Analyzing the Elements of Art: Six Ways to Think About Texture Welcome to the fifth piece in our Seven Elements of Art series, in which Kristin Farr of KQED Art School helps students make connections between formal art instruction and our daily visual culture. Here are the other lessons in the series: shape, form, line, color, space and value. Seeing is Feeling: Texture in Art Image  Texture: you know it when you feel it on a physical surface, but do you know how to describe the textures of an artwork, architecture or even a song? Just like three-dimensional forms, texture can be real or implied. Real, tangible texture can be created through endless tactile possibilities: cutting, building, tearing or layering of materials, for example. Implied texture is created using other elements of art, including form, line, shape and color. Revisit our previous posts about the elements to get a sense of how they can be combined to create visual imagery with texture that makes an impact. _________ Texture on the Move Nick Cave stages a Soundsuit “invasion” in the Brightmoor neighborhood as part of “Here Hear.”
Real or actual texture can dramatically enhance a work of art. The artist Nick Cave creates Soundsuits, wearable creations that are meant to move. His Soundsuits come in all shapes, sizes and textures, and the texture contributes to the sound the suits make. Get a closer look at the texture of his work in the slide show above, Nick Cave Revisits Detroit, Soundsuits in Tow, and see how these wearable sculptures move in the video Bridging Dance and Art. Or watch this video of Mr. Cave’s horse-like Soundsuits Galloping Through Grand Central. What material is used to create the texture of the suits? How is the texture emphasized? How does it contribute to the effect of the performance? What kind of three-dimensional object could you create using textures that you can hear? What kind of materials could you attach to a person or object to create emphasized texture and movement? _________ Real Texture: Describe It An installation view of “Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay” a 2009 show at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Related ArticleCredit...Aaron Igler Which types of art materials offer the widest variety of textures? Consider the images in this slide show, The Art of Clay, and list all of the textures you see in each image. Do some of the objects have more than one texture? How many different adjectives can you think of to describe the texture of each object? Get creative with your descriptions. You can even create your own adjectives to describe the endless types of texture in art and all around us in everyday objects and landscapes. Look closely at the images in the Art Auctions’ Blue Chip Period slide show. How many textures can you spot and name? Are they real or implied? Can textures be both real and implied? Aside from painting and visual arts, texture can be found in other industries, such as fashion and photography. Texture is an “essential building block” for fashion and style. See how many textures you can find and name in this visual diary from New York Fashion Week. Once you’ve described all these textures using known and made-up adjectives, make a poem or song out of your list of descriptive words. _________ Implied Texture: Compare/Contrast A detail of Roberto Burle Marx’s design for the garden of the Ministry of the Army in Brasília from the early 1970s.Credit...Burle Marx Landscape Design Studio, Rio de Janeiro, Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Look closely at the painting above. How does it suggest, or imply, texture? How might the different parts of the image “feel”? Why? For Roberto Burle Marx, the Brazilian landscape architect who created it, “painting and landscape design were inseparable, if not identical, art forms,” writes the Times critic Holland Cotter in this appraisal of Mr. Marx’s work. The image above, a garden plan for the Ministry of the Army in Brasília, is meticulously color-coded, and the gardens that resulted actually reproduced, in plots of vegetation and crushed stone or painted pavement, the precise colors and shapes in this study. Next, take a look at the colorful, busy paintings of Erik Parker in the slide show, Eye-Popping Art. Which of the other six elements of art does he use to create implied texture? Line? Shape? Form? Color? All of the above? How would you describe the implied texture of his paintings? Do the images seem smooth or rough? To compare and contrast, view some historical paintings by Courbet, Bellini and Guston, whose works range from the 15th century to the 20th. Are the techniques these master painters used to create texture similar or different from Mr. Parker’s? What if an artwork has built-up layers of paint? Would you consider the texture real or implied? In your opinion, does the use of texture make a painting more believable or “real?” For instance, here is a painting by Julia Rommel: Julia Rommel, Relatives, 2015Credit...Jason Mandella According to this article,
Are these textures real, or implied? _________ Photographic Texture Hindu women worship the Sun god Surya in the polluted waters of the river Yamuna during the Hindu religious festival of Chatt Puja in New Delhi in 2014. Related Slide ShowCredit...Ahmad Masood/Reuters Photographs explore both real and implied texture — the photograph contains memories of textures captured in a freeze-frame moment. Which everyday elements create texture in the black-and-white photographs of 1958 New York featured in the article A Son’s Sleuthing, a Father’s Archive, and Capote’s Vanished Brooklyn? These images, taken by the famed photographer David Attie, were originally shot for Holiday magazine. How is texture created in these images? When is the texture created by a tangible object like stairs or concrete, and when is the texture created using light and angles? How do form and space help to create texture? How is texture emphasized in these pictures? Describe the textures you see and consider how they might contribute to the idea or moment Mr. Attie was trying to capture in Brooklyn at the time. Then, further practice investigating further by scrolling the Lens Blog, our weekly What’s Going On in This Picture? feature, or the arresting archival photography in The Lively Morgue, a Tumblr featuring interesting images taken by Times photographers over the last century. _________ Textures in Nature The rendering of real objects can be implied using texture, even when the image leans toward abstraction. Texture can help identify the objects artists paint, which often serve as interpretations of real life. In her review of a painter’s natural scenes, Sally Michel, Landscapes of Color and Texture, Roberta Smith wrote: “Her mountain and lake views are actively worked in contrasting textures and patterns. In ‘Forest Edge,’ numerous greens are painted over one another, as if to indicate different species of trees. Sometimes, as in ‘Field in Hilly Landscape,’ a blanketing forest is enlivened by tiny bits of bare canvas that suggest light or movement.” Which elements of nature do Ms. Michel’s painted textures convey? Though bordering on abstract, the textures help make the elements recognizable as part of a landscape. Browse through paintings by master painter Claude Monet in the slide show Claude Monet: Late Work. What kind of natural elements did Monet depict using texture? How is his use of texture to portray nature different than Ms. Michel’s? What kinds of textures are found only in nature? What kinds of textures are man-made? Next, look at the work of Alma Thomas in Ken Johnson’s review, Alma Thomas, an Incandescent Pioneer. Ms. Thomas paints landscapes as well as abstract images. How does she use texture in her artwork? What do her textures emphasize? What do they remind you of? _________ A Times Scavenger Hunt for Texture A sculpture from Makoto Azuma’s “Polypore” series, which involves coating the edges of polypore fungi in metal.Credit...Shiinoke Shunsuke Now that you’ve expanded your vocabulary for describing textures, start looking for them all around you in The New York Times Art & Design section — or elsewhere on NYTimes.com, like this T Magazine piece about “Art Objects that Blur the Line Between Natural and Artificial” — and challenge yourself to a scavenger hunt. See if you can find images of artworks or photographs with the following characteristics: • Texture that is implied but not real. • Real texture that can be felt physically. • An artwork with a combination of real and implied texture. • Something bumpy, something smooth, something soft and something scaly. • Collect images for each item on the scavenger hunt list and create a digital collage. • A place to start? The images in “Art Fall Preview: From East Coast to West Coast. From Concrete to Ethereal.” _________ Your Turn: Texture Books Now that you’ve practiced scavenging images of all different textures online, it’s time to get serious about your collection and create a “texture book” that focuses on images and textures, rather than text, like a picture book. Choose to continue the texture scavenger hunt through photography, found objects and craft materials, or drawing/painting: Photography - Find at least 10 different textures to photograph up close. Collect a wide variety of colors and textures and curate a collection of images that emphasizes the many different textures we see every day (and the rare ones, too). Once you have a nice grouping of images, create a collage digitally or with prints of your photographs. Found objects and craft materials — For a more tactile approach, collect fabric and other scrap materials of 10 different textures. Focus on scraps that are on the flatter side and easy to display in book form. Alternatively, you can experiment with craft materials. For example, use paper-cutting techniques, or glue flat objects to paper to create your 10 different texture pages. Find a way to creatively bind your pages together — another opportunity to add texture! Drawing/Painting - Perhaps the most challenging approach, try drawing or painting a variety of 10 different implied textures and compile them into a book format. If you choose, you can add informative text to the pages to describe each texture or to serve as a title for your drawings and paintings. |
Why do artists use texture? (site 1)
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