By Ketan Mehta

This feature is an attempt to spread awareness and information about visual arts and eventually make the readers enlightened and equipped for more informed discussions on all things art.

Let’s start with a simple question. What is art? Art is something that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing to our eyes. Art is something that makes us more thoughtful and well-rounded humans. On the other hand, art is such a large part of our everyday lives, we hardly stop to think about it. Look at the computer or a laptop in front of you. Someone designed that. It is art. The shape of your car is art. Your coffee cup is art. Your tie or a well-stitched dress is art. Ask your children the impact that lack of graphics would have on their favourite video game or a TV cartoon character. It is hard to imagine, even for a minute, a world without art.

To appreciate art, one must have the knowledge of the elements of art. They are the ‘building blocks’ of any work of art. Artists manipulate these elements, mix them in with principles of design and compose a work of art. The elements of art are line, shape, form, space, texture, value and colour.

Musicians talk in ‘common language’ about the key of A, and they all know it means a pitch relating to 440 oscillations per second of vibration. Similarly, understanding these principals enable us to describe what an artist has done, analyse what is going on in a particular piece and communicate our thoughts and findings using a ‘common language’.

While line isn't something found in nature, it is absolutely essential to depict objects and define shapes. It can define a space, create an outline or pattern, imply movement or texture and allude to mass or volume. A painter makes form and space appear in two-dimensional works through the use of perspective and shading. A sculptor, by default, has to have both elements in a sculpture, because these elements are three-dimensional.

No, I am not going to give any dope on colour but value of the colour is something, which the painters always play with. It is the lightness and darkness of a colour. Artists use them to create dimensions and moods on a flat surface. The next time you see a work or art, see if you can identify which elements of art have been ‘exploited’ to convey a message or to create a mood.

Master of elements
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first artist to use ‘value’ consistently across colours. This skillful use of light and dark paints to define three-dimensional shapes became known as chiaroscuro, a style of shading that dominates tone (brightness) more than colour.

Da Vinci believed that the human body was the outward and visible expression of the soul and was shaped by its spirit. A painter must reverse the process and by constructing a body, give expression to a spirit. Da Vinci considered this an artist’s highest purpose and he himself excelled therein. His portrait of Mona Lisa has always been considered a masterpiece for its expression of an inner life. It is almost certainly the most famous painting in the world and probably the only one that virtually everyone can recognise and name.

Leonardo made the ‘lines’ blend into one another through minuscule brushstrokes, which made for a rather hazy, albeit more realistic, depiction of light and colour. Mona Lisa is an early, wonderful example of this technique called sfumato, which lends the mysterious qualities to the painting.

As we now see it, the Mona Lisa is a collaboration between art and time, impossible to look at with fresh eyes or to imagine other than it is. Only when we read Georgio Vasari, (the author of Lives of the Artists, written over 400 years ago) who drew a word-picture of Mona Lisa’s lustrous eyes, rosy flesh tones and red lips, do we realise how much her appearance has been modified by age and varnish. Mona Lisa’s smile was described by Vasari as ‘more divine than human’. Vasari tells us that Da Vinci employed musicians and jesters to prevent his model, Madonna Lisa Gioconda, (Mona is simply a contraction of Madonna) from losing her smile and lapsing into an expression of conventional melancholy. After spending four years on it, Da Vinci could not part with his work and eventually carried it with him to France, the reason why it is in the possession of the Louvre today.

While we cannot put a price tag on Mona Lisa, we can certainly invest in art which we like, understand and afford. The big question that comes to the mind first is, ‘how much should I pay for a work of art?’ The best place to start is an auction. The price that a work of art sells for at an auction is generally accepted to be an accurate estimate of its fair market value. At an auction, art is generally required to sell immediately, with no fanfare or restrictions, to the highest bidder. Another good estimate of fair market value is the price that a retail gallery pays for a work of art before they mark it up. This dealer price is considered to be the value of the art, and is considered an indicator of a work of art's fair market value. In the forthcoming months, I will give more information on how to invest in art.