Illusion In Painting

Illusion of Movement

Painting on a two dimensional surface and creating "temporal form" or "movement" is trickery, conceived by the artist of the work. In three dimensional art (sculpture, ceramics and crafts - the plastic arts) form is not illusion but actual and very real. By creating a work on a two dimensional surface, drawing, painting, etc., the artist uses his or her knowlege of illusion to add other dimensions than width and hieght. The tricks of the painter may involve color manipulation or implied direction: what is generally considered in artistic terminology "color theory" or "composition," respectively. Below are 2-D paintings that are involved with an additional dimension, the portrayal of movement.

Paintings by Terry Hart Some tricks and illusions of painting: color theory, symbolic movement and underlying geometry (composition), are only three of the many tricks that may be employeed to create the illusion of movement	Paths of Golden Rectangles, enamel on plexiglass, 16X20 in, 2007 "Concurrent" color creates the illusion of movement
Golden Dancer, acrylic on canvas, 36X48 in, 1979	Blue Nude, acrylic on canvas, 36X48 in, 1978
Red Nude, acrylic on canvas, 36X48 in, 1978 ^The line drawings above are from a series of paintings and drawings executed by Terry Hart in the 1980s. He chose to label the series "pencilism." The strong influence from the French artist, Henri Matisse, who called the intentional use of line in many of his paintings, "cloisonism," is very apparent in Hart's work. Mattise's use of linear tecnique (the way in which the artist used stongly noticable outlines around the forms in his compositions) indicates that artist's appreciation of the bold and colorful stained glass technique, cloisonne`. Hart's absence of color in this series of work reminded the artist more of drawing than of painting: hince the term pencilism. Movement in Hart's series of paintings and drawings is only suggested to the viewer by a technique called "movement lines." This particular tecnique is used by many cartoonists and also by contemporary Pop artists such as Keith Haring. The compositions are not illusionistic but interpreted as movement by the fact that movement is symbolized. The drawings and paintings would otherwise seem to be stop-action, frozen-in-time interpretations of the physical act of movement.	Spittoon and Pipe, acrylic on buckram, 18X24 in, 1979 ^The painting pictured above has a very Paul Cezanne like appearance. Paul Cezanne has rightly been called the father of modern art. This 19^th and turn of the 20^th Century artist is classified as a Post-Impressionist and broke ground in art circles by simplifying subject matter into separate plains of color and volume. The painter’s approach to depicting landscapes, still lifes and portraits was by simplifying the parts of his subject into plains of color, value and volume. He once stated that everything could be broken down into three basic shapes: the cube, the sphere and the cone. With the breaking down of nature into these basic shapes and volumes, Cezanne was able to compose a painting that lead the viewer’s focus along paths into the composition and around the composition, creating a sensation of movement into a painting. This implied guidance of a viewer’s focus was not new, as underlying geometry in painting composition was used by artists throughout history, but Paul Cezanne used his groundbreaking theory as a marker of his content in painting, thereby defining his style: that he painted for the sake of creating a painting – art for art’s sake. Paul Cezanne and his theories were a tremendous influence on the later artistic movement of cubism.