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The formal elements, those aesthetic effects created by design, upon which figurative art is dependent, include line, shape, color, light and dark, mass, volume, texture, and perspective, [2] although these elements of design could also play a role in creating other types of imagery—for instance abstract, or non-representational or non-objective two-dimensional artwork.
Oil paint historically has been the ideal media for depicting the figure. By blending and layering paint, the surface can become more like skin. "Its slow drying time and various degrees of viscosity enable the artist to achieve rich and subtle blends of color and texture, which can suggest transformations from one human substance to another."
A figure drawing may be a composed work of art or a figure study done in preparation for a more finished work, such as a painting. [1]: Ch. 8 Figure drawing is arguably the most difficult subject an artist commonly encounters, and entire courses are dedicated to the subject.
In 1961, Danish Egyptologist Erik Iverson described a canon of proportions in classical Egyptian painting. [2] This work was based on still-detectable grid lines on tomb paintings: he determined that the grid was 18 cells high, with the base-line at the soles of the feet and the top of the grid aligned with hair line, [3] and the navel at the eleventh line. [4]
The Boston origins of the American movement date to a "wave of German and European-Jewish immigrants" in the 1930s and their "affinities to the contemporary German strain of figurative painting ... in artists like Otto Dix (1891–1969), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), and Emil Nolde (1867–1956), both in style and in subject matter," art historian Adam ...
The artists featured in these exhibitions blurred the historical distinction between abstract and figurative painting. Human figures, landscapes, plants, figures, interior/exterior spaces were combined in non-representational landscapes. All forms of expression, visual languages or art historical quotations were incorporated into their work.
In the late 1950s, Joan Brown was a maturing artist who helped make California, and the Bay Area in particular, an important artistic center. Brown worked with multiple other artists to make popular the concepts of figurative painting, Beat Generation culture, and Funk art.
Articles relating to figurative art, artwork (particularly paintings and sculptures) that is clearly derived from real object sources and so is, by definition, representational. The term is often in contrast to abstract art.