1. When thinking of an artist bringing a sense of unity to their work, and thinking of examples of a unified work, nothing sticks out more to me than The Mona Lisa.
The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci between 1503 - 1503(and often speculated to have been completed in 1517), is a monumental example of unification in art. While she is slightly off centered in this portrait, the vertical lighting illuminating the center of her face, body and hands shows us the use of emphasis through lighting, telling us that she is the focus, or focal point of the piece. Something that ads harmony to the painting is the progression of the lighting and coloring, with the bottom horizontally going up vertically in the landscape. The colors progress from darker to lighter as the landscape goes from close to further from her, successfully adding a depth of field, and shows us a sense of perspective as well as directional force. Even though the colors are going from darker to lighter, the colors guide our eyes upwards and outwards, and we are taken through the pathways towards the canal almost naturally.
2. An artist creates an asymmetrical balance by making two sides of a painting non identical and different from each other. Having two opposing and contrasting sides in an asymmetrical painting does not necessarily mean the piece is not balanced. Sometimes an artist creates an asymmetrical piece in order to create balance.
This is "The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum" by my personal favorite painter, Vincent van Gogh. It was created in September of 1888 and located at the Kroller-Muller Museum in The Netherlands. Not only is the symmetry off balance, but you can immediately notice the stark differences in the multiple main focal points in the painting. The focal points are the restaurant patrons, the people walking down the ally and the stars. The golden color of cafe lighting strongly opposes the ink like color of the sky, and in fact they never meet. In fact if you look closely, none of the colors blend together. They exist in their own space on the painting, contradicting each other yet somehow creating a sense of harmony in the chaos.
3. Scale can change the meaning of an artwork by distorting or minimizing our perception of normality in order to illicit an emotional response that would be of a different nature would we be seeing the subject in the art in the scale we are accustomed to.
The artist behind this is unknown(or at least unknown to me, despite my research). This is an example of scale distortion. The Lego man, usually being the size of half an adult thumb, is shown to be a giant. This could give the viewer an overwhelming sense of awe, playing on irony since Lego men are traditionally so tiny. What is something that is made for us to control, gives a feeling of protection for us. Perhaps this a comfort that Lego has provided many of the viewers, and now seeing their childhood comfort on a grand scale, the viewers are experiencing a literal and metaphorical larger than life experience? Another curious addition that shows scale, is the tiny Lego man standing on the shoulder piece of the giant Lego man. Ironically, the tiny Lego shares similar skin color as a human, playfully showing us in the position of toys. Is this a giant Lego piece with a regular human like Lego on its shoulder? Or is it a regular sized Lego man with an even tinier human Lego piece on top of it. This is a great example how scale can twist and turn us, and be all the more fun while doing it.
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