Degas, The Millinery Shop The Millinery Shop by Degas is at the Chicago Art Institute. The Art Institute is both a very famous art school and an equally famous art museum. Follow this link and view
As you may see, unity often accompanies elements of variety and balance and vice versa.
Image Source: The Great Wave off Shore at Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai, from The Met (Links to an external site.), license CC Public Domain (Links to an external site.) 
Katsushika Hokusai The Great Wave off Shore at Kanagawa, with Ralph Larmann
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Unity, Variety, and Balance
The Millinery Shop, Date: 1879/86, Artist: Edgar Degas, French, 1834-1917
This time we’ll look at a painting. This is by Degas who was an Impressionism painter (pronunciation: day-gah).
Impressionism was a movement in the late nineteenth century in which painters wanted to capture an “impression” of their subject. Soft edges and depictions of the play of light are some hallmarks of impressionist paintings. Degas is especially known for his paintings of ballet dancers and their movements, but here, he painted the beautiful interior of a hat shop.
Notice the soft contours throughout the image. No hard lines, right? Also notice the loose brush strokes. Next, do you notice any repetition? Variety? Balance? We'll go over these elements in our discussions.
Image Source: The Millinery Shop, by Edgar Degas, from Art Institute of Chicago (Links to an external site.), license CC Public Domain (Links to an external site.)
Artwork: Joseph Cornell, Untitled (The Hotel Eden)
1.6.8 Joseph Cornell, Untitled (The Hotel Eden), 1945. Assemblage with music box, 15⅛ × 15⅛ × 4¾". National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
This piece is neither a print or a painting. It is a box. Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) was an artist who made hundreds and hundreds of these small boxes. We are looking at his work because it suggests conceptual unity as opposed to formal unity (unity of forms).
Conceptual unity refers to the cohesive expression of ideas within a work of art, and an artist may link different images that conjure up a single notion. The artist’s ideas and cultural experiences can also contribute to the conceptual unity of a work.
For example, In Untitled (The Hotel Eden), although the interior is a protected place, neither the bird nor the ball is free and the artist has fused his memories, dreams, and visualizations. Notice all the little details Cornell adds to this work: a tiny vial, a piece of thread with its spool, a cut out paper bird, a strange little ball…All these elements seem unrelated. BUT they work together as a whole to service the idea of the artist. Here the combination results in a complex visual expression of the artist’s personality and memories.
Image Source: Joseph Cornell, Untitle
