Clutter, Anyone?

Of course it can! I love clutter when it leads the viewer's eye around the canvas!
You have to learn as an artist what it NOT necessary and what will distract and how much "clutter" you can successfully get away with

Sure but don't you need a main subject? Composition? The viewer needs some clue as to the point of the image.

Depth of field, focal point, color, size etc can help make sense from the clutter. As a photographer its your job to extract from reality. As a visual artist its you job to select elements. Random clutter without any organization doesn't seem to lead to a powerful image.


Here is some clutter:

Doesn't it depend on your taste? Some people like a completely white canvas with a black spot. Clutter would drive them dotty.....'scuse the pun

Sure, if it has a flow for your eyes to follow. Too much distraction with no type of flow for my eyes to follow makes me un-interested and I move on.

Here you go Abbie

Hah Susan! Perfect to illustrate my point

Correct me if I am wrong, Roger, but your question wasn't about taste so much, as it artistically being a good thing......Minimalism can be a good thing too, but the question is about cluttered images.

Roger,

Do you want organized chaos? As clutter? Organized chaos is a higher order concept. Like droplets in a river.

The Night Watch is organized chaos, clutter. The atoms that form our solar system are organized chaos. etc etc

My garage qualifies as having "clutter", but nothing a good cleaning wouldn't fix. :)

Greg's garage is unorganized chaos. But if he has a path through the garage to his door, well he has partially organized chaos.

bravo.

Dave

Where's Waldo?

I know precisely to what the top post referred, Marlene and stand by my answer, thanks all the same

It's dependent on how your clutter is displayed/arranged...

Where's Waldo The Futility Of Seeking

uh, I was asking Roger.....


Ed.. I found him! He's hiding in the sleeve of the red head on the right, lower side!!

I love clutter because it has lots to look at.

Alfred and Ed,
Your examples are worthy of a "yes, it a good thing" to clutter!

This gets a lot of attention. Not really sure what the point of this is or the main subject. I guess its more about eccentricity and clutter then electric meters.


BTW, I reserved comment on the work in question in the referenced thread as she was already changing it and I am not going to second guess one of my favorite artists.

Thanks Marlene, i was wondering where he went to... lol

On the current thread I was referring to, the image in question, was critiqued, as a pejorative, of being "cluttered",

To me, in this particular case, I felt the "clutter" made the image far more powerful.

And being disorganized clutter made it even more dynamic.



Edit:

Bradford,

We seemed to be talking about 2 different threads.....

I'm referring to what I understand is a photo of an abandon gun powder factory

I think it can be a great thing with the right balance of color and other compositional elements!! I love pictures that give you lots to look at and a reason for the eyes to dance around the piece!!

Clutter is not the same as volume of visible objects. A photo (or painting) of many organized objects is not cluttered. A few objects randomly arrange (by hand or nature) can still be cluttered. Shawna's image (above) is a fine example of many objects well organized, which is NOT cluttered. Here is another:

Some guy named "Pablo" did the one at the following link:

http://www.jkrweb.com/art/images/guernica.jpg

... so if you are really famous, I guess clutter is a non-issue.

Now the other extreme:

Here's a rather cluttered yard but it has some breathing room with the snow in the front of the photo.

" Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay ! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten."...Frances Wright

One mill's clutter is another photographer's treasure...or something like that. I've sold quite a few prints & cards of this 'rustic clutter' off site. Go figure! Some cool 'cluttered' imagery above, btw. I enjoy artsy, well-arranged 'clutter'.
My home & I, however, remain clutter-free! Organization and less-is-more are key...for me & my well-being.

16 images may have been a touch to many "cluttered collage "... also a wonderful image i find "orbit 2 " a touch distracting with the signature & watermark :)

The lead question of this discussion was: Can a cluttered image ever be a good thing?

I think an equally pertinent, closely related question is: Can some people see order where others see clutter in the same image?

A person's disposition, experiences, previous discipline and other factors that shape perception can have a profound influence on how the eyes engage with an image. Two different people, thus, can arrive at two different conclusions about the same image.

... also inspired by that OTHER discussion thread.

This is one i recently did , i would class it as subtle clutter , where there is enough clutter and also mystery in the tittle to make you want to look more so i am a fan of clutter to some point :)

Mystic Sparrow,

Very different direction. Interesting.

Roy chaos yes, but organized.

Roger,

disorganized is an interesting topic. And I liked the power of that image as well.

Dave

This is way "over the top" ! got a little carried away!

Robert,
IMO, yes. Consider pack rats and people who are hoarders....they know exactly where everything is and if one thing is out of place, they know it!

In a painters world, clutter sometimes greatly distracts the viewers eyes from what should be the focal point. A good example is this painting that I painted a few years back. Has never sold one print nor has the original sold at the gallery. Usually, my pelican originals sell fairly quick. I decided a few weeks ago to rethink and then rework the whole painting. You be the judge.

The pelican seems lost in all of the water movement. Your attention goes to no one thing but instead, almost a bunch of chaotic lines. The second, even though I added refection and a clump of grass, the flatter blues cause your eyes to focus straight on the pelican which is as it should be.

Love the new and improved, Phyllis!
I see that many agree that the clutter isn't the problem as long as it leads the eye around and then there is a landing place.
Your updated reflection brings us right back to this stunning center of interest...and I love the greenery that balances it all out!

Exactly right Marlene and thanks!

Sorry to disprove your generalizations, Phyllis B., but MY attention went immediately to the pelican in the first one. The ripples just seemed to be a choice of background:



The second one IMMEDIATELY splits my attention between the pelican and its reflection. I find it MORE distracting, even though the water is calmer:



The waves in the first one logically distort the reflection and pull my attention to the bird.

As I said, different eyes do different things. Do not assume that a well-worded analysis applies to every viewer automatically.

If the painting has not sold, then I do not believe it is because of HOW you chose to paint it. Rather, I suspect that there are other reasons that have nothing to do with clutter.

Robert, IMO, yes. Consider pack rats and people who are hoarders....they know exactly where everything is and if one thing is out of place, they know it!

Or consider people with high IQ's and idiot savants ... remember RAIN MAN, where the character instantly counted matches spilled in what (to an ordinary mind) would appear as an uncountable mess.

Doesn't get more cluttered than this...

Yes, I think some people can see order; whereas, others see clutter in images. I should take a photo of my husband's desk. He thinks it's perfect since it's the only way he finds anything in his disorganized mess. I see complete chaos. I always speak my mind but don't interfere with his work.

Same with my image. I chose to upload it because in summer, this is exactly what the marina in summer looks like....reality....a cluttered mess where nothing but the background stands out.

clutter is perfectly fine when its related to the main subject and supports the theme of the image. its not fine when there is so much extra stuff in the image that you can't figure out what the image is all about. i have many busy images, however they are themed.

a long time ago i got a critique on something of mine that said it was cluttered. this was from a site that considered more than 1 fruit in a still life to be cluttered. but in my case it was a sundial. in my mind, i took the sundial and some flowers. but in reality, there was a bit of a green house, apartments, tree, wires, cars, etc. it was a thing in a scene. however they were right, it was cluttered with things unrelated to the image so you didn't know and couldn't tell what the image was actually about.

it took me a long time to figure what busy and cluttered meant.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I think most would prefer to look at something uncluttered to take them away from the real clutter all around them.

Right now I'm having a problem with the clutter of images, not so much with what is in them.
All my walls are cluttered with other peoples artwork and mine with more stored away till they get switched out.
Then there are all the digital files I have, I've spent the past 5 days backing up and organizing all my files, trying to delete files I don't need, don't use or have multiple of.
Though my walls are cluttered with artwork, the frames help separates them and puts order to the clutter / chaos.

Any image we work on is a transformation, an abstraction of reality - we are choosing what elements to put in or emphasise - so I guess we are uncluttering. a photographer is choosing a focal point, a fliter, a speed, a texture. A painter is choosing which details to emphasise - not all of them - perhaps some of the leaves or branches, but not usually all the thousands of leaves on a tree individually. Personally , what works best (and seems to sell more) is getting that delicate balance between highlighting some detail and just suggesting the rest - which imagination completes.

Maybe Hieronymus Bosch could weigh in on the subject.

Vanessa, Garden of Earthly Delights is one of my most favorite artworks from the masters. It was my topic of my thesis paper for my BFA.

Whew. You picked a tough one, Peter. How did you tackle the subject? I'm assuming your paper was a tome :D

@Peter @Vanessa - Bosch is a brilliant example - there few who can master that ordered chaos. Any more comments Peter ? It's a fsacinating painting.

my latest clutter creation.

James,

ALfred, breathtakingly beauitful!
what works best for painters is knowing when to stop adding or subtracting.

@James, true. Maybe clutter is the wrong word for the work? As long as it has appropriate hierarchy or discriminable pattern, a better word would be complex? Beyond that, it is as everyone says, a matter of personal aesthetic and whether or not an individual can sort that particular brand of chaos. Beautiful piece, Alfred.

Tangent alert, but here's an article extolling the virtues of a cluttered store. Others might think in terms of ADA violations, blocked exits and how soon they can flee the place, so art might operate under similar principles: http://business.time.com/2011/04/08/why-a-messy-cluttered-store-is-good-for-business/

I honestly do NOT see clutter in this image. I see a dense arrangement of verticals and horizontals -- two main themes and their many variations -- and a repetitive form (boat hull).

All density is NOT clutter, and all clutter is NOT dense.

An absence of recognizable repetition and an absence of relationships are what create true clutter. And one person's ability to find these things in any one image is NOT necessarily equal to another person's ability.

The boat shot is also well composed, I think.

Robert, my photograph does have a theme, and there isn't anything outside that. However, it still looks a mess to me. I even wrestled with uploading it at the time. However, I decided to do so because every person sees things differently.

Thank you for your positive comment.

My eye apparently has gotten very sensitive for spotting this sort of composition based on golden spirals. I just feel it, and then I lay down the spirals to confirm my suspicions.

I laid down one spiral the length of the image, and one spiral the height of the image on the left side. The correspondences are THERE.