Luminism
ルミニズム / 1850–1875 / Style / American Modern Art
An American landscape manner in which the brushmark is erased from a smooth surface and atmospheric light is graded in stages to the horizon. Figures are small, water lies still as a mirror, and light itself becomes the subject. A textbook of composition for anyone designing stillness.
A smooth surface with the brushmark erased / Composition built on an emphatic horizon / Atmospheric light graded in stages / Water held as a mirror
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Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Wide hero imagery for slow, calm propositions, where a horizon and a graded sky carry what no photograph of people can · Environmental graphics in large quiet interiors, where one long horizontal field has to settle a room
- Type
- Small roman capitals, widely tracked, sitting low in the field so they never breach the horizon.
- Composition
- A horizon at roughly a third, an unbroken band of sky above it, and any incident kept small and off the axis.
- Material
- A long gradient with no visible banding, on matte paper or a colour-managed screen; a reflective finish destroys the graded light.
- Caution
- Turning the graded sky into a saturated sunset: Luminist light is measured, and pushing the chroma converts stillness into stock sentiment.
- Further study
- Its difference from the Hudson River School / Its intellectual affinity with Transcendentalism / The re-evaluation of the 1970s