"If you can say it... Why paint it?" A review of the key concepts of Contemporary Art

Here is what you can find on the website mighty optical illusion, under the post: A "Psychological" Optical Illusion

Do you still believe that your artwork is so powerful that you will soon be internationally famous?!? The conclusion is that the key does not lay in the visual clues... explanation:

Rules of visual grammar, from which differences of interpretation according to an individual’s experience may arise, are the process of analysing the elements of a picture.

Kress And Van Leeuwen T. argue that analytical processes involve two kinds of participants: One carrier (the whole: e.g. a landscape) and any number of possessive attributes (the parts: trees, sea, hills...)”. In the case of abstract art the carrier, the possessive attributes or both are not labelled and let the viewer decide on what the labels are and then leaves him/her to interpret the work of art. The meaning of the basic geometrical shapes are motivated by the properties of the shapes, or rather, from the values given to these properties in specific social and cultural contexts. This means that the interpretation of geometrical shapes can vary across a culture but also within cultures.

Colours can also have an effect on the perception of the viewer. These effects concern partially unconscious treatments, but also cognitive or symbolic associations. Colours can modify people’s perceptions on various levels being visual, auditive, tactile, kinesthesia, gustative, somesthesia. For example, the estimation of height and weight (e.g. most of washing machines are painted in white partly because it makes them appear lighter and recalls notions of ‘clean’ or ‘pure’). Colours are culturally and symbolically associated with concepts, sensations and environmental elements and have on influence on our emotions such as excitation, anxiety, affective values and preferences.
Contrary to the opinion that colours are only a matter of taste and therefore their perception depends on individuals, researches demonstrated the existence of a collective consciousness within large groups of individuals which show stable consumer preferences. Regarding the tribalisation phenomenon, colours can have new connotations:

Each ‘youth clan’ has its own trends and color codes with a famous example being the two main gangs of Los Angeles which chose colours as distinctive signs of affiliation (CRIPS in blue and BLOOD in red). Another example is given by the Indian culture, with the word “VANA” which means “caste” but also “colours”.

Shapes and colours are displayed in a given space within the physical limit of the artwork. The elements relate to each other and are presented in a way that a relationship is created between them, while their position conveys cultural specific information and values. Remember that you start a Japanese book from the end!

Look as well on advertisements in your London edition of glamour how ‘fantasy' elements (such as the woman lying on a cloud) are usually displayed on the top half, while 'realistic' elements are on the bottom half (Such as the extra light fresh yoghurt that will make you feel like the woman on the rainbow...or perhaps not).