Harmony (art)
Under harmony ( lat.-gr. harmonia, assembled, line ) refers to the partial to widespread agreement and restriction in the constituent basic elements of two or more systems or system areas. Harmony is a concordance that is more concealed or can be determined in deeper building structures, which can be indirectly experienced in this way in wide outer areas. The common use and the limitation evokes a feeling of developed and balanced unity, simplicity and lightness in relation to the entire appearance. Therefore harmony is also the absence of (inner) conflict. The deeper correspondence inherent in the harmony, the consonance and the "unity of diversity" is perceived by a perceiving authority as pleasant or aesthetically beautiful.
Historical views
The search for harmonies in spatial and numerical relationships led ancient thinkers to some realizations. Johannes Kepler discovered his planetary laws through them .
As in other cultures, the art of the Egyptians was a reflection of divine order - the mate . The mate “ is the harmony of tones, the euphoria, the right measure, also in architecture, the balance against any excess. “, Says Eric Hornung . The axial temple of the ancient Egyptians, for example, relates symmetrically to an axis on which all elements of the building are mirrored. But all symmetry is only part of a broader basic principle. The paradox of the living effect of rigor is explained by the fact that “ only at first glance seems perfect symmetry, which at second glance reveals itself to be a refined and well thought-out deviation from it. "
According to the theogony of Hesiods (Boeotic legend) Harmonia is the daughter of Ares (god of war) and Aphrodite (goddess of love, beauty), wife of cadmos (= cosmos, i.e. world, meaningful order), her siblings are Phobos (fear) and Deimos (horror). Thus, through her name and in her person, she symbolizes the union of two opposites, which creates the prerequisite for the emergence of human culture. According to the Attic legend, she is the daughter of Zeus and mother of the Muses, thus the protector of the sciences and the arts.
Heraclitus' doctrine of “ harmony (or unity) as a contradiction ” draws from older sources: “ What is conflicting fits in and what is diverging results in harmony and everything arises through contradiction. " Aristotle comments on this in his ethics:" Nature strives for the opposite and from this, and not from the same, produces harmony ... Art also achieves this, apparently by imitating nature. The painting mixes the components of white and black, yellow and red color in the picture and thereby creates the similarity with the original; the music mixes high and low, long and short tones in different voices and thereby creates a uniform harmony. "
The influence of Vitruvius and its ancient theory of proportion (for the temple and house construction) to the Renaissance painting was low. Raffael z. B. seems to have preferred a “ certain idea ” and nature to Vitruvius's calculations, just as antiquity always determined these proportions differently and rather followed an “ idea ”. Raphael's anthropometric studies influenced Leonardo da Vinci . Leonardo's portrait grotesques seem to argue against such mathematical teachings rather than studies.
Johann Georg Sulzer (“ General Theory of Fine Arts ”, 1771/74) writes: “ You have high and low colors, like high and low tones; and just as several tones can unite in one sound in which none particularly stands out, so does the same with the colors. So in the colors the harmony, the consonation and dissonation are of the same quality as in the tones. “This“ highest harmony of colors… can only be achieved in the paintings that are painted from one color, gray in gray or red in red, what kind of painting the Welsh call Chiaroscuro. “But:“ Although only the unison has perfect harmony (see unison), it is therefore not the most pleasant consonance, but only the fullest. The agreement of the manifold (Concordia discors) is always more pleasant than the still more perfect agreement of the similar. "At this point, and after refuting his own starting point, Sulzer comes to the old problem of integrating the drawing:" A large part of the harmony depends on light and shadow; because this alone can give a painting harmony. The highest unity of mass or the highest harmony can only be found on the sphere, which is illuminated by a single light. The highest light falls on a point and from there as the center point it gradually decreases through completely connected degrees to the strongest shadow. This is the pattern that the painter must adhere to in order to achieve perfect harmony in light and shadow. But this can only be understood by individual masses; for where the painting consists of several, the harmony cannot have the highest degree, because the different groups have to separate from one another. "So Sulzer's exemplary academic way of looking at things, which has meanwhile dropped its goal of integrating color and drawing, comes to correspondingly consistent conclusions:" So you don't always have to work towards the highest harmony; because it would often make the whole thing weak. "
J. and W. Grimm stated during the German Classical period that “harmony” had become a fashionable term, and they describe harmony as “the combination of individual tones struck at the same time to create a beautiful whole, the pleasant arrangement of the colors and groups of a painting ”. And in Goethe's theory of colors it says: “ … the actual harmonic effect only arises when all the colors are placed side by side in equilibrium. "
In the foreword to the Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire writes of a “ human need for symmetry and surprise ”. It was precisely in his time that painters often used logic instead of harmony . For example with Eugène Delacroix , or with Paul Cézanne : “ You have to express yourself as logically as possible ... There is a logic of colors, the painter only owes its obedience. Never to the logic of the brain, if it surrenders, it is lost. Always the logic of the eyes. “A work has no“ power ”, no“ expression ”, no“ logic ”or no“ harmony ”means largely the same thing.