Universal Principles of Art

83 SIMPLIFICATION

REDUCING A STATEMENT TO ITS FUNDAMENTALS

Simplifying form, or editing complex situations into a readable set of forms or ideas, is one of the foundational strategies of art. Many tribal cultures pursue an art based on severe simplification, and ancient civilizations generally rendered figures and settings as simplified formations. More sophisticated simplification occurred in the Renaissance, particularly in the work of Piero della Francesca (1415–92), whose deep interest in Euclidean geometry led him to reduce forms towards the condition of geometric solids. A great deal of modern abstract art involves the reduction of appearances to sets of simple forms. For example, the French artist Fernand Léger (1881–1955) reduced both ...