Elements of Art

line, shape, value, color, texture, space

Line

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1486).  Tempera on canvas.  67.0 in x 109.6 in. Uffizi, Florence.

Line-In mathematics, the path made by a moving point.  Lines in math are without width or end; lins in art do have width as well as endpoints

Dot-in art, a point that has a measurable size

Matthew Ritchie Morning Line

Shape

Lynda Benglis, For Carl Andre, 1970. Acrylic foam. 56 1/4 x 53 1/2 x 46 3/16 in. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.

Shape-An area within a composition that has boundraies that separate it from what surrounds it, making it distinct

Amorphous-Without shape; without boundaries

Mark Dion Herbarrium Perrine

Value

Kara Walker, Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), 2000. Cut-paper silhouettes and light projections. Dimensions variable. Guggenheim, New York.

Value-The lightness or darkness of a color

Kara Walker

Color

Jasper Johns, Flags, 1968. Lithograph. 34 5/8 x 25 7/8 in. MoMA, New York.

Hue-Color; the visual sensation created by specific parts of the visible spectrum, enabling us to label it, for example, as red or blue

Intensity-Brightness of a color

Afterimage-The lingering impression made by a stimulus that has been removed.  The afterimages of colors are their complements

Jasper Johns, Flag

Texture

Vincent can Gogh, Sunflowers, 1887. Oil on Canvas. 17 x 24 in. The Met, New York.

Visual texture-The illusion of actual texture

Actual texture-Texture related to the materials used to create the work

Arturo Herrera "Failure"

Space

Joseph Stella, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939. Oil on Canvas. 70 1/4 x 42 3/16 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.


Sculpture-The art of carving, casting, modeling, or assembling material into three-dimensional figures of forms; a work of art made in such a manner

Louis Bourgeois "Identity"