December 2017
Intermediate to advanced
208 pages
3h 39m
English
Sufficiency of means is the idea that a work of art is strongest when it achieves its desired result in the most economical fashion possible. Each component, whether it be color, line, layering, or tone, is deployed in a fashion that allows it to achieve its task and no more. Often, this idea involves considerable editing, the removal of extraneous material not necessary for the success of the artwork.
This principle is sometimes expressed by the idea “less is more,” a phrase first coined by the English poet Robert Browning in his poem about the Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530). An opposite outlook can be seen in the so-called “pompier style” academic paintings of nineteenth-century France, where painters ...