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Grant Wood's "American Gothic" is definitely an example of the unity of the sinister kind: the repeated pattern of the pitchfork with the paned stained glass of the church behind the couple is a none-too-subtle message communicated by the unity of the form. While often associated with beauty and harmony, unity can also be sinister, when it communicates static or stultifying social norms. It is true that extreme unity makes a composition boring: a checkerboard is the ultimate in unity, and not particularly interesting visually. The shapes can be clones or approximations and textures can be identical, or echoes of one another-think of a piece of clothing that unites two types of corduroys. Elements in a painting that would be considered examples of unity might be colors that are close to one another in terms of hue or chroma, or recurring shapes, or textures that mimic one another. Unity can be thought of in terms of Gestalt psychology as a factor that arouses the mind by the redundancy of information. Examples of structural unity include a quilt with four quarters or regions that repeat, or a Tibetan mandala that echoes in repeated shapes that are nested within one another. In addition, at a structural level, unity can be seen in the symmetry or repetition or approximation of multiple shapes within a piece. Unity of color and shape is what the art theorist is getting at under the (relatively) synonymous labels of uniformity, coherence, harmony, and similarity, expressed as characteristics of the elements of color, shape, and texture. Although often called something else, unity is one that appears as a constant in those lists, often as a polar opposite to contrast or variety. The principles of art have been enumerated by different artists, art historians, and art critics in all sorts of way.
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But unity always expresses a shared commonality within a painting or sculpture or textile. Unity doesn't necessarily apply to an entire work of art, it can also apply to an element or elements of a piece of work that could also contain other forms of expression. Unity is a principle in art that refers to a set of compositional strategies used by an artist to make the parts of a painting or another work of art hang together as a whole through visual relatedness.