Calling Attention to Your Subject :

Focal Point

Using a Focal Point

• What takes center stage?• A focal point is an emphasis• An emphasis relates to the overall

meaning of an image• It can be achieved in a number of ways:

– Contrast– Isolation– Sharpness– Placement

What takes center stage?

What is the nominal subject of this image?

Suggest ways in which this artist is achieving his emphasis of the subject

Consider:

•Placement

•contrast

What is the subject of this painting?

What are some of the secondary or support elements that the artist calls to attention?

What are some of the “isolated” focal points?

This means of producing focal points is called “emphasis by isolation”

This is a unified, single image by the same artist. What differences can we point to in this work that is different from the diptych in the previous work?

What is the subject of this painting?

How is the space divided, and how does this division contribute to our understanding or at least our consumption of the image?

This fresco has many individual details—features. Describe what you believe is the most significant feature of the work.

Are there individual features in this work that stand out? What is the subject?

• Different works have different degrees of emphasis. In Durer’s Rhinocerous, the entire beast is itself the significant feature, though one could talk about the descriptive and identifying text as also being significant. Language always changes a work

This is a more radical case of an artwork without a particular significant point of emphasis. In this case, we say that we are maintaining the work’s unity without a focal point. What mechanisms and features allow this to work?

• Ultimately, the principle of unity should override the strength of any given focal point (point of emphasis)

• The relationship between the whole and th parts exists in a continuum:

Discuss the “whole and the parts” of these two works:

summary

• Focal point works in a unified picture do define meaning within the picture’s narrative

• The unity of a work overrides any individual focal point in visual importance

• The whole is sometimes the main emphasis, for example color field painters, Jackson Pollack, and pattern work.

For Discussion:

Rothco: Color Field Painting, 1970’s

Design idea for golf tournament by “Roxy”

Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol

Ancient of Times by William Blake, (19th century)

What is the subject of this painting?

What are some of the secondary or support elements that the artist calls to attention?

What are some of the “isolated” focal points?

This means of producing focal points is called “emphasis by isolation”