Curious about the artist's inspiration for these compositions — paintings and drawings dominated by shapes that look strangely like Casper the Friendly Ghost (who had his film premiere in 1945, Mr. Elderfield learned), combined with odd, amoebic figures; abstracted body parts; and grinning faces — Mr. Elderfield said he "turned to the wonders of Google".
Some artists choose to complicate their work with symbolic gestures and tangential flourishes that either dilute or strengthen the basic composition, as paintings by several artists here show.
The leftward direction of scroll reading is reflected in the composition of paintings and pictures which may build to a climax from right to left; or a main event presented on the right may be followed by its after-effects to the left.
In a growing number of cases conservators have discovered abandoned compositions underneath paintings, illustrating the artist's practice of reusing a canvas or panel.
The technique is gaining widespread popularity in the field of cultural heritage since it was first presented in 2008 [6] and has been used with great success to reveal and visualize hidden compositions in paintings by Van Gogh and Magritte among others [6 11].
There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.
This has led to, for instance in the Netherlands, rationally and artificially designed landscapes, such as the Noordoostpolder area (Fig. 1), and urban designs, such as Pendrecht in Rotterdam, that were inspired by Mondrians and Van Doesburgs artworks, such as the paintings 'Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red' (Mondrian) and 'Composition VII, the three graces' (Van Doesburg).
Despite the impeccable composition of his paintings, art critics dismissed Rockwell for decades, calling his work too saccharine.
