December 31, 2003
Do You See What I See?
For anyone who wants to read a good book on the construction and interpretation of the "man made environment," I would suggest a book I received as a Christmas present, George Nelson's How to See.
Reading "How to See" it's hard to tell sometime whether I'm reading a monograph or wandering through a smorgasbord, whether I'm following a critique of our treatment of nature, or Nelson's musings on what he thinks looks good or is designed well.
The book's about 15 to 20 thousand words long, much of it in the introduction.
Seeing things is an intellectual-aesthetic exercise which increases one's inalienable capital: riches that can be accumulated without cost and once acquired, cannot be lost or stolen. — p. ix
Essays come under a number of different, sometimes enlightening, headings:
- Numbers
Arrows
Focus
Nonverbal Messages
Important Messages
Public Sitting
Important Documents
Hydrants
Here's a sample of the essay on directional arrows:
Arrows are part of the public baggage that goes with an addiction to mobility . They are a powerful, pervasive element in the modern scene. They prick, cajole, exhort, sell, direct; and there is no way of measuring the amount of brain damagge they do. — p. 12.
The "Important Documents" essay contains a picture by Saul Steinberg (one of my favorites).
Nelson's earnest tone and his unbridled criticism of industrial society sometimes hits and sometimes misses the mark, but he always makes you think about and rethink a subject.
...it was disturbing to discover that Detroit's bland and shiny products are more"alive" visually in death than when they come off the assembly lines.
In the "Skylines" essay, Nelson made me reexamine the iconic city skyline photo, and that these towers of commerce might not be everybody's ideal of progress, not that that's what I thought. It's just that I never gave it much thought at all.
What you see may be what you get, but what you see is also what you think. In trying to "read" what the photos show, it helps a lot to note the functions of towers before and after, say, 1900.Posted by mastr at December 31, 2003 08:36 AM
Here we find, in the near total shift from churches, university, and government towers to office blocks. — p. 93.