Blurred
Images whose edges soften and details dissolve, through motion, focus, a dragged brush or deliberate smudging.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Blurred are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Blur takes away the hard edge that normally tells us where one thing ends and another begins. Painters suggested it long before cameras: Leonardo da Vinci's sfumato melts contours into smoky transitions, and J.M.W. Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) lets a locomotive dissolve into weather.
Photography changed the idea. Early long exposures turned passers-by into ghostly smears, and around 1900 Pictorialist photographers chose soft focus to give prints the look of paintings. Gerhard Richter brought the camera's look back into painting in the 1960s, dragging a brush or squeegee across photo-based canvases such as Uncle Rudi (1965) so they appear out of focus. Francis Bacon smeared faces to convey movement and unease. Look for the cause: a lens, a moving subject, or a hand that has wiped the image back.
Related artists
More in Visual Qualities
Bright and Vivid Colors
Bulbous
Calligraphic
Color Gradient
Columns and Totems
Contour Line
