The Work of Art

ART’S LEXICON

The artist did not think of his art as a “self-expression,” nor was the patron interested in his personality or biography. The artist was usually, and unless by accident, anonymous, signing his work, if at all, only by way of guarantee: it was not who, but what was said, that mattered. A copyright could not have been conceived where it was well understood that there can be no property in ideas, which are his who entertains them: whoever thus makes an idea his own is working originally, bringing forth from an immediate source within himself, regardless of how many times the same idea may have been expressed by others before or around him.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy, “The Nature of Medieval Art”

Take the simplest kind of drawing assignment: arrange a circle, dots, and lines to make something that we might recognize as a person:

[circle, w/dots and lines for eyes, nose, mouth)

If the eyes, nose, and mouth aren’t in proper relation to each other, we may recognize some elements that say “person” but their relationship to the whole is so skewed as to make us doubt the accuracy of the label:

[series of circles w/lines and dots in the “wrong” places]

Since we all share the experience of seeing people with similar relations between head, eyes, nose, and mouth, it’s not hard to agree, either that our drawing should exhibit the same relations, or that our drawing should emphasize the fact of a mis-fit. Either way, it’s easy to answer such simple, non-judgemental questions as: “where should the nose go? “where are the eyes in relation to the nose? “what about the mouth?”

Agreement comes when we understand relations between the individual features and where we must locate them in order to convey the idea in our mind. That is, the nose should go roughly in the center, the eyes should be centered on either side of the nose, and the mouth should be centered between nose and chin. The concept of center, then, is crucial – it is also one we know by experience. We have all stood at the center of attention, or reached out for the salt at the center of the table, or run in to the center of a circle game. When we agree, further, that drawing eyes, ears, nose, and mouth in roughly the right places makes a recognizable face, we can also agree more generally one how we might use the idea of center to examine other designs besides simplified people.[1]

SHAPE

Since we’ve already talked about scale and centers, let’s take the notion of shape. If we try to draw the features of a face in a box or in a kidney bean, the face loses essential facial qualities:

[simple shapes and faces]

While we do commonly experience box and bean shapes, we don’t commonly see actual human faces of those shapes. If we can experience discord between the idea of “face” and the shape used to represent it, we can also experience it elsewhere. It’s not hard to get this kind of discussion going. All I have to do is ask, “what works here?” “What doesn’t work?” Obviously, the answers will vary, but generally it doesn’t take too long to establish enough agreement to be able to name shapes, identify centers, and locate boundaries that identify the whole.

Indeed, we know a thing is whole when centers define boundaries and boundaries define centers; when parts have their place, and the whole provides adequate space for the parts.

POSITIVE & NEGATIVE

In general, we perceive shape in terms of positive or negative, presence and absence. The classic example is a (positive) table shape that creates two (negative) face shapes:

Where and how you focus your attention defines which aspect comes to the fore, positive or negative.

If the boundaries work, if positive and negative balance each other out and have good proportions, then the shape is good; both positive and negative aspects have enough strength to claim your attention:

And to stand alone as separate and whole:

BOUNDARIES

Boundaries don’t just divide, they join. Take a joint between two pieces of wood. A carpenter shapes them to make a corner for a drawer. The simplest joint forms a straight line boundary defined by where the end of one piece meets the side of the other:

but there is little strength in
such a joint, even when glued.

Instead, the carpenter shapes the common boundary to make it more complex, effectively weaving the substance of one into or around the substance of the other. Such a joint locks both pieces in place, and will hold without glue. The joint also forms a new shape that has its own integrity and wholeness. Two pieces become one, while two shapes become three. The third shape, that of the dovetail itself, not only separate the sides, it connects them. But the joint can’t work if the shape is wrong: one side will be weak and the joint won’t hold. Strength comes of wholeness, and wholeness depends on (roughly) equal division of parts – or symmetry.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry (literally, “of the same measure”) describes how a balance of forces can maintain both the integrity of the parts and the wholeness of their relation to each other. Symmetry does not mean equality – remember that measure is not number. Symmetry can unite an 8 inch board with a 3 inch board – but try to unite a 3 inch with an 8 foot board and you’ll have trouble because you’re working with two very different measures. Similarly, the human body is roughly symmetrical right to left, but the left side of any body is never a true mirror image of the right side; eyes are typically at slightly different levels on the face, and have slightly different shapes.

[three faces, one normal, the other two made of mirrored versions of left and right sides]

Complex wholes like human bodies or cities are made up of discrete, separate wholes: bodies contain cells, organs, and limbs; cities contain people, houses, neighborhoods, and districts. Each of those smaller wholes must be roughly symmetrical with each other in order to function, but due to varying local forces – left- or right-handedness among humans, or neighborhood ethnicity in cities – the whole can’t be perfectly symmetrical without sacrificing some essential living inner part. On a larger scale, this lack of precise symmetry helps prevent stagnation, but it is also evidence of the inner life responsible for creating such “imperfect perfection.” Take the universal symbol of the cross, where life meets death, where the four directions converge, where God and man become one, where good encounters evil – or where mathematics defines the intersection of two lines as a “point.” Note, however, that when the lines lack symmetry – when one is too short or too long – the meaning changes, it becomes another kind of mark, and we interpret it – we use it – differently.[2]

CONTRAST

contrast consists not merely of opposition. When relations and boundaries work, the work unites opposing parts into a new and unified whole. The symbol for yin/yang is a good example, as is the cross. Both are made of identical elements. The event of their coming together – their op-position – creates a unique and whole third element. So mother and father create family. So light creates shadow; so filling the cups empties the pitcher; so the depth of the roots defines the height of the tree; so the vertical path of the sun defines horizon and horizontal; so the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Materials also work by such opposition: rough, white paper abrades the soft, dark surfaces of pen, pencil, or crayon; amorphous, crystalline stone and fibrous wood resist the invasion of sharp chisel and knife blade.

But contrast alone doesn’t necessarily strengthen wholeness. Consider a yin-yang, and a split circle; both are equally half dark and half light, but have completely different effects. If we divide both with one line, we begin to see the causes of the difference. The lower circle is made up of two exactly equal mirror opposites. The boundary between them measures the full width of the circle. In the yin-yang, the straight vertical boundary divides two shapes into four. The boundary itself is divided in six, each unit equal to one diameter of the small paired circles. In the split circle, there is only opposition; we notice it more than we notice the unity of the circle. In the yin-yang, however, the boundaries are more complex, the oppositional relationship is working on varying scales, the symmetries display both balance and movement.

Which one creates a stronger whole? Or, as Christopher Alexander might ask, which one has more life? They both contain equal amounts of dark and light. They are both divided yet whole. Yet they are fundamentally different. How do you choose between the two?

If you chose the yin-yang as the stronger whole, the one with more life, I would suggest that the reason for your choice might have to do with what Alexander calls gradients.

In the Yin-Yang, the curved boundary separating light and dark (as well as the opposing light and dark dots), graduates, or slows the transition from light to dark and back again. Nature behaves the same way. The darkness of night doesn’t give way to the brightness of day all at once. We don’t go from midnight to noon in an instant. Rather, we experience the shift from night to day as a sometimes imperceptible process that requires a whole separate name: dawn, dusk, twilight, daybreak. Similarly, good boundaries don’t just bind opposites together, they create whole zones where opposites mingle and inter-act.

The same principle, or lack thereof, is readily apparent in buildings at the borders between windows and walls, or even between the two planes of wall and ceiling. The traditional approach provides a gradual transition from open to closed, horizontal to vertical, typically through the use of graduated mouldings or curved surfaces.

Note that either transition has the same effect: it creates a wider boundary where light and dark can mix or shift more gradually. Mouldings expand the boundary not only by their physical width, but also by building up that width gradually, with trim of different sizes. In addition, the corners of successive pieces of moulding create alternating strips of dark and light which effectively mix to make an intermediate zone between light and dark, wall and window, inside and outside. Because it effectively contains those alternating qualities, the boundary becomes a whole in and of itself, which strengthens the relationship between the opposing qualities of the light and the dark.

When we look at it this way, the choice between yin-yang and half-circles becomes a choice between boundaries. Look at what happens when we isolate the boundaries:

Clearly, the “S” curve alone still shows something recognizable of the yin-yang, while the straight line alone doesn’t even hint at anything circular. The disparity between the two grows when we recognize the small, dark and light circles as additional, necessary parts of the boundary. Opposition without relationship creates isolation and fragmentation. Only opposition in relationship can create a working, beautiful whole.

ROUGHNESS

Since living relationships must constantly adapt to changes in the environment and the movement of life itself, so too must boundaries between materials, light, color, context and content, also be at liberty to shift and adapt as needed. Christopher Alexander calls this kind of adaptivity roughness. Ianto Evans invokes it when he says “it’s better to be roughly right than perfectly wrong.” It is, in effect, a matter of choosing between accuracy and precision. In scientific procedure, precision means that every shot lands near every other shot. Accuracy is how close you get to the target. If you’re hunting a bear and have only three shots, which is better: one bullet in the heart and the other two in a shoulder, or all three shots precisely half way between heart and shoulder?

In visual terms, the example of Yin-Yang is simple enough that precision and accuracy are relatively easy to obtain. Hand-drawing it can illustrate the point, especially if the first attempt is a little off. Here the line is good, but it doesn’t meet the circle in the right place. Clearly, the line lacks accuracy.

However, if I draw new lines over the old ones, without any erasures, I end up with something less precise, but a bit more accurate. With additional work, it begins to look “right.”

One can rework almost any drawing this way, and generally improve it – though it can be hard to convince a person of this notion if they are both obsessed with precision and possessed of an eraser – in which case, unless they can achieve both precision and accuracy in the same line, they’ll waste both pencil lead and eraser material, and they’ll find it very hard to move on. It’s worth examining the drawings of the great masters for evidence of this kind of gradual adjustment towards accuracy.

By the same token, a blunt pencil and a fat line may get better results than a very sharp pencil and a fine line, because the more open the line, the easier it is for your eye to adjust for discrepancies and inaccuracies. Alexander points out, however, that this property is not merely a fancy word for “hand-made.” Rather it is how nature adapts the small individual parts to the whole. For example, the kernels on a cob of corn are all roughly the same shape, but each kernel adapts, slightly, not only to accommodate its neighbors, but also to conform with the overall shape of the cob. So a “perfect” ear of corn is made up of slightly imperfect kernels arranged in slightly irregular rows. Similarly, the markings on a zebra or a giraffe shift and vary, irregularly, with the shifting volumes of muscle beneath the skin – but the whole works.

As with any art, combining theory with practice takes time. Names and proofs are never enough, nor is an essay, or even a whole book. You have to get familiar with your materials, develop skills, make mistakes, and generally acquire experience. And even then, every situation presents its own challenges, every relationship requires new negotiations and clarifications. A common language offers a place to start building a common understanding, and a common beauty.

[1] This section is inspired partly by the work of Christopher Alexander, who designs buildings, neighborhoods, and other artifacts; who has written many books, including the classic design manual, A Pattern Language; and who as a mathematician helped shape the web software that makes possible such things as “wiki” pages. In The Phenomenon of Life he argues that life exhibits “15 properties” that we regularly observe in traditional designs, and which is most often missing from much modern design. The properties themselves are not so new as the context in which he places them and the evidence he offers for how they work. For anyone interested in design, he offers substantial and satisfying support for the rightness of certain kinds of design decisions. Using varieties of scientific observation and documented fact, he argues that individual, subjective experience comes from a common source and set of principles. His “15 properties” are:

• levels of scale
• strong centers
• boundaries
• alternating repetition
• positive space
• good shape
• local symmetries
• deep interlock and ambiguity
• contrast
• gradients
• roughness
• echoes
• the void
• simplicity & inner calm
• not separateness

[2] Christopher Alexander distinguishes large scale symmetry from what he calls local symmetries, which allow small wholes to work individually, but also in right relation to each other – like ethnic neighborhoods in a city.