Much has been written on visual perception. Yet so far, nobody has considered analysing harmony as a state where the introduction of any change would perceptibly reduce the aesthetic value of the work as a whole.

Visual harmony has been investigated before. Rudolf Arnheim, a renowned art and film theorist and perceptual psychologist, explored how various relationships between compositional elements affect viewers’ emotions. He analysed a range of visual phenomena, including the division of a surface, balance, weight, perception of elements as parts of a whole, spatial perception, and deformation.

Max Wertheimer, together with the psychologists Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, developed Gestalt theory based on the phenomenon of holistic perception – the mind’s tendency to instinctively combine elements into commonly-known or expected forms. However, its similarity to the matter of perfect harmony is only illusory, stemming from its use of the terms “part” and “whole”.

In the case of Composition Matters, the “whole” is simply the entire painting – a complex structure composed of many smaller parts, not a commonly-known or expected simple form. Naturally, there are artists who use deformations and simplifications in representing commonly-known forms, thus employing what Gestalt theory has taught us about perception. However, this does not mean that they create what is here considered a harmonious composition.

The renowned art historian Ernst Gombrich writes on the subject of pictorial representation:

What an artist worries about as he plans his picture, makes his sketches, or wonders whether he has completed his canvas, is something much more difficult to put into words. Perhaps he would say he worries about whether he has got it ‘right’. Now it is only when we understand what he means by that modest little word ‘right’ that we begin to understand what artists are really after. […] When it is a matter of matching forms or arranging colours an artist must always be ‘fussy’ or rather fastidious to the extreme. Moreover, his task is infinitely more complex than any of those we may experience in ordinary life. He has not only to balance two or three colours, shapes or tastes, but to juggle with any number. He has, on his canvas, perhaps hundreds of shades and forms he must balance till they look ‘right’. A path of green may suddenly look too yellow because it was brought into close proximity with a strong blue – he may feel that all is spoiled, that there is a jarring note in the picture and that he must begin it all over again. He may suffer agonies over this problem. He may ponder about it on sleepless nights; he may stand in front of his picture all day trying to add a touch of colour here or there and rubbing it out again, though you and I might not have noticed the difference either way. But once he has succeeded, we all feel that he has achieved something to which nothing could be added, something which is right – an example of perfection in our very imperfect world. [*]