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Do All Fine Art Paintings Need A Focal Point?
This is the restaurant where Vincent Van Gogh took his meals when he lived in Auvers sur Oise, France. His bedroom is just upstairs. After he shot himself, he was taken up to his bed and sometime later, died in his bed.
A few years ago Honey and I visited Jackson Pollock’s house and studio near East Hampton, Long Island. It’s a great place to visit and interesting to see the cans of paint and brushes Pollock actually used, not to mention the paint all over the studio floor that you know he spilled while working. When I have seen Pollock’s work in museums, I have looked for a focal point, but can’t find one. Instead, the viewer becomes involved in all the drips and splashes of paint continuously moving, never stopping to rest. In that kind of painting the entire work is the focus.
This brings up the question of whether paintings need a focal point to be successful. There isn’t much in life that is all black or all white, and that goes with all things in art, which includes focal points. Some painters argue that the composition can’t be strong without a focal point. Others don’t like any rules, including those that help a painter in planning a good composition. Still others say, sometimes you need a focal point and sometimes you don’t
My opinion is… using a focal point is a wonderful compositional tool, when used correctly, but not absolutely necessary for success. The focal point is what draws the viewer’s eye into a painting. It is the area where a painter wants the viewer to land and stay a bit before moving on around the painting. It doesn’t mean there are no other interesting places to look in a work, just that this one area has received a little more emphasis. The focal point is used to stress key points in a composition. Without that emphasis, the viewer’s eye just wanders around with nothing in particular to look at.
In some paintings, an area of emphasis isn’t needed. In these cases, the painting itself is its own emphasis. For example, Jackson Pollock uses many lines and points to draw attention to the entire surface instead of individual parts. Whether a painting is abstract, non-objective or realistic doesn’t matter, but whether the work needs an area of emphasis, and that is the painter’s decision.
There can also be more than one focal point in a painting. As soon as that happens, the painting becomes more energetic, causing the viewers eye to move back and forth between the areas of focus. In that case one focal area receives more emphasis; while the others get a secondary position, more important than the rest of the composition, but not as important as the primary focal point. A painter creates a focal point in order to get attention, or just change the composition a bit and create a “surprise” for the viewer.
It is important to understand the concept of a focal point in order to be able to make the decision about whether to include a focal point in your painting or not. Do you always use a focal point in your work? Please comment below. Later, Judy
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