The dogma of the right angle - via image format in painting 

If we think of a painting or picture, we automatically have a rectangular format in mind, like a window.

One of the first considerations of a painter will be what format the new picture should have. The considerations refer to the size of the image and on the other hand to the aspect ratio, i.e. to whether it is a square, portrait or landscape format.

It can sometimes be the other way around, that you think about what you best paint on the format that is just around in the studio. In any case, the format has a significant impact on the image effect. My subsequent statements primarily refer to the edge ratio when I speak of the format.

It makes sense that far -spacious landscapes on a landscape format make sense, but one chooses a portrait format for the representation of a gorge or a mountain neckline. Portrait painting is almost always a portrait format. Due to the different economic and social conditions, their own rectangular formats with characteristic aspect conditions developed due to the different economic and social conditions. A book could easily be filled over their variants, sizes, origins and effect on those considered.

Surprisingly, however,, however, the artistic revolutions and upheavals in the course of time were also hardly questioned, the rectangular format was hardly questioned in painting. If we refrain from the special case of the round formats that have been used for centuries.

A picture triggers both conscious and unconscious emotions for the viewers. The format is particularly effective in the unconscious. Anyone who deals with art should take a look at different geometric and free shapes in peace and pay attention to the feelings that are triggered.

Both form and the name of the oval are derived from the egg, which for us represents the epitome of security. The circular form creates feelings of perfection, one of life with life, universe or God.

The rectangular format gives us support and security on the one hand and allows us to position us. But on the other hand, it also limits us in thinking and in our emotions and should therefore be questioned in art.

The rectangular format seems to be a dogma in painting.

We find almost exclusively pictures whose pages are in the exact 90-degree angle. I think pictures whose angles deviate from it would initially disturb the showers. Especially if the deviations from the 90-degree angle were low, this would cause an indefinite malaise.

But shouldn't art also disturb, pushing out, pushing, pulling, pulling out of our rectangular thinking, feeling towards a non -pre -shaped one?

But only a few painters deviated from the rectangular format.

The American abstract painter Frank Stella (1936-2024) with his Shaped Canvases , who gave his pictures a wide variety of geometric shapes, would be mentioned here and also left the wall surface and let them protrude into the room and thus let the border between painting and plastic blurred.

The German painter Gerhard Hohehe (1920 to 1989) also detached his works from the rectangular image format and the area.

The Italian representative of the Informel movement, Emilio Vedova (1919-2006), cut polygonal panels, some of them taller than a man, as picture supports, which he joined together at irregular angles. Not primarily to create sculptures, but to add the appeal of the third dimension to his paintings.

The German painter Imi Knoebl (born 1940) emits painting into the room as well as from the rectangular format by shifting different monochrome objects and formats, but I would assign many of its objects to plastic rather than painting.

The work of the Spanish painter Angela de la Cruz (born 1965) consists largely of work in which she literally breaks with the tradition of the format by breaking the frame and loosening the canvas and partly re -arranged and thus transformed into mostly three -dimensional objects.

But that was already with shaking on the dogma of the right -angled format and the flat representation in painting.

In the past, it may have been an argument that a rectangular framework is the most stable form and is easiest to manufacture and be tense, so this argument can no longer be accepted. At the state of the art, it would be easy to create and cover frames in all conceivable forms. All conceivable shapes can also be milled from wood or plastic plates.

It is also happy to argue with our viewing habits. The picture has always been like a window and one is just rectangular. Therefore, you stay with the rectangular format of the picture, because the customer expects a picture to be rectangular, everything else would disturb him. In addition, the entire art logistics is set to rectangular images. These could be made, transported, stored and hanging and calculated their space.

I think these are the same arguments as they were listed at all times to stay at the comfortable status quo for everyone involved and to prevent new and development.

I think that to argue with our viewing habits is particularly questionable , because like so many habits that have developed over decades and centuries and at some point it turned out to be harmful, it may also be healthy and sensible for us in the broadest sense of this "rectangular" vision. But that would mean shaking on a dogma.

The right angle is inorganic and not according to humans. It hardly occurs in visible nature. But it provides the most stable connection in technical terms. And so you used technical works wherever possible, the right angle. Earth attraction also caused the right angle as the optimal function of the statics.

All technical arguments that apply to the right -angled image format can therefore be cited in the architecture to a much greater extent. Because it is about stability of buildings and the endangerment of human life.

But the architecture in particular not only tried a hundred years ago, but began to break away from the right angle. Rudolf Steiner realized that people with the right angle do not feel really comfortable and, under whose rule, cannot develop freely. In ingenious architects such as Zaha Hadid, you can only find round shapes and no angles at all. Today we see buildings where we spontaneously think: "How can it be stable?" The technical challenges to deviate from the right angle were more considerable in the architecture than is the case when leaving the right -angled format in painting.

And yet the painting has not taken the step to break away from the right angle. In addition to many others, this is also one of the phenomena that cause me to speak of the archaic form of the art market.