Flatness
Images that deny deep space, using flat colour, outline and shallow planes that press against the picture surface.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Flatness are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Flatness is a choice as much as a limitation. Byzantine icons and Italian panels of the 13th century, such as those by Coppo di Marcovaldo, set figures on gold grounds with little illusion of depth, so they read as sacred presences. Egyptian wall painting, Persian miniatures and Japanese woodblock prints each organised space through flat colour and clear outline.
From the 1860s European painters sought flatness deliberately. Édouard Manet's The Fifer (1866) stands against an almost empty grey ground, Paul Gauguin and the Nabis used unmodulated colour, and Henri Matisse's The Red Studio (1911) floods a room with red until walls and floor merge. After 1945 flatness was treated as a core value of modern painting, and Alex Katz, Pop artists and later Takashi Murakami's Superflat drew on posters, cartoons and anime. Look for missing shadows, even colour and outlines that lock forms to the surface.
Related artists
More in Visual Qualities
Fragmented Geometry
Geometric
Glittery
Grid
Highly Detailed
Highly Ornamented
Irregular Curvilinear Forms
Irregular Linear Forms
Layered Images
Linear Forms
Marbleized
Metallic
Mimicking Ruined Materials
Mirrored
Pastel Colors
Patinated and Oxidized
Patterns
Pixelated
Primary Abstraction
Primary Colors
Psychedelic
Radiating Lines
Raw versus Finished
