Lecture notes--Part two-- Balance

(This section is based on Rudolph Arnheim's The Power of the Center)

Composition reveals itself when, as we inevitably do, we see a painting or sculpture or building as an arrangement of definable shapes organized in a comprehensive structure...It seems to be possible to describe a compositional scheme common to works of visual art of whatever time and place- a condition that needs to be met by all art if it is to fulfill its function (1).

Rudolph Arnheim

The Power of the Center

According to Arnheim, all works of visual art have a spatial organization--how the shapes are placed on the canvas or how the arms are attached to the torso of a sculpture or how the various parts of a building go together to take up space. This spatial organization can be identified and talked about, just as we have talked about linearity or planarity. This spatial organization is made up of two elements, or dynamics (in the sense of attraction or repulsion), which he calls centricity and eccentricity. All visual art has one or the other, or both, as Arnheim explains--

....centricity and eccentricity are spatial relations...as basic to the physical as to the mental world, and they are easily represented through visual shapes. Furthermore, and perhaps even more important, since the psychological relations that art is called upon to depict are motivational strivings, their images too must display the actions of the directed forces (5).

Centric

Anything that embodies itself with some freedom seeks round shape.

Goethe

When things come out of a center or, the reverse, bear in on a center, a dynamic is created. Our eye is drawn to or away from the center as in the two examples below--

When a painting has a central figure which our eye is drawn to, we are looking at an example of the centric dynamic. For example, DaVinci's The Last Supper. As we have already discovered, the orthogonals come together at the representation of Christ's face. This is the center of the painting.

Eccentric

But what happens when there are other shapes which pull at our attention? For example, in Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of Grande Jatte, the stress is on the vertical, the up and down (although the centric is hinted at by the planar quality of the painting). This creates what Arnheim calls the eccentric--no true center but a grid of up and down and /or side to side--

Much visual art of the Middle Ages is eccentric-- for example, the paintings by Fra Angelica and della Francesco which we have already looked at. But many paintings are a combination of the two dynamics, that is, of a center and a grid.

Here are some paintings which are examples of centric and eccentric--

Goya's painting of this actual incident from Spanish history clearly has a center represented by the peasant in the pool of light with his hands held high in the air. The guns of the soldiers reinforce his centrality by all focusing on him. This does not mean that there aren't eccentric aspects to the painting The uprightness of most of the figures), but clearly it is mostly centric. Our eye is always drawn to the central figure.

Liberty Leading the People also has a central figure reinforced by the number of figures in the painting who are looking at her. She is also lit in such a way as to draw our attention.

Van Eyck's Arnolfini and His Bride, on the other hand, is more grid-like and therefore, eccentric. Although the mirror is in the center of the painting, our attention is not drawn to it. Rather, we notice the space as created by the orthogonals, the window and the bed, and the two vertical figures which balance each other. Neither figure demands attention over the other.

A Perceived Connection Between Wolflin and Arnheim

A connection can be made between Arnheim's dynamics and Wolflin's four pairs of design elements. The connection is as follows--

Centric	Eccentric
Linear	Painterly
Planar	Recessional
Closed Form	Open Form
Multiplicity	Unity

This is not true at all times or in every instance. However, it does happen more often than not. (Extra points will be given to anyone who finds a painting that runs contrary to this chart--that is, a planar painting which is eccentric, and so on.)

Arnheim's analysis gives us yet one more way to talk about pictures. This would be a good time to take another tour of the WebMuseum to find yet more examples of the centric and eccentric dynamic. Keep in mind that all of these ways of talking about paintings will be utilized in the Midterm.