Glossary: Golden Section

The golden section is a horizontal line dividing a painting into two parts. When used in relation to landscape painting you have a picture that is divided into one third sky to two thirds land or vice verse. This was the classical approach to painting and for a long time considered to be an immutable law that all artists had to follow. It seems to make the painting balance better.

A great many paintings appear to have no relationship to the Golden Section, but actually many modern paintings of an abstract or semi abstract nature are constructed on the basis of the very formula that they seem to flout. Paintings that seem to have no form or structure were in fact painted on a classical system many hundreds of years old.

It is both the understanding and mastery of these and so many other tricks that artists learn while training and practising. The next time someone says to you that their 4 year old child “could do that Picasso” you might point out that if that is really so then they have a genius on their hands. It won’t make them any more of an art connoisseur but you’ll feel a lot better!

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