific principles.
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/seni/hd_seni.htm
Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte by Robert L. Herbert, University
of California Press, 2004
Spencer Tunick
Since 1994, he has organized 75 temporary site-specific installations of
nude volunteers around the world. Some of these installations have involved
thousands of volunteers. Gathered in this way, the nude bodies become
more abstract, a shape or a substance that diminishes the significance
of sexuality.