THE HUMAN MIND, MET WITH infinite amounts of data in the world, is always demanding, "Get to the point." It wants to reduce the complex to the simple. This is what psychology and brain science have told us, and it has been applied in many areas—including a painting's composition.
The mind seems amazingly equipped to do this, usually for our benefit, but sometimes to deceive us. Psychologists have given various names to this reality, from "cognitive bias" (deceptive) to "framing" (quick accuracy). The mind's frames, for example, either being hardwired or condition by life, have acute, helpful expectations about the perceived world: The mental frames organize all the data flooding in, helping us make our way, and remarkably so.
Before we look at art, let's consider two other examples: news and literature. Studies of newspapers and magazines have found that certain "stories" are repeated again and again, just the facts are changed. These are frames: the tendency for news writers and editors to set up a certain kind of dynamic in a story, which they know always works (and that the public is accustomed to).
In literature, as well, it has been argued that every successful novel has only a few story lines, though everything else can differs. One theory goes that there are “seven basic plots” that all literature express. My favorite, for simplicity's sake, is the argument that all fiction can be reduced to two story lines: The hero goes on a journey, and, a stranger comes to town. All the rest is detail once these subliminal plots are in place.
The frames of the mind also affect how we experience visual art. Some of this is well known. The visual system is acute to sharp contrasts of dark and light, for intance. Of all objects represented in a painting, it is the human ones--especially the eyes--that draw our mind’s attention first, and most often.
While artists do not begin their careers from this psycho-scientific vantage point, they have nevertheless come up with conventions that suit how our mind works. Dark and light is one example. The rule that a composition suffers if its main object is dead center is another. The Dutch landscape painters said a landscape emphasizing the sky should put the horizon line at one third up the painting's height. That rule of thumb somehow does match the expectations of the human mind.
All of this occurred to me when I again read painter Barbara Nuss's proposal that there are 14 kinds of landscape compositions that work. Her argument is not based on frames or cognitive bias, but there is certainly some connection. The "formulas" all are applied to a horizontal rectangular-shaped canvas.
The first group of compositions is perhaps simplest. (1) A cross (+) shape in which a horizon line is bisected by a vertical line, such a dominant tree. (2) An L shape in which the vertical line is off to the side, making an L with the horizon line of the foreground. (3) A U shape in which both sides of the painting have vertical lines anchored on a bottom line. (4) An O shape defined by surrounding shapes, as in bending trees creating a circular vista. (5) An S shape, as in a road curving from a distant point to the forefront. And (6) a large pyramid shape set against a horizon (a classic composition since the Renaissance).
The remaining composition have more to do with lines and the balancing of objects. (7) A diagonal field in the foreground, and opposing diagonal in the background. (8) Lines of linear perspective moving from the distance to the forefront (done with buildings or lines of trees). (9) A pattern of several lines going horizontally, bisected by many small vertical lines (trees against fields and rolling mountains). (10) A grid of nine squares with the center of interest not in the center square (with exceptions), and not the lowest squares. (11) Repeated objects in the foreground, such as large rocks, organized in a balanced pattern of three.
Nuss gives the last three formulas pictorial names to describe them. (12) A balanced “scale,” with a dominant object in the middle, and on either side objects of similar weight to each other. (13) Many shapes overlapping each other in a short depth of field, like a collage. And, (14) A balancing scale where a large object on one side has a similar smaller-shaped object on the other side, like a large and small building.
I'm sure Nuss, a lifetime painter, had thought through other possible formulas. But the arbitrary number of 14 suggests that everything she thought of was reduced to these. Very little, in terms of a landscape composition, is left out. Interestingly, these are all compositions of the mind, set-ups not always found conveniently in nature itself (yet true to nature).
One suspects a kind of mental framing is taking place here. The child’s brain matures while seeing the three-dimensional world, seeking its simplification. The 14 composition, all pleasant and effective, seem to satisfy something innate in ourselves.
Whether a brain scientist could prove these are innate preferences is up for speculation, but it would be an interesting experiment. Either way, painters have always counseled that artists must adjust what they see in nature to work as a composition. To that point, Nuss quotes a friend: "Why let the truth get in the way of a good painting?"
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