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Product Description
Book Description
First published in 1899, Arthur Wesley Dow's Composition has probably influenced more Americans than any other text to think of visual form and composition in relation to artistic modernity. While Dow is known as the mentor of Georgia O'Keeffe and Max Weber, his legacy as a proponent of modern art has suffered undeserved neglect by recent artists and art historians.
In Composition Dow develops a system for teaching students to create freely constructed images on the basis of harmonic relations between lines, colors, and dark and light patterns. Greatly influenced by Japanese art, he expounds a theory of "flat" formal equilibrium as an essential component of telling pictorial creation. Generations of teachers and their public school pupils learned from Dow's orientalism and adopted basic postimpressionist principles without even knowing the term. The reappearance of Dow's practical, well-illustrated guide, enhanced by Joseph Masheck's discussion of its historical ramifications, is an important event for all concerned with the visual arts and the intellectual antecedents of American modernism.
In Composition Dow develops a system for teaching students to create freely constructed images on the basis of harmonic relations between lines, colors, and dark and light patterns. Greatly influenced by Japanese art, he expounds a theory of "flat" formal equilibrium as an essential component of telling pictorial creation. Generations of teachers and their public school pupils learned from Dow's orientalism and adopted basic postimpressionist principles without even knowing the term. The reappearance of Dow's practical, well-illustrated guide, enhanced by Joseph Masheck's discussion of its historical ramifications, is an important event for all concerned with the visual arts and the intellectual antecedents of American modernism.
From the Inside Flap
"Composition is a great classic that had immense influence on thinking about art during the first decades of the twentieth century; it is still a challenging statement about the nature of effective visual representation, and it remains of special interest to students of the history of art."--Richard Shiff, University of Texas, Austin
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
ANYONE WHO CAN think of "design" in art as a matter of form doing structural more than representational duty is on the way to comprehending the modernist motion of preeminent form as it emerged from design in the decorative (or applied or industrial) arts into an independent "abstract" art, with the positively decorative as transitional to the fully nonobjective. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
ANYONE WHO CAN think of "design" in art as a matter of form doing structural more than representational duty is on the way to comprehending the modernist motion of preeminent form as it emerged from design in the decorative (or applied or industrial) arts into an independent "abstract" art, with the positively decorative as transitional to the fully nonobjective. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your money,
By A Customer
This review is from: Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (Paperback)
I want composition that I can understand and deal with in my painting everday. I don't care at all to read the long intorduction offered. Thanks but no thanks
5.0 out of 5 stars
Composition Masterpiece,
By Todd (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (Paperback)
Dow's book is a classic of pictoral composition. Yes, there is a long forward, but so what? Dow didn't write the forward. The book is a workbook format, and many may not find the exercises useful, but the information sandwiched inbetween is priceless. Not an easy book to read, but well worth the effort. If you're looking for a quick fix with pretty pictures and easy formulas, don't buy this.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic worth reading,
By Todd (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (Paperback)
Dow's book is a masterpiece. The information is relevant to all visual arts. It is written as a workbook with exercises for students. Whether you follow the exercises or not, the information is priceless.
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