THE VISUAL ELEMENTS - TEXTURE

Texture in art is the surface quality of an artwork - the roughness

or smoothness of the material from which it is made.

JAN VAN HUYSUM (1682-1747)

Detail of Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn, 1724 (oil on canvas)
T he Visual Element of Texture defines the surface quality of an

artwork - the roughness or smoothness of the material from

which it is made. We experience texture in two
ways: optically (through sight) and physically (through touch).

Optical Texture: An artist may use his/her skilful painting

technique to create the illusion of texture. For example, in the
detail from a traditional Dutch still life above you can see
remarkable verisimilitude (the appearance of being real) in the
painted insects and drops of moisture on the silky surface of the
flower petals.

Physical Texture: An artist may paint with expressive

brushstrokes whose texture conveys the physical and emotional
energy of both the artist and his/her subject. They may also use
the natural texture of their materials to suggest their own unique
qualities such as the grain of wood, the grittiness of sand, the
flaking of rust, the coarseness of cloth and the smear of paint.

Ephemeral Texture: This is a third category of textures whose

fleeting forms are subject to change like clouds, smoke, flames,
bubbles and liquids.

Our selection of artworks illustrated below have been chosen

because they all use texture in an inspirational manner. We have
analyzed each of these to demonstrate how great artists use this
visual element as a creative force in their work.

Optical Texture
JAN VAN HUYSUM (1682-1747)
Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn, 1724 (oil on canvas)

J an Van Huysum was one of the most influential Dutch still life

artists of the 18th century. Dutch artists developed still life as an

independent genre to fill their employment gap when religious art
was banned by the Protestant churches during the Reformation.
Van Huysum was famous for his magnificent flower paintings
whose compositions were a mixture of Baroque chiaroscuro
and Rococo flamboyance. As a subject they perfectly satisfied the
Dutch love of horticulture and met the demand for decorative
artworks for the houses of the rich merchant classes who had
taken over from the Catholic church as the main patrons of the
arts. The advantage of owning a Van Huysum flower painting over
a real bouquet of flowers, which would have been outrageously
expensive at the time, was that it was permanent and not subject
to decay. It was therefore seen as superior to nature.

You can see that Van Huysum's pictures were not painted as a
unified arrangement from life as there are a variety of flowers in
the group which bloom in different seasons. He would construct
and paint these works from separate studio studies of individual
stems, buds and blossoms which he would carefully adapt and
compose to create his spectacularly colorful displays.

It was Van Huysum's stunning painting technique that elevated

his status to that of the greatest Dutch painter of flowers. At this
time, the quality of realistic representation in a picture was seen
as a measure of excellence. The Dutch even had a word for it -
'bedriegertje' which means 'little deception'. His outstanding
ability to paint the realistic textures of petals, stems, leaves,
droplets of moisture, a horde of insects and the distinctive
surfaces of terra cotta vases and marble pedestals, left his
contemporaries standing still. We do not know a great deal about
Van Huysum's painting methods as he was extremely secretive
about his technique, to the extent where he refused to allow
anyone into his studio while he was working. He once employed
an apprentice, Margareta Haverman, but discharged her as he felt
that her competent copies of his paintings were devaluing his
own.

DAVID HOCKNEY(b.1937)
A Bigger Splash, 1967 (acrylic on canvas)
A Bigger Splash' is one of a series of swimming pool paintings

that David Hockney used to explore various methods of

representing the ephemeral texture of water. It also involved his
continual interest in the relationship between painting and
photographic methods of recording what we see. You can observe
the development of these ideas in the way he uses photography
to enable him to see what is invisible to the naked eye. The
'splash' is painted from a photographic source found in a
magazine about swimming pools while the rest of the image is
based on his drawings of Californian buildings. The ephemeral
texture of the 'splash' only becomes visible to the naked eye when
it is frozen in a photograph. Hockney originally considered
creating a real splash by throwing liquid paint at the canvas but
thought it would be more interesting to paint its precise shape by
hand. He was amused by the irony that something which only
existed for a fraction of second would take him a couple of weeks
to paint. The image, therefore, becomes a commentary on the
relationship between painting and photography and how each can
be used to inform the other.
LUCIAN FREUD (1922-2011)
John Minton, 1952 (oil on canvas)

L ucian Freud's portrait of his friend and fellow artist, John

Minton, is one of his early masterpieces. His works of this period

have something of the intense character of Northern
Renaissance portraits by artists like Robert Campin and Roger van
der Weyden. They are painstakingly painted in fine detail with soft
sable brushes to render the subtle variations of the tone and
texture of the eyes, skin and hair. Freud's unrelenting focus on
each and every square centimeter of Minton's head plots a map of
microexpressions that reveals a state of unease in the sitter.
Variegated textures combine to communicate this underlying
sense of disquiet: the tussled layers of his hair, the wateriness of
his eyes, the oiliness of his skin, his loose mouth and the
muscularity of his lips, and all in concert with the tilt and
elongation of his head. This is a meticulously observed portrait
whose surface textures work together to reflect the psychological
state of their subject.
DUANE HANSON (1925-1996)
Man on a Bench, 1977 (vinyl, polychromed in oil, with accessories)
Photo: Metropilot ©

D uane Hanson takes optical texture to the ultimate level of

realism in his life size sculpture of a 'Man on a Bench'. He cast

this dejected figure from life, heightening its accuracy with subtly
painted veins shining through its translucent wrinkled skin. The
addition of fastidious details like naturalistic eyes, lashes and
stubbly eyebrows, thinning grey hair, socially defining and age-
appropriate clothes lifts the work to an uncanny level of
deception.

Due to its human scale and verisimilitude it is hard to ignore this

sculpture. It has a remarkable presence which is strengthened by
the placement of the work where it invades the space of the
spectator demanding a response to its despondent subject - a
barometer of your empathy or apathy towards your fellow man.

Hanson's work is a commentary on contemporary life from a

working class perspective. Some of his subjects are brutal and
violent, some tackle sensitive social issues and some simply
reflect man's sense of alienation in our world today. They are a
modern reincarnation of the spirit of Realism that was
reawakened by the noise of Pop Art.

Physical Texture
VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Self Portrait, 1889 (oil on canvas)

In his famous self portrait of 1889 from the Musée d'Orsay,

Vincent Van Gogh uses the physical texture of paint not only to
fashion his own likeness but also to reveal his psychological
disposition. The planes of his face and texture of his hair are
boldly hatched in contours of expressive brushstrokes which,
despite their feverish energy, hold together as a tightly drawn
portrait. The psychological intensity of the image unwinds from
his eyes like a wave discharging its energy through the swirling
strokes of his jacket and into the turbulent flow of the
background. Today we see this painting as one of the most
powerful psychological portraits in the history of art but Van
Gogh viewed his work in a less intense light. He wrote about this
portrait in a letter to his brother Theo, "Today I’m sending you
my portrait of myself, you must look at it for some time – you’ll
see, I hope, that my physiognomy has grown much calmer,
although the gaze may be vaguer than before, so it appears to
me." [1]. This is why Van Gogh is so universally loved. He paints
with such instinctive honesty and vulnerability that he is unaware
of what he is actually revealing about himself.
KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF (1884-1976)
Self Portrait, 1906 (oil on canvas)

V an Gogh's vigorous painting technique was a major influence

on the paintings of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. His forceful style

provided the inspiration for Schmidt-Rottluff to push his own art
towards the psychodrama of Expressionism. Although Schmidt-
Rottluff's vivid Expressionist palette may be more strident and his
impasto brushwork more energetic than Van Gogh's, he
disappointingly reveals less of himself than you might expect. His
use of visual elements is heightened for expressive impact but he
is too consciously aware of their aesthetic effect. Consequently
the result lacks the endearing candour of Van Gogh's portrait. It
is, however, the type of painting that advances the canon of art by
developing new expressive possibilities for color and texture. Its
radical technique offers subsequent generations the licence to
abstract these elements as separate aesthetic components in their
own right.

MAX ERNST(1891-1976)
The Entire City, 1935-36 (oil on canvas)
M ax Ernst used the physical texture of surfaces as a source

of Automatism, a device used in Surrealism to unlock the

'unconscious mind'. To this end he devised various techniques
such as 'frottage' [2] and 'grattage' [3] to transfer textures onto
paper and canvas. In 'The Entire City' he creates a textured
surface by scraping paint over a canvas that has been laid upon
planks of wood and wire mesh. The resultant texture is then
searched as a potential source of images, similar to the way that
psychologists use Rorschach blots.

In this work Ernst uses 'grattage' to unearth a form that evokes

the terraced architecture of an ancient civilization. He then
develops this idea with a painted sky for a background and
flowers and plants for a foreground. The processes that Ernst
employs combine a range of techniques that generate a Surrealist
vision: an image born in the 'unconscious mind' and raised to
consciousness through the 'free association' of Automatism.
JOAN EARDLEY (1921-1963)
Seeded Grasses and Daisies, September, 1960 (oil on board with grasses and
seedheads)

Joan Eardley was an extraordinary Scottish painter whose style

ranged from kitchen sink realism to expressive abstraction. Her

subjects also ranged between the urban and the rural: from the
gritty humanity of her portraits of children amidst the post-war
slums of Glasgow to her powerful landscapes and seascapes of
Catterline on the north east coast of Scotland.

Joan Eardley painted her Catterline landscapes outdoors come

hail, rain or shine. She would often work on several paintings in
the same location, gradually building up an awareness of her
surroundings. It was her desire to paint what she felt about the
landscape and not simply to represent what she saw in it. This
involved getting to know a location over a period of time so that
she was sensitive to its changing character. She would then try to
focus on those key elements that contributed to the emotional
impact of the landscape. In 'Seeded Grasses and Daisies,
September', her total immersion in the subject led her to
incorporate stalks of meadow grass and flowers in order to
ground the abstract texture of the work in reality. Here, the image
and its medium literally become one and the same.
ANTONI TÀPIES (1923-2012)
Cruz y Tierra (Cross and Earth), 1975 (mixed media)

A ntonio Tàpies saw texture as a language 'of great expressive

forcefulness' that had not been fully explored in art. He

experimented by mixing building materials such as sand, cement,
marble dust, tar and straw with his paints. He combined these
unrefined media to create a weathered, impasto surface into
which he scratched, carved and collaged enigmatic evidence of
the human presence.

Tàpies viewed his paintings as walls with all their metaphorical

layers of meaning: the inscribed marks and ciphers of humanity;
declarations of love and hate; bloodstained scars of violence and
disorder; separation and confinement; construction and
destruction; the elements of nature; smooth, serene, tortured,
broken and repaired surfaces; the romantic ruins of a crumbling
civilization; a witness to the passage of time and the physicality of
matter.

'A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious;

such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first
significance or its first relevance. A cross could equally stand for
crossing something out. It could also be a sign of obstruction. An
overturned cross, an X so to speak, could be the symbol of
mystery, something for the other side. Then I could paint a cross
in such a way that a connection is made between two bars, and in
doing so convert it into a symbol of the unlimited. So, many
different crosses and X symbols occur in my works.' [4]