Unity Quiz

Why do artists often try to create unity in their artworks?

Answer explanation

Artists are concerned with unity. They want their work to have a feeling of wholeness or harmony, and they achieve this when all the parts of a design work together.

List four ways to create unity in an artwork.

Answer explanation

Dominance

Repetition of Visual Units

Use of Color

Surface Quality

Explain what dominant and subordinate elements are in a design. Name an example of an image that has a dominant element. Identify that element?

Answer explanation

One way to achieve unity in a design is to make a single visual element play a major part.

These lesser parts are said to be subordinate, or secondary: they can both support the dominant subject and add variety to the design.

Name an image below that uses repetition of shape to create unity.

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Select one image below that uses an overall surface texture to create unity. Describe the texture?

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Explain what prompted Käthe Kollwitz to create her series of prints, The Weavers’ Uprising.

Answer explanation

The Weavers’ Uprising, was based on a play she had seen. The play, The Weavers, written by Gerhart Hauptmann, was about the 1844 revolt of weavers who lived near the German-Polish border in Silesia and worked, in traditional style, on hand looms.

With what two countries was Noguchi most closely associated? How did these cultures influence his work?

Answer explanation

Born in Los Angeles in 1904 of an American mother and Japanese father, Noguchi spent his early years in Japan, but he returned to the United States at the age of thirteen.

Which elements in this painting would you call subordinate?

Answer explanation

Look at Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue on White (fig.8–6), which is clearly a single unit. The artist used one major shape and a single color that dominates and provides a sense of whole-ness.

Analysis of this work will reveal a variety of repeating shapes. Can you find a shape that does not repeat?

Answer explanation

The Square does not repeat

This twirling, dynamic composition keeps our eye moving from one part of the painting to the next. What element of design did the artist use to unify the work?

Answer explanation

Shape, Color, Texture