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Golden Ratio In Art

There are so many websites dedicated to the golden ratio in art (perhaps one of the best is this one) that I don't want to bore you with more explanations.

But for those who don't know what is the golden section, perhaps it suffice to say that

it's a way to build and draw things with a precise geometrical idea so that what we see looks beautiful and well proportioned without knowing why

Probably since the making of this BBC documentary starring John Cleese, The Human Face the concept of a magical number (PHI =1.618 0339 887) in Nature and Art has been growing in interest even more.

(And a little diversion on "beauty" in the following video clip it's almost a must to add).

Golden ratio

To see many example of golden ratios in art and Nature, simply go here.

Nautilus

You will see over and over again Leonardo's work, Greek architecture, the Nautilus (see the picture above, how curious they are!) , Botticelli's, Piero della Francesca's paintings and fresco's (by the way Piero della Francesca he was born in Sansepolcro, Tuscany---oh, the link is a surprise of mine...), Palladio, Mondrian, Seurat, and many more examples.

Actually, there are not many example of Golden Ration in Art* because this hypothetical mathematical way of creating beauty is more a myth. You can check many paintings, from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Picasso and you will see that the focus of the painting (eg. an eye, the head for the portrait, the particular scene or bridge) is rarel exactly at the right spot....

How to do that? Well, simply multiply each dimension of the painting or image by 0.62 and see what there is at the intersections of the two lines.

The golden section applied to many famous painting does not work. Bottom line: it's a guideline only and a tool among others. Composition is an art in itself and like variety.
See? The "rule" of the golden ratio in art for the Mona Lisa does not work. The centre of interest(s) (the face, the eye, the hands) are not even nearly near any of the intersections of the red lines. This does not make the painting a failure as you know...Conclusion: good composition is not just framed into mathematical rules as good and nice as these can be. There is no golden rule but perhaps one: variety.

In case you want it, here is a vector grid (in zip format)in Adobe Illustrator format (ai file) to play around on pictures that you see. Overlap it, resize it to the painting size and see...