Grouping and Containment

The view in Gestalt Psychology as defined by Launching the Imagination, is that "visual information is understood holistically before it is examined separately" (p.68). This means that the viewer is looking at the picture as a whole before recognizing and analyzing the separate parts that make up the whole picture. According to Launching the Imagination, there are six different aspects to this view, two of which are grouping and containment.

Grouping is an aspect that details how the brain will group different objects by either location, orientation, shape, and color"(p.68). The act of grouping can happen even when the objects are differentiated by shape or other aspects. The brain chooses to group shapes together in order to create connections in what we are seeing.

Mandy Behrens created an excellent example of grouping with this painting found on http://www.poppytalk.com/2012/05/affordable-art-weathered-silo.html

To me, the different squares are all grouped together despite the different sizes and colors of the shapes. 

The next aspect is containment. According to Launching the Imagination, containment is, "a unifying force created by the outer edge of a composition or by a boundary within a composition" (p.69). A way of using containment in order to create unity is by applying an outline or other boundary in order to close off the group of shapes from the outside. As explained in the book, a vertical rectangle is "often used when a rising or sinking movement is needed, while a horizontal format can create an expansive effect" (p.69)