Symmetrical balance, Asymmetrical balance, Scale

1. Describe several ways that artist unify their artwork. Find an example and describe how it is unified. 

Symmetrical balance is known to form a balance that has the same element or imagery on both sides, which are opposite to each other. Unity plays a role that brings certain element in the artwork such as color, shape, size, etc. By achieving this, it creates a major impact to the artwork that is driven by creating attention and also givens a feeling of what the artwork stands for. 

In this artwork, French artist named Henri Matisse creates red room or the Harmony In red. As it describe in the video,HarmonIntroDesignPrinciples,"Matisse red painting is unify through the color red and also the lyrical patterns shape like vines or trees repeated in the table cloth, the wall paper and the trees outside of the window". By viewing this canvas the colors are heavenly painted by using oil mediation and items can be seen arranged in a scatters pattern across the table. Symmetrical is expressed by the color in the painting and items on the table are repeating. The colors and the items are introduced with warm and cold colors such as the glass vase, fruits, flowers and the fruit bowl. 

2. Describe how an artist created asymmetrical balance- post an artwork of your choice and explain how it is balance asymmetrical 

Asymmetrical balance means to have no balance. The composition of this painting is less equal than a symmetrical balance painting. If a painting were cut in half, a certain side would stand out more than the other. The color's brightness, shapes, element, size and form all determine the balance of the artwork.

Asymmetrical balance is introduced by showing which side is more interesting. A good example would be the Japanese painting “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”. The right side shows small waves and boats are being pulled towards a big wave. On the left side the wave is introduced as strong and more dangerous than the other side. The left side shows heavy color's that represent the color of natural water and the background also shows a heavy storm, which stands for a gloomy feeling.

3. How can scale change the meaning of an artwork? Use a visual example of your choice as an example and explain how the meaning is changed by scale 

Scale and proportion in art are both concerned with size. Scale refers to the size of an object and proportion is the amount of related part that becomes a whole. Scale is one of the most important decisions of planning a artwork. Whether to do an artwork in large scale or small decides how the work will be done. There have been many artists in the twentieth century that used distorted scale for visual effect.

One of the examples that show distortion is the well-used sculpture named "Roses of Will Ryman" and can be seen in the Elementary school in Raleigh. This sculpture portrays a giant flower growing out of the ground in the cityscape environment. While viewing this object at close range we can see and feel it's realism that portraying a in un visual vision. Here we can see the bend objects that is forming into different size of the scape, leaves pointing in different direction, a small bug can be seen crawling down the scape and finally flower petals that are blooming making the artwork to feel alive.

The Laocoon Groups

After watching the video that my professor post it on YouTube, I have seen deal of images about Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. Many of the images have their own unique meaning, theme and style. What caught my attention was viewing the living sculpture of the human body, mythological creatures and finally god like figures, but what was I interesting the most was how these sculpture figure can contain a simple story just using every part of the body. Of course Egyptian have their own unique style of showing the symbolism and humanism. On the other hand I am in favor of Roman/ Greek art by truly capture the figurines and then build them into life size statutes. 

          The Greek sculpture, "Laocoon and his Sons" or "The Laocoon Group", shows the image of a Trojan priest named Laocoon and his two sons, Antiphas and Thymbraeus being killed by two serpents. The background of this sculpture shows that the Trojan priest had angered the Greek God by warning of the danger that the city of Troy faced. Upon the Trojan wooden horse entering the city, soldiers were carried inside of the wooden horse.

         The analysis of the Laocoon group will be dealing with how this sculpture was able to show face expression, size, body movement and symbolism. The sculpture was built in the 16 century, Rome. The sculpture was made out of marble and the Dimension of this figure determines to be over 2m (6 ft. 7in) in height. After searching for this sculpture there have been multiple articles about the true nature of this sculpture purpose. The figure of Laocoon is projecting a struggle with the two serpents catching a hold of him and his sons. It shows the priest's facial expression is heading towards panicking and the same goes for the two sons. His body parts are being wrapped by the serpents, but not entirely. As you can see, Laocoon's left foot supports himself by touching the ground with the toes of his foot. The right leg is bent, touching the steps on the base of the altar. Using his right arm Laocoon grabs a hold on a part of the serpent, and the serpent’s body wraps his left arm. Laocoon grabs a hold of the serpent body, and by the looks of it the serpent has taken a fatal bite from his side. Laocoon's head is turned back with a grimace of pain as he has seen the horrifying death of his two sons struggling. To his right the younger son is completely enwrapped by the serpent and to the left the elder brother is turning his head looking at his father while seeing the fear and horror that the elder brother faces upon death. 

         For symbolism a god was angry at the Priest for warning the people about the Trojan attack, the God sent the serpents so that there would be no interference. The Greek God, Apollo, was known to be the God of light. Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis. According to Apollo side of his story, he had warned the Trojans not to accept the Greek's gift of the wooden horse. Serpent was seen as a positive image in Greek and roman literature. The two serpents were named either Porces and Chariboea or Curissia and Periboe.

 In the end I was interest of look up at this image and of course I wasn’t able to gather enough information of the this statue, but overall I did managed to learn some history into this fine art and I can see why this sculpture was so popular in the roman times.