Peter H. Everett and Professor Bruce H. Smith, Visual Arts
Dynamic Symmetry is the name given by some to the underlying principles of design found in the human body and in the growth patterns of many plants and shells. From the research of Professor A.H, Church of Oxford, Rev. H. Moseley, D’arcy W. Thompson, and others it becomes apparent that these principles of design are derived from a summation series of numbers, specifically 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89, etc. (also called the Fibonacci or Braun ratio-series).
Art historians and artists including Jay Hambidge and Schwaller De Lubic have found that much of Egyptian and Greek art and architecture can be explained by this same summation series or dynamic symmetry. Many artists and historians claim the use of dynamic symmetry helps to create harmonious and beautiful works of art.
The purpose of the research was two-fold. First, to document whether these principles of dynamic symmetry were used by three post-Renaissance artists: Edgar Degas, Giorgio Morandi, and Jan Vermeer–and if so, how they were used. Second, to test the hypothesis that the use of dynamic symmetry helps create more harmonious and beautiful compositions than would be possible without these principles, and that this harmony and beauty is apparent to both the non-artistic and artistically inclined viewer.
Three paintings by each of the selected artists were exhaustively dissected and analyzed using geometric and arithmetic analysis techniques set forth by Jay Hambidge in his book, The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry. Conclusive evidence was uncovered in each of the mentioned artist’s works to conclude that Degas, Morandi, and Vermeer either consciously used these geometric divisions or that their art can be explained by these dynamic compositional divisions.
One of the analyzed paintings from each artist was selected. In order to eliminate as many extraneous elements as possible, the selected paintings were reduced to simple linear drawings defining the dynamic compositional divisions uncovered. Thus, the elements of color, subject matter, value, and texture were eliminated from the experiment.
In order to validate the hypothesis the compositions with dynamic symmetry needed to be compared with random and intuitive compositions not containing dynamic symmetry. To reduce potential bias and to solidify the research, the compositions with dynamic symmetry were compared only with random compositions not containing these dynamic divisions and intuition was left for future research.
Two randomly skewed compositions without dynamic symmetry were produced from each of the dynamic compositions. The three sets of compositions (each set consisting of one dynamic composition and the two random compositions derived from it) were shown to a convenience sample of 41 artistic and 50 non-artistic people (for the sake of this research, an artistic person was defined as someone actively engaged in the making of art and a non-artistic person being anyone not engaged in this activity). Culture, age, sex, race, background, and other variables were not considered in the selection of those tested. The test groups were asked to select which composition they felt was the most harmonious and beautiful and the least harmonious and beautiful from each set, according to their own definition of harmony and beauty. Overall results were tabulated at the end of the experiment and running totals were kept to document any selection trends.
65% of the artistic people surveyed selected the composition based on the dynamic composition of Vermeer as the most harmonious and beautiful over the two randomly skewed compositions, which each received 17% of the votes. 52% of the non-artistic group selected the actual Vermeer composition over the two randomly skewed compositions, which received 30% and 18% respectively. 100% of the time throughout the surveying of both groups, the actual Vermeer composition had more selections than either random organization. Also, throughout the experiment the Vermeer composition was chosen the fewest number of times as the least harmonious and beautiful by both artistic and nonartistic participants, 49% of the artistic group selected the composition based on Morandi’s dynamic divisions, while the two random compositions received 22 and 29%. 44% of the non-artistic group chose the actual composition, giving 26% and 30% of the votes to the randomly skewed compositions in the set. In tabulating results after each person was interviewed, it was found that the actual Morandi composition had the most selections 95% of the time by the artistic group and 88% of the time by the non-artistic group. Interestingly, both artistic and non-artistic groups chose one of the random compositions the least number of times throughout the test when asked which composition was the least harmonious and beautiful.
54% of the artistic group selected the actual Degas composition as the most harmonious and beautiful and the two randomly skewed organizations received 39% and 7% respectively. 100% of the time throughout the surveying with the artistic group the Degas composition had more selections than either random organization. 28% of the non-artistic group selected the actual Degas composition, while 64% chose one of the random organizations. The random organization had the most selections 94% of the time during the experiment with the non-artistic group and was almost equal with the actual composition in being chosen the fewest number of times as the least harmonious and beautiful.
The artistic group selected the Vermeer, Morandi, and Degas compositions based on dynamic symmetry more frequently than the non-artistic group, thus indicating that the harmony and beauty of the dynamically organized compositions was more readily apparent to the artistic group than to the non-artistic group. In the case of Degas, the nonartistic group did not find the dynamically divided composition more harmonious and beautiful than similar random organizations, while the artistic group did—thus indicating further difference in the perception of harmony and beauty between the artistic and nonartistic groups. If these experiments can be projected to a larger population, it would appear that people actively engaged in the making of art find dynamic symmetry to be more harmonious and beautiful than random organizations. Also, people not actively engaged in the making of art find the dynamic divisions used by Vermeer and Morandi to be more harmonious and beautiful than random organizations.