The Elements, Styles, and Subjects of Art

“THE ELEMENTS OF ART”

Elements of Art are stylistic features that are included within an art piece to help the artist communicate his thoughts. They are also the
building blocks used by artists to create a work of art. When analyzing these intentionally utilized elements, the viewer is guided towards a
deeper understanding of the work.

The seven most common elements include line, shape, texture, form, space, color and value.

1) Line- is marks moving in a space between two points whereby a viewer can visualize the stroke movement, direction and intention based
on how the line is oriented. Artists may use line including actual, impelled, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and contour lines.

2) Shape –is a two-dimensional design encased by lines to signify, its height and weight structure and can have different values of color
used within it to make it appear three-dimensional. It can be geometric like squares, and circles or organic, like free-form or natural shapes.
They are flat and can express length and width.

3) Form – is a three-dimensional object with volume of height, width, and depth. These objects include cubes, balls, spheres, boxes,
pyramids and cylinders. Form is often used when referring to physical works of art, like sculptures as form is connected most closely with
three-dimensional works.

4) Color-is an element consisting of hues; of which there are three properties: hue (the name of the color such as red, green, blue, etc.)
chroma or intensity, (how bright or dull it is), and value (how light or dark it is). It is present when light strikes an object and it is reflected
back into the eye, a reaction to a hue arising in the optic nerve.

5) Space- refers to the perspective (distance between and around) and proportion(size) between shapes and objects and how their
relationship with the foreground or background is perceived. Positive space refers to the areas of the work with a subject. While negative
space is the space without a subject.

6) Texture- is used to describe the surface quality of the work, referencing the types of lines the artist created. The surface quality can
either be tactile (real) or strictly visual (implied).

7) Value- refers to the degree of perceivable lightness of tones within an image.

In the visual arts, style is a “distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories or any distinctive, and recognizable way in which
an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made. It also refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other
works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location,” school”, art movement or archaeological culture. The notion of style has long been
the art historian’s principal mode of classifying works of art. Art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed
by a group of artists during a specific period of time and/or locations of artistic activity. There were art movements and styles that dominated contemporary
art through the decades since the 1950’s. These are abstract, expressionism, kinetic art, Opt art, performance art, environmental art, feminist art, post
minimalism; video art, graffiti art, postmodern art, body art and digital art.

1) ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM -is a post-World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s.It has many stylistic
similarities to the Russian artists of the early 20th century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity
characterized many of the abstract expressionists’ works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. A
modernist movement initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world
solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express
the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.

2) KINETIC ART- is any art form from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or depends on motion for its effect. Refers to
threedimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move naturally or are machine operated the moving parts are powered by wind, a motor, or
the observer.

3) OPT ART- is short for “optical art” is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions_opt art.

4) PERFORMANCE ART- is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be live, through
documentation, spontaneously or written, presented to a public in a Fine Arts context traditionally interdisciplinary. It is also known as artistic action.

5) ENVIRONMENT ART- genre of art engaging nature and ecology. It is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art
and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. It has evolved away from formal concerns, worked out with earth as a sculptural
material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns.

6) FEMINIST ART- is a category of art associated with the late1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political
differences women experience within their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world.

7) MINIMALISM- an art movement that began in post- World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. The
movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post minimal art practices which
extends or reflect on minimalism’s original objectives. Minimalist often refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials;” also known as “minimal
art”,” literalist art and “ABC art”

8) VIDEO ART- is an art which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. It emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video
technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. It can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast;
installations viewed in galleries or museum; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or
more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.

9) GRAFFITI ART- drawings and paintings on walls. It is writing or drawings made on wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view.
It ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient
Greece and the Roman Empire.

10)POSTMODERN ART- is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its
aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multi-media particularly involving video are described as
postmodern.

11)BODY ART-is art made on, with, or consisting of the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings. Other types
include scarification, branding, subdermal implants, scalpelling, shaping (for example tight-lacing of corsets), full body tattoo and body painting.

12) DIGITAL ART- is an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. Since the 1960s, various names
have been used to describe the process including computer art and multimedia art. Some are styles progress through the decades and have influenced artist
throughout the globe. While some at short-lived and are confined to a group of localities. As much some art styles cannot be confined one particular decade.
“DIFFERENT STYLES DEPICTING A SUBJECT”

1.) REALISM – the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts.

2.) DISTORTION-is the alteration of the original shape of something.

3.) ABSTRACTION-is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general. It refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things
from the visible world_it can refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art.
Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract.

4.) NON-OBJECTIVISM – an art that does not attempt to represent the recognizable form or effect of objects as they appear in nature.