This is part 4 complete now.
Part 4 Composition
Fibonacci Rule
The Fibonacci rule or the Golden mean has been in Pythagorean mathematics and part of their secret wisdom cult well before 500BC. It has been with life a lot longer. All life and living intelligence have a rhythm and method of collecting data for its own collective survival and propagation. The Fibonacci phenomenon is a core operating system for life to automatically live more and lose less and to avoid losing more and potentially die. This is a primal intelligence for survival and then immortality.
Artist needs this phenomenon for their work to live more.
I found that the primal intelligence that looks at my paintings is scanning the elements of the painting and assessing their merit as to whether these elements are dominating their attention as a winner or loser of a given area of the entire painting, to see if there is any value to be harvested here. Without composition people would not even see my work. This was especially true of the western men who were put in front of my work. I noticed that structure was very important to hold any viewer, even against their will, to linger in front of my work. What sort of marketing was going on here?
At a core level of survival and success, hunting and killing, staying alive and recognizing a threat required the same primal intelligence, a similar intelligence to businessmen and pilots. Most animals are very blind with only poor eye sight and often no colour and no depth of field capability. Even coming from downwind and silently walking directly towards animals, was very confusing for these animals. If I held a transparent branch of leaves in front of me, I was somehow miss understood as a human or as an `anything seen` before. The animal could make no assessment of gain or loss. Knowing that vision is enhanced by an artificial mathematical correlation to a memory of an object stored and learnt in the brain giving then 20 x 20 vision the thin branch of leaves broke up my shape and didn’t match anything stored. So I was able to come very close to the animal. This is true of Humans as well.
As an Artist I wanted to come very close to the viewer. The closer the better, it was the same. Contemporary artists understood the need to get close to the audience. The Modern with staggered beginnings with Painting in 1880’s and finally Theater in 1914 all had agreed that the true expression of reality was not the literal image pursued by the naturalist painters called realists, rather the reality was the structure of the work. That means its compositional impact on the viewer, and touching the viewer at a very deep level begins to communicate with the audience at a very real place talking about real things. This could not be done before in cultivated Europe. Probably still can’t. The Modern is not over and is still struggling to be heard. The Modern is Nietsche and he will only be redundant when we all finally pass over into virtual reality all together. The Post Modern is about ones process and can be argued it is just a bunch of lies and illusions in a world of lies made important. The Shopping Malls and shopping are doing a good job of this. But that is the Modern and it taught us about composition and how to get very close to the viewer.
The viewer like the animals being hunted like the artist hunting, like every living thing operating with intelligence, which is even a rock if you don’t mind looking hard enough, all used the Fibonacci logical phenomena of assessing area and shape into curiously its dominance in a certain part of your work relative to another part of your work for a particular loss or gain potential for the viewer.
My students have heard me say regularly “A lot and a little” of each element of composition needs to be programmed into the work. It is a necessary binary. Like a rhythm simply swinging from the left foot to the right foot, one side will dominate into a simple two step dance. One foot will be dominant over the other. We have such fun with this dance. When you paint water colour and operate in the wet endlessly painting wet paint on a wet surface flooded with water, you have no time to take out a measuring stick and measure 1:1.6 approx or 1:0.62. It is all about a lot and a little: The great Fibonacci ratio or Leonardo’s Golden Mean. That is not quite two thirds, like 62% and its opposite 38%, the sacred ratio of all life, in genetic material, stock exchange predictions, sublime marketing communications and beauty. It reveals the mathematical measuring basis of how the brain and all intelligence gathers information and makes sense of it as useful or not.
The most important rule in painting composition or business negotiations or the fatal strike in Karate or any war, is to remember the saying “a lot and a little”. It may be a little first, and then it is followed by a lot. The composition of a painting, music, movies, a battle field of some war will be a dance of elements which will be scattered all over the place a bits of “a little” and bits of “a lot” measured very carefully as dominating this part of the painting and not that. This can be precisely measured by the minds accountant as this area or element of composition is winning in value and influence or not. The ratio is the Golden Rule and the phenomenon is Fibonacci. Without it the painting does not sell. The war does not sell, and the music repels.
The first known approximation of the (inverse) golden ratio by a decimal fraction, stated as "about 0.6180340," was written in 1597 by Prof. Michael Maestlin of the University of Tübingen, Germany in a letter to his former student and mathematician Johannes Kepler who proposed that all the planets went around the sun and wrote a letter to Copernicus about it. Copernicus was too afraid to publish it in his life time. He was a Bishop in Poland.
Understanding this Fibonacci mathematical ratio is important. It is important to translate this into a simple quick to use discipline in a crisis as you hunt down the profound meaning of something in your work. There is a high work load in water colour and in the water out of control your best friend is structure. Structure is this basic rhythm of “a lot and a little” Consider sustaining a trip on the Colorado River and applying the Fibonacci Rule with the focus and hard work demanding your fullest attention. For action moments a simple light weight discipline is necessary. The wilderness of nature has applied this and immortalized this light weight living rhythm now for billions of years. The Neo-Venetian money lenders are still trying to obliterate it by killing everything that is real and living.
The composition of your piece is made of many elements called Elements of Composition.
There is no risk if you paint red on red. It is one element. It is consistent with the Fibonacci rule because the sequence starts with:
0:1. This means: Out of a whole painting of red there is only red. There is no fraction.
Fibonacci sequence is: 0:1:1:2:3:5:8:13:21:34:55:89:144: and so on forever
0:1:1:2. This means: Out of a whole painting of red called(2)wholes there is one (1) of red and one (1) of same red and there is nothing (0). There is no fraction again. It is a Red on Red painting. This was exhibited in the State Gallery of Victoria, and part of their collection in Melbourne in Australia. Bare with me.
The viewer looks on and wonders what is going on. The composition here is only red. There is still no risk to make this painting because it stays in one dimension, in one boring safe element of composition. It is the most walked passed painting. Like our modern society. If you take away Einstein’s greatest work, apparently unread, and deliberately unread by current captured economists and marketing specialists, you take away the necessary relativity between the elements that make up your life and give meaning.
It means you are sitting in a train with the windows blanked out. Your box shakes and your train belongs to someone and their intention. That’s Red on Red. That is why it is famous. No one is lying to you. The artist isn’t. He is soundly proposing the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence. And so too is the Marketing Globalization train beneficiaries and owners, they do not lie to you. In your life there is no risk. There is no relativity. There is also no wonder and immortality. That is why the painting ‘Red on Red’ is so great. It is telling you the public punter the truth about your lot in life.
However the sequence of life goes on forever. The sequence is made up of adding the two previous numbers. (3) is made up of (2) and (1):
0:1:1:2:3 This means: Now out of the whole painting called (3)can stay boring red for eternity or two portions are (2)that was red all over, and one portion is (1) something new, another element. So we have 2/3 red and 1/3 some new colour. So we quickly see that we have a lot and a little. Dividing the work up it becomes a little more interesting and there is a relativity coming into the work that only is of particular interest if it is close to the ratio 1: 0.6180340. if it is closer to 1:001 that is 1% and 99% it means very little threat and very little gain. Much the same as 50% compared to 50% it not interesting because you can lose as much as you could gain if you take further interest. Even 75% and 25% are boring because you haven’t got much more to gain or it is still too far and too great a risk at 25%.
The greatest interest to any living intelligence is around the Fibonacci ratio at 62%. It is half way between 50% and 75%. As seen in nature everywhere, this ratio attracts attention. Artists want to attract attention. As beauty is about attracting attention! Going on with the Fibonacci sequence helps show this.
0:1:1:2:3:5 This means: Now out of a whole painting of a whole total of (5) it is made up of 3/5ths and 2/5ths
0:1:1:2:3:5:8 This means: Now out of a whole painting of a total of (8) it is made up of 5/8ths and 3/8ths
This goes on and on and the ratio is always the same. 1 : 0.62 This is the golden mean when dividing up your painting area. It is also true of every new element introduced into the work.
A list of the elements of the composition:
Dividing the area up, each slash of colour, each line, each angle, circles, squares, triangles, human bodies, curves, sky, hills, trees, rivers, and the list goes on forever. They are all treated in the same way. At the Kunst Academie of Arts in Germany as anywhere in the world it takes 5 years to understand composition. It takes a further 5 years of intense life experience to forget what they taught you. In short there would be a lot of that element and a little of that same element somewhere in the work. This is the minimum composition. If it occurs once it will attract attention. It can occur at an infinite amount as well. Every mark you make is consciously “a lot or a little”.
This is 5 years of study. They do not tell you that the human brain, as any intelligence anywhere, is studying the world in a binary fashion of 0 : 1.Croodiles do this. Do I have comfortable profit at 62% chance in my favour or not? Is there a threat or not? Is it right or wrong? Philosophers do this. Is it good or Bad? Philosopher priests do this as well. Is it a winner or a loser? Is it one of us or not? Is it rich or poor? Is it God blessed and Chosen or not and therefore of the devil? How much? Is it a small ratio or percentage or a significant large amount? Do I need to worry or not? Is it enough shareholding or not? Can I influence or not? Do you get it or not? Do you understand the binary or not? Do you understand that this binary and especially when it is around 62% everyone, all residents of life get excited because it is not equal, nor is it insignificant? It is extremely interesting around 62% visually it means you might live today or not. It means you are very rich and powerful now or not. Looking at a painting is naturally doing this. The blue is winning, the diagonals aren’t and the opaque male is dominant and winning influence today and the translucent female mystery is not. There is mystery in the work or not. The work is profound or not.
If you decide to add the colour blue it goes onto your work in the rhythm of a lot of it somewhere and a little somewhere else on the work. Arranged in such a way that one wins influence over your attention more than the other, so that if you as an accountant were to measure its area up on one side of your work it is either dominant or sub dominant. Check to see if there is conflict. One mark or collection of marks must win area and therefore influence of the viewers attention over the same type of mark elsewhere in the work. We want to be able to say the left side wins over the right side or visa versa.
A critical understanding is that there must be conflict in you work if you want a western person or an Asia person thinking western, to notice your work and lean forward and consider fondling the wallet. If there is no compositional conflict it makes people feel uncomfortable. No edge of ancient opportunity triggered by the 62%.
A perfect composition is an endless number of elements in conflict poised and suspended by the sub-dominant 38% of itself. Grand music full of Perfect Cords, these are called “the feel good cords” found in every Hollywood movie. They sell the sub-standard work. People feel just great listening or looking at such a lot of conflict naturally and ceaselessly.
Marketing
Soon enough the marketing people took hold of the endless lectures on composition at the Academy of Arts and now TV Adds don’t even make sense and seem to waste your time. Like the Study of Red on Red Painting the greatest response was, “Don’t waste my time”. But it worked and it sold to me to talk about it years later.
The power of the Fibonacci loaded composition is the most powerful phenomenon of the visual image.
The composition is the structure of the work. The elements of composition are the bits used to engineer the work. In the art world expressing what is going on in your world as a factual document is now done with structure, elements of composition and literal images. The splash of red colour talks about the fact of red. If it is missing as a sub-dominant in the work it is called irony. Much important information was transmitted through irony from the fascist governments of the former East Bloc countries of the former Soviet Union. The artists who used irony escaped transportation to Siberia. The Fibonacci main stream administrators were looking for the complete story, hence truth. Leaving out the dominant or sub-dominant pair the Artist was safe. The camouflage of irony meant they could continue to communicate through their art work. Irony in the Modern in Western Europe became very popular as well and often it was the only way of communicating the truth. Europeans couldn’t take on the truth straight on. It had to come in to them sideways. In long complex sequences of ironical parodies the artists of Europe touched the truth of matters. Kandinsky is full of these long ironical juxtapositions in his work.
There is much that Europe couldn’t cope with. After the reformation the notion of female flesh was avoided. An Old Testament thing that invaded Christianity at full speed after the Protestant Calvin in Geneva promoted what it was to be God beloved and blessed. The female was strongly obliterated. The Jewish church and the Calvinist church fully married then. The strong camouflaged Patriarch controlling the money marched all over the world.
In the whole modern world today you will find it so everywhere that one element of composition is missing. It is the female element of composition. I am the only person that speaks about it and has noticed. Can you find any other element of composition that is missing as well? Elements of composition are the fractals and bits that make up our world. They appear in paintings and elsewhere. They are our world. If they are missing, like the female element of composition, then you tell me what is going on here.
The female element of composition is the presence of mystery, the texture of the ineffable and profound in the work. A lot here and a little there, was actually nowhere to be found in any work anywhere. In fact after the Renaissance it fell away almost completely. The last renaissance painter was Rembrandt. The west stopped marketing mystery and a world beyond description in the 1600’s. It stopped being evident in the artwork. It is still so today 400 years later. Even Asia dropped the mystery stuff as the Dutch East Indies Company and its sister the British East Indies Company visited South East Asia; marketing themselves with their “men of war” iron cannon ships to do business with an early morning artillery barrage.
Japan closed its borders about that time for nearly 300 years. It was called the Edo Period. Mystery and wonder continued to be seen in the art work until it was all undermined by the infiltrating Rothschild Bank of England doing a deal with the low level poorer Samurai. Using the classic Venetian tactic of divide and conquer and loan both parties money at high interest and then weapons with optional mercenaries came to Japan. There was a rebellion amongst the high level Samurai and low level Samurai called the Meiji Revolt. The financed low level ones won the revolt. This is called the Meiji Restoration. The Meiji period is recorded to have started in 1868. Mitsubishi Trading Company was a joint venture between Rothschild and a low caste Samurai. They together restored the Emperor into the supreme immortal position. Like a European King the Venetians loved harvesting. Later this Emperor position signed off with the invading interests at the close of WW2 those 3 cities could be bombed with Atomic bombs. Two fell to waste. Japan was then fully harvested for 65 years. The last 19 years up to 2010 Japan has been in recession and depression.
The paintings changed then too. You see a lot more empirical detail in the way of accurate botanical representation. And so the female finally went from Japanese art as well. Do you think it might be the Neo-libertarians who since Venice still today push their own Globalization through money lending into cultures far away just so that they can get more rent off the money? Well they certainly don’t like the female essence at all. It has been obliterated from the art world and possibly from your world as well, most likely. No one has noticed. They see more under ware and skin, but no female essence that everyone is calling for. Do you think the thinking has been hijacked through the good old power of marketing? Simply by leaving out this element of composition the world has changed. Could it be all those Art Academies never including the female element of composition in the education? Is it their fault that we have lost our entire precious wilderness?
The truth of the world has been compromised by leaving out these facts that play a role as elements of composition.
There is a core sickness that comes historically through the influence of these Neo-Libertarians and the spreading of themselves just because they happen to be the money lenders with insatiable greed over money control. Now there are no old growth forests, most places have no trees, there is no fresh water now it is tampered with and there is no clean air. The soil is contaminated and lost fertility and there is no nature left anywhere with kids choosing to live a virtual reality.
Their parents are shocked by the bank and the endless payments, ask what is the meaning of all this?
Distance
To establish the sense of distance into a composition is to further prioritize the information that comes via the elements of composition, so that the illusion of a depth of field occurs for the viewer. The depth could be the distance in a landscape or a deep feeling of another dimension beyond the viewers’ world.
There is a voyeurism in the world of the most sophisticated societies of our safe place and the other that is being harvested for information privately. Depth is something most appreciated by the sophisticated western liberal world. There is something cost effective about voyeurism. To create this illusion there must be a fore ground a middle ground and a distance.
Compositionally, big fat marks or area are found in the foreground. As big as you like! Then progressively smaller. The distance is filled with void and the smallest sub-dominant marks done with your smallest brush, say a number 2 size. This depends on the overall size of your work.
The fore ground is the sides, top and bottom of your work. Like a window or a key hole you might peep through.
Tone is another way to create foreground. Maximum tone is paced into the foreground; Like pure black. This can go as far into the painting as a key hole idea lets you.
As with tone you could use chroma or hue. Perfect primary colour is perfect maximum chroma; the same with secondary colours and tertiary colours. Once again it is at maximum in the foreground.
Opacity is another foreground move with translucency where you want distance recognized.
Thin lines or just lines themselves imply distance.
Cool colours sit in the distance and warm colours are found dominating the foreground.
We could create distance by simply drawing it in by using perspective line and vanishing points and sell the illusion of objective reality. This is a very popular method that gets attention as it naturally builds “a lot and a little” into the work of the objects used as elements of the composition.
Depth of Field known as distance in the work is an illusion of three dimensionality of here and there. Here is another level of relativity of perspective that is added to the relativity of the Fibonacci related composition. The Fibonacci relativity is real and talks and presents reality to the viewer and the illusion of distance is a cartoon in the work, pretending to represent the reality called realism.
Content
The content of your work is important for the marketing department. Feeling the elements of composition in Fibonacci structure and rhythm is enough to capture great meaning and value for the viewer. The viewers’ attention will be with you with or without content. Your promotions people will say I want this content and that content because our audience is literally living in a profane way, never accessing anything meaningful, profound and mysterious. It is mysterious to have no content. It is like someone knocking on the door and opening the door you find no-one there. You have to ponder.
People still ponder about that painting “Red on Red” or Jackson Pollack’s’, “Blue Poles”.
After returning from Europe and Africa, exhibiting in Germany African drawings, I started painting in Australia in 1981. My other career is remote area single pilot flying operations. Sitting next to the parked aircraft in the middle of central Australia alone and painting the landscape brought a new challenge with it. How do you paint the powerful awesome endless and featureless desert? There are no trees, houses, mountains and rivers. What do you paint? The only content in the desert is the aircraft. To paint an aircraft is an aircraft portrait or study. How do you paint the empty nothingness of the desert? How do you paint the view from your yacht in the Southern Ocean? Is there nothing there until Chile? Let us face it there is no content in the desert. Do we only respect content? If so death can be with you within 2 kilometers walking.
Painting reality is not painting content. That is true only some of the time.
Painting wilderness has no identifiable easy to access content. If you have never seen and experienced wilderness and not familiar with a wild eco-system, then remember it is recognized by the shear presence of something extremely powerful and dominant over you. Like a big truck full of armed and engaged police officers that cannot be painted. Many children now have no idea about something naturally impactful. Children are moving or have already moved to a very simple cartoon reality. A landscape painting of wilderness makes no sense. Wilderness makes no sense. Content is necessary.
Adults, like children need content. They have never seen a Luna landscape we have to teach them.
The female element of composition talks about the ineffable, intangible something that cannot be recorded as an object. It is very real and it takes up space and commands that space with a power of life and death. The female element of composition tells you about the temporal nature of life and the existence of a finite mortality inside your reality. It certainly disturbs a shopper and a “Manga” comic reader. We could use the female element of composition to represent a vase of flowers to say something more than the vase and flowers, rather the work can describe the world we live in and how fragile we are in it.
Sitting out in the Australian desert it is quite clear all alone how fragile life is and how easily the land can kill you through its own volition and power. The discovery that the female element of composition actually describes this greater reality of the world came about to describe the quality of the place and the experience of being in such a place. This provides meaning to the Artist and to the audience. Content has not the capacity to do this.
Now meaning is needed by those that believed the social advertising spoof, their school teachers who were getting them ready for the great virtual reality of Job Land and Kissinger’s hijacked mindset sold by the IMF and World Bank, to be finally legislated by the Government bureaucrats. Socially we deliberately walked away from real meaning in life thinking it will fix itself with more TV, sport and pornography. We were left with content. Content was our social story of our lives and the objects we have. Despite Nietsche the Art Academies made no difference in this matter. They too omitted to see that the most important aspect of life and being alive as an element of composition was missing in art work so obviously.
So content is your choice. Please enjoy it and always follow your promoter. Starvation of the Artist is not on my list of topics. This brings Part 4 to an end.
I will do the last Part 5 in Chies car while we are driving to Kyoto or Tokyo over the next 10 days.
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