Figurative art

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Figurative art

Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes art

Art

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature....
work - particularly paintings and sculptures - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational

Representation (arts)

Representation describes the signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation people know and understand the world and reality through the act of naming it....
. The term "figurative art" is often taken to mean art which represents the human

Human

A human being, also human or man, is a member of a species of bipedalism primates in the family Hominidae . Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago....
figure, or even an animal figure, and, though this is often the case, it is not necessarily so: Painting and sculpture can therefore be divided into the categories of figurative, representational and abstract, although, strictly speaking, abstract art

Abstract art

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Encyclopedia

Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes art

Art

Representation (arts)

Human

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world....
is derived (or abstracted) from a figurative or other natural source. However, the term is sometimes used as a synonym for non-representational art and non-objective art, i.e. art which has no derivation from figures or objects.

Figurative art is itself based upon a tacit understanding of abstracted shapes: the figure sculpture of Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
was not naturalistic, for its forms were idealized and geometric. Ernst Gombrich

Ernst Gombrich

Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Order of Merit, Order of the British Empire was an Austrian-born art historian who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom....
referred to the strictures of this schematic imagery, the adherence to that which was already known, rather than that which is seen, as the "Egyptian method", an allusion to the memory-based clarity of imagery in Egyptian art

Egyptian Art

Egyptian Art may refer to:*The Art of ancient Egypt, c.5000 BCE - c.300 BCE*Hellenistic art of Egypt, c.300 BCE - c.100 CE, during the Ptolemaic dynasty...
. Eventually idealization gave way to observation, and a figurative art which balanced ideal geometry with greater realism was seen in Classical

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
sculpture by 480 B.C. The Greeks referred to the reliance on visual observation as mimesis

Mimesis

Mimesis is a Critical theory and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include: imitation, Representation , mimicry, imitatio, nonsensuous similarity, the act of Resemblance, the act of expression, and the Impression management....
. Until the time of the Impressionists, figurative art was characterized by attempts to reconcile these opposing principles. The rise of the Neoclassical

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct Cultural movement in the Decorative art and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture ....
art of Nicholas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was a highly influential France painter in the Neoclassicism style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, chiming with the moral climate of the final years of th...
ultimately engendered the realistic

Realism (visual arts)

Realism is a visual art style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. Realists render everyday life characters, situations, dilemmas, and objects, all in verisimilitude....
reactions of Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet

Jean D?sir? Gustave Courbet was a France Painting who led the realism movement in 19th-century French painting....
and Edouard Manet

Édouard Manet

?douard Manet , 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883, was a French Painting. One of the first nineteenth century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from realism to Impressionism....
.

The formal elements, those aesthetic effects created by design, upon which figurative art is dependent, include line

Line

Line or lines may refer to:* Line , an infinitely-extending one-dimensional figure that has no curvature* Line , the fundamental unit of poetic composition...
, shape

Shape

The shape of an object located in some space is the part of that space occupied by the object, as determined by its external boundary ? abstracting from other properties such as colour, content, and material composition, as well as from the object's other spatial properties ....
, color

Color

Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....
, light

Light

Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is Visible spectrum to the human eye , or up to 380?750 nm. In the broader field of physics, light is sometimes used to refer to electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not....
and dark

Dark

Dark may refer to:*Darkness, the absence of light*The Dark, the name of several works of fiction*Evil, sinister or malign*dark , a term used to describe a broadcasting service that has ceased transmission...
, mass

Mass

In physical science, mass refers to the degree of acceleration a body acquires when subject to a force: bodies with greater mass are accelerated less by the same force....
, volume

Volume

The volume of any solid, liquid, plasma, vacuum or theoretical object is how much three-dimensional space it occupies, often quantified numerically....
, texture

Texture (painting)

Texture in a painting is the feel of the canvas. It can be based on the paint and its application or addition materials such as ribbon, metal, wood, lace, leather, sand, etc......
, and perspective

Perspective (visual)

Perspective, in context of visual system and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their space attributes, or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects....
, although it should be pointed out that these elements of design could also play a role in creating other types of imagery -- for instance abstract, or non-representational or non-objective two-dimensional artwork.

Figurative art

See also

External links