skip to main content
10.1145/3306211.3320136acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessiggraphConference Proceedingsconference-collections
other

Secrets of balanced composition as seen through a painter's window: visual analyses of paintings based on subset barycenter patterns

Published:28 July 2019Publication History

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the author implements and uses a subset barycenter pattern to analyze various paintings. The suggested visualization and analysis tool is inspired by Gombrich's theory of a painter's window and Locher's psychological research on computational balance. An image's or an image group's subset (set of cropped images) may reveal genre and artist characteristics. Moreover, it may also reveal forensic information about each artist's individual style and its changes over time with barycenter dispersion patterns. The suggested barycenter pattern analysis can enrich the methods of art history and criticism.

References

  1. R. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1954).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. R. Arnheim, The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1982).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. R. Bearden and C. Holty, The Painter's Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting (New York: Crown Publishers, 1969).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. C. Bouleau, The Painter's Secret Geometry: A Study of Composition in Art (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1980).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. E.H. Gombrich, Art History and the Social Sciences (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1979).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. W. Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane, H. Dearstyne and H. Rebay, transl. (New York: Dover Publications, 1979).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. P.J. Locher, P.J. Stuppers and K. Overbeeke, "The Role of Balance as an Organizing Design Principle Underlying Adults' Compositional Strategies for Creating Visual Displays," Acta Psychologica <b>99</b>, No. 2, 141--161 (1998).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. V. Firstov et al., "The Colorimetric Barycenter of Paintings," Empirical Studies of the Arts <b>25</b>, No. 2, 209--217 (2007).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. I.C. McManus, K. Stöver and D. Kim, "Arnheim's Gestalt Theory of Visual Balance: Examining the Compositional Structure of Art Photographs and Abstract Images," i-Perception <b>2</b>, No. 6, 615--647 (2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. J. Zujovic et al., "Classifying Paintings by Artistic Genre: An Analysis of Features & Classifiers," 2009 IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, Rio De Janeiro (2009) pp. 1--5.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. V. Yanulevskaya et al., "In the Eye of the Beholder: Employing Statistical Analysis and Eye Tracking for Analyzing Abstract Paintings," ACM Multimedia (2012). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  13. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. As Gombrich notes, a painting can be interpreted in the form of frames viewed through windows.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Locher, Stuppers and Overbeeke {8}.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Locher, Stuppers and Overbeeke {8}.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Firstov et al. {9}.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. McManus, Stöver and Kim {10}.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. J.W. Park, "Information Aesthetics with Visual Genealogy Project," Leonardo <b>44</b>, No. 5, 464--465 (2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. S.K. Park, E.J. Lee and J.W. Park, "Visual History with Choson Dynasty Annals," Leonardo <b>49</b>, No. 4, 334--341 (2016). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. For this study, I used 300 random subset images at 25%--50% of their original frame size, which provides a converging, stable result.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. In fact, in 1919, Mondrian returned to Paris after World War I. It was also when he pursued his own neoplasticism in Paris (1919--1938), independent from De Stijl.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  23. Turner absorbed Goethe's theory of light, darkness and color.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  24. This is described at www.nextrembrandt.com, accessed 8 January 2019.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  25. C. Ginzburg, "Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method," History Workshop, No. 9, 5--36 (1980).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Data and source codes used in this research are available at github.com/fmalab/VisualAnalysisForPainting, accessed 8 January 2019.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Recommendations

Comments

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Sign in
  • Published in

    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGGRAPH '19: ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Art Gallery
    July 2019
    126 pages
    ISBN:9781450363112
    DOI:10.1145/3306211

    Copyright © 2019 Owner/Author

    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    • Published: 28 July 2019

    Check for updates

    Qualifiers

    • other

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate1,822of8,601submissions,21%
  • Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)7
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

    Other Metrics

PDF Format

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader