Frontality

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Frontality is a representation principle and draws u. a. the Persian ( Parthian ) or Egyptian and Greek archaic free sculpture of the Kore (sculpture) and the Kouros . This is also a characteristic of design elements in temple architecture. This is already in the Near Eastern art as well as in the Egyptian art u. a. to find the so-called mummy portraits . The viewer is facing the entirety of one side of a work of art. In the case of free-standing sculptures of roughly life-size figures, the viewer's eyes are directed towards the work of art, while the eyes of the work of art are in turn directed towards the observer. The facial features as well as the body in the archaic free sculpture are strictly symmetrical along the central axis. This frontality as a representational principle is largely canceled out in classical Greek sculpture . The movement and the classical contrapost , however, take its place, as it u. a. can be seen by the classical sculptors or ore caster Polyklet ( Diadumenos , Doryphoros ) and Myron ( Diskobolos ).

Images of saints and figures of saints in churches such as Jesus Christ or Mary often have such a frontality. In new visual media such as photography , reference is also made to frontality when it comes to generating suggestion . The representation principle is therefore also of great importance for modern art such as u. a. the frontal sculpture .

The “Law of Frontality” was first formulated in 1892 by the Danish art scholar Julius Henrik Lange . The Egyptologist Adolf Erman brought it to research for Egyptian art. Lange's theory was soon viewed critically, for example by Sigfried Fechheimer and Hedwig Fechheimer . Fechheimer countered the principle of frontality with the principle of shaping through figures such as cubes, lines or surfaces.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christina Natlacen: Plato's Aesthetics of Frontality and the Aspect of the Mask. (PDF file) University of Siegen , accessed on June 22, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Frontality, Law of. In: Johannes Jahn , Stefanie Lieb : Dictionary of Art (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 165). 13th, completely revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-520-16513-8 , p. 277.
  3. ^ Arnold Hauser: Social history of art and literature, 2nd edition, Munich 1983 (ebook 2017), p. 39 ff.
  4. ↑ Sylvia Peuckert: Hedwig Fechheimer and the Egyptian art: life and work of a Jewish and Jewish art scholar in Germany, Berlin 2014, pp. 151–158.