The Aesthetic Dimensions in Art and Society

Chapter 3: Light and Lighting Regarding the mystery that light is, physicist Arthur M. Young wrote in The Reflexive Universe: Evolution Of Consciousness, “Light, itself without mass, can create protons and electrons which have mass. Light has no charge, yet the particles it creates do. Since light is without mass, it is nonphysical, of a […]

Light And Shadow

An aesthetic and so much more There’s an intrinsic satisfaction, an aesthetic pleasure, that comes from the experience of light when it plays a prominent, sometimes dominant, role in a photograph or painting. The works of masters such as Rembrandt, Turner, and Hooper are largely characterized and revered for the qualities of light they depict. Light […]

XVIII. Simplicity / Complexity

The nature of this aesthetic dimension is expressed as a continuum, determined by the number of visual elements within the frame. A photograph of the moon against a black sky with no stars counts as one element. If the light of an airplane is visible, or if there are stars, each is another element. Changes […]

XV. Proportion

As an aesthetic dimension, proportion expresses the relationship of elements within a frame—to each other and to the whole image. Traditionally, paintings and photographs displayed logical proportion where everything within the frame conformed to observation. The part-whole relations made sense, so little to no interpretation was necessary.  Then in the early ‘20s, Picasso and Salvador […]