Harmonious scale in Matisse's Pink Nude

Any painting has a structure on formal level.
Everyone knows that painting is not always artwork.
Only masterpieces deserve to be called pure art which can tell us what art is.
As the taste judgement can find masterpieces immediately,
there is no difficulty to find interesting works among ever increasing digital images.
I expect that making models can help to think why great artworks are so distinctively attractive.
The principle of visual grammar is that redrawing the same shape makes the lines more smooth, almost  chains of arcs.
Here is a good example of such case.
Matisse spent almost six months to paint Pink Nude and twenty-two photos were taken for each sesession.

                                         Matisse [Pink Nude] and the photo of the first version


Firstly I make the circle-arc model of the final painting.

                   Matisse  Pink Nude  circle-arc model
There are seven pivots (intersection of more than three arcs), and
five circles are enough to make the whole structure.


Now I arrange the circles concentrically.

                                   concentric diagram of scale for Matisse's Pink Nude
The diagram shows that the circles  have very regular intervals.
The regular scale creates  sense of harmony.


I use these cicles to make circle-arc model of the first version of the painting.

                   Matisse Pink Nude  the photo of the first version
Surprisingly all the clearly drawn lines of the nude can be replaced with the circles in the scale.
It means that the five circles already had become the main motifs at the first stage.


I made the circle-arc models of all the versions to see the change of scale.


    Matisse Pink Nude arc models


I used only thirteen circles to make all the models.
The largest yellow green circle became dominant at the last stage.
This way of using the largest circles for unity is the same technique Hokusai used for [To-Megane].
It can be said that the twenty-one versions were painted to search the right circles for the unclear parts of the nude in the first painting.




I have made more than a dozen of circle-arc model for personally interesting artworks.
So far thirteen circles were enough to make all the models.
This number suggests that our ability to distinguish the difference in curvature of arcs.
It is not coincidence that musical scale has twelve tones.
Our sense is not analogue but digital.
Our sense organ is so primitive that twelve or thirteen scale is enough to express our perception.
Visual perception develops firstly and then we start thinking logically on this level.
The other abilities are constructed based on this structure.
This is the reason why every cultured world valued art.
It seems that art is not considered important anymore as education.
Such educational system fails to produce potential geniuses.