Pyramids

The pyramid is a stable structure, and a group of figures arranged in a pyramid shape on a plane surface usually results in a stable composition.  Even when the forms are busy and involved, the overall impression is of rightness, solidity and permanence.  These examples are chosen from work done in several periods from the Renaissance to the present.

Rossi 1528:

El Greco 1575:

Van der Burch 1650:

Fragonard 1780:

Delacroix 1862:

Botero 1973:

Buffett* 2006:

* "Pauline Street Breakdown"

More Pegge Hopper

When I posted the article "Painting Sunshine,"  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/01/painting-sunshine.html  I had not seen Pegge Hopper's canvas of her two daughters on the beach.  It is a good example of the painting of sunshine.  The figures are modelled, but only in a few close values, shallowly.  The sensation of bright sunlight is achieved by the extreme interval between the lit and shaded portions of the sand on the beach.

Apart from the impression of midday sun, the composition of the picture is a marvel.  Though the main figure is in repose, the picture is dynamic because there isn't a horizontal line in it; all are diagonals.

The painting is compelling to the viewer because it is full of novelty and the unexpected, yet in perfect equilibrium.  Variety, ( in this case cropped extremities, hidden faces, foreshortened torsos, feet at the top) is an achievable quality, and so is equilibrium, if you employ symmetry.  But to get both balance and variety into the same composition is something for an artist to strive for.  Pegge Hopper has done it here.

Pegge Hopper

Here is a painting by Pegge Hopper, featuring a Polynesian woman seated in profile on the floor.  She wears a modest garment which covers all but her head, hands, and part of a foot.  The artist's  knowledge of the figure, and her ability to draw it convincingly, enable her to make us aware of the body underneath and all of its articulations, using nothing more than a simple, flat, colored shape.

Pegge Hopper's expertise at drawing is also responsible for the capture of the fleeting motions made by the arms and hands.  The woman reaches back to separate her hair from her neck and fans some air in to cool herself.  It is a familiar, everyday gesture, feminine and graceful.

The colors, however, do not result from fine draftsmanship.  They come from somewhere that, unfortunately for me, I have never been..  The Isles of the Blessed, Intuition, Paradise, the Albert King color system, I don't know where it is, but Pegge Hopper does.
http://peggehopper.com/index.html

Pitfall

When undertaking a complicated composition, an artist often divides the attention of the viewer by creating two (or more) centers of interest.  When that is done, the picture's integrity suffers.  I exposed one of my own mistakes in a previous article.  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-photographs.html

The two houses, in this sketch, were threatening to divide, like microbes, into two cells.

Paul Gaugin painted fine and original and complex pictures which are treasured everywhere they hang.  Only a very few, painted early in his career, exhibit this flaw.

Giovanni Bellini:

I could find only one somewhat borderline example from the work of Andrew Wyeth:

Gabriele Munter:

Artists, be aware of this pitfall.