Curves, Corners and Commentary

Written by Sam Downey, Arts Staff Writer Graphic by Haley Wolff, Staff Graphic Artist

Have you ever stood in front of a painting and felt like you almost understood it? Sometimes, it may seem like you can pick up on what the artist wants you to see, but not how this is accomplished, or to what end.

One way that artists command attention and imply meaning in visual works is through the use of line and shape. It may seem obvious to state that all visual art is assembled out of lines and shapes, but these elements carry connotations that, when read as a whole, can alter the tone of a piece. These impressions are then used to build artistic claims about morality, gender roles and beyond.

Consider the difference between curved and straight lines. In art, straight lines convey ideas such as structure, rigidity, stability and artifice; conversely, curving lines represent dynamism, natural-ness, emotionality and ideas of change and flow.1 If it seems like ideas within these interpretations contradict each other, that’s because there are no hard and fast rules about what a given line means: straight lines can represent safety and structure in one piece and oppressive rigidity in another.

These ideas extend to shapes as well. Squares and rectangles feel stable, circles are emotional and dynamic and triangles imply tension.2

All of these are examples of geometric shapes, as opposed to the less easily defined category of organic shapes, though a sound composition will include a balance of both.

¹ “Visual Elements,” Lumen Learning, accessed Feb. 2022. ² Johnny Levanier, “The Meaning of Shapes in Design,” 99Designs, 2021. Regardless of the line or shape used, all of these connotations come with their share of cultural stereotypes. In this way, straight lines and square corners have come to be seen as strong and intellectual—and thus masculine—while curves and organic shapes, feeling at once natural and emotional, have become feminine.3

The gendering of lines grows more obvious when looking at almost any animated character. Notice what kind of lines and shapes make up the traditionally male versus female designs, especially when the characters are non-human and lack traditional gender markers.4

³ Cece Evans, “What is the Meaning of a Curved Line in the Arts?” Our Pastimes, 2017. ⁴ James Chiang, “Straights and Curves,” Animat“The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt is a classic example, as this iconic painting of a couple embracing depicts sharp, rectangular blocks on the man’s robe and swirling, organic patterns on the woman’s. The connotations of these shapes play out in the man’s dominant stance and the woman’s submissive swoon, as well as in the way these elements balance and complement each other.5 By analyzing an element as simple as shape, one can conclude what the painting is saying about gender roles and romantic partnerships. Furthermore, lines and shapes can represent a tension between the ideas of reason and passion. This becomes an issue of morality in certain cultural contexts. Classical art, for example, emphasized the beauty of geometric shapes with mathematically-perfect proportions, which later inspired Renaissance artists as well.6 In Classical and Renaissance art, geometricity represented rationality and balance, relegating non-perfect organic shapes to depictions of untameable wilderness and passion-driven figures. Nowadays, structural shapes and lines might be associated less with ideal forms and rationality, and more with rigid confinement. Curving, flowing shapes and lines, as well as their connotative meanings, have come to be valued differently too. This has less to do with the shapes themselves and more to do with shifting values of structural and natural forces in society and the world. ■

ed Spirit, 2021. ⁵ Artincontext, “An Analysis of Klimt’s Painting, ‘The Kiss’,” artincontext.org, 2021. ⁶ Christopher Muscato, “The Ideal of the Circle in Renaissance Art,” Study.com, 2015.