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Line of beauty is a term and a theory in
File:Sign-painter-Beer Street.jpg, The line of beauty denoted on Hogarth's 1751 ''Beer Street'' sign painter.
File:Illustration from the title page of The Analysis of Beauty..jpg, An illustration from the title page of ''The Analysis of Beauty''.
William Hogarth's ''The Analysis of Beauty''
(1772 edition)
Art Fundamentals
Aesthetic beauty Art history Works by William Hogarth {{aesthetics-stub
Line of beauty is a term and a theory in art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
or aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
used to describe an S-shaped curved line (a serpentine line) appearing within an object, as the boundary line of an object, or as a virtual boundary line formed by the composition of several objects. This theory originated with William Hogarth
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like s ...
(18th-century English painter, satirist, and writer), and is an essential part of Hogarth's theory of aesthetics as described in his 1753 book '' Analysis of Beauty''. According to this theory, S-shaped curved lines signify liveliness and activity and excite the attention of the viewer as contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines, or right-angled intersecting lines, which signify stasis, death, or inanimate objects.
In contrast to grand compositional lines, which are regularly found in Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
or Rococo
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
art, the serpentine line is not primarily dictating the whole composition of a canvas. Instead, the line should be understood as being found in specific subject matter, like the human figure. A composition is created by employing various kinds of lines in various relations to each other without destroying its simplicity.
Gallery
See also
*S-curve (art)
In the visual arts, an S-curve is an '' S''-shaped curve that can serves a wide variety of compositional purposes. The term is usually applied to the standing human figure bending first one way and then back the other. It may also be applied more ...
*Ogee
An ogee ( ) is the name given to objects, elements, and curves—often seen in architecture and building trades—that have been variously described as serpentine-, extended S-, or sigmoid-shaped. Ogees consist of a "double curve", the combinatio ...
External links
William Hogarth's ''The Analysis of Beauty''
(1772 edition)
Art Fundamentals
Aesthetic beauty Art history Works by William Hogarth {{aesthetics-stub