-This is an outstanding text for teachers and students.- -- The Studio
This richly illustrated examination of visual arts in the European tradition shows how the great masters employed the -golden mean- and other geometrical patterns to compose their paintings. Author Charles Bouleau explores a tremendous variety of ancient and modern works: the Parthenon friezes, Italian mosaics, the Bayeux Tapestry, and Gothic stonemasons' marks of France and Germany as well as paintings by Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, and Pollock. His insightful expositions cast new light on such well-known works as...

Bouleau's classic illustrated work examines the essential reliance of European painting tradition on the golden mean and other geometrical patterns. From antiquity to the present, expert painters-including abstract modern masters such as Paul Klee and Jackson Pollock-have conveyed harmony through the mathematics of spatial division, ultimately giving geometry a crucial role as the foundation upon which these classics were built. For over half a century, The Painter's Secret Geometry has been a seminal work for students of art history and composition. Now this popular, rich analysis...