the education of vision—before it's too late

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzYrUfsAvkZur5cBv6xlhSg

 

which [two] things belong together // grouping

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version

 

art, design, architecture / online published links

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Alan Watts / merely a philosophical entertainer?

from Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version

Currently I am reading the autobiography of Alan Watts (1915-1973), the British-born philosopher (whom some have dismissed as a “philosophical entertainer”), who popularized Zen Buddhism and other aspects of Asian philosophy. To my dismay, I am not enjoying it.

That said, I remain indebted to his introduction to The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity (NY: Braziller, 1963), which I first read secretly (since books were banned as “contraband”) while undergoing US Marine Corps infantry training. Back then, I was enamored by the resemblance between Watts’ essay and my own understanding of Gestalt theory (which had influenced him as well), which I had discovered as an undergraduate art student.

I wish his autobiography had been as precisely and sparingly phrased. But I would like to share the following passage, in which he bemoans his own education, and provides a list of components that he regards as more essential. Do not try this at home.

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Alan Watts, In My Own Way: An Autobiography, 1915-1965. NY: Pantheon Books, 1972, pp. 92-93–

[In an ideal education] I would have arranged for myself to be taught survival techniques for both natural and urban wildernesses. I would want to have been instructed in self hypnosis, in azkido (the esoteric and purely self-defensive style of judo), in elementary medicine, in sexual hygiene, in vegetable gardening, in astronomy, navigation, and sailing; in cookery and clothesmaking, in metalwork and carpentry, in drawing and painting, in printing and typography, in botany and biology, in optics and acoustics, in semantics and psychology, in mysticism and yoga, in electronics and mathematical fantasy, in drama and dancing, in singing and in playing an instrument by ear; in wandering, in advanced daydreaming, in prestidigitation, in techniques of escape from bondage, in disguise, in conversation with birds and beasts, in ventriloquism, and in classical Chinese.

we do not first see, we define first and then see

related online video talks

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922, p. 81—

[In Art as Experience, John Dewey] gives an example of how differently an experienced layman and a chemist might define the word metal. "Smoothness, hardness, glossiness, and brilliancy, heavy weight for its size…the serviceable properties of capacity for being hammered and pulled without breaking, of being softened by heat and hardened by cold, of retaining the shape and form given, of resistance to pressure and decay, would be included" in the layman's definition. But the chemist would likely as not ignore these esthetic and utilitarian qualities, and define a metal as "any chemical element that enters into combination with oxygen so as to form a base."

For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.

regarding montages and vision

 

the extraordinary visions of Joseph Podlesnik

Above The photographs of Joseph Podlesnik are simply astonishing. A large selection are on sale through December 8, 2023, online here.

a new practical guide to art in relation to seeing

coming soon

There’s a new book in the works—it isn't out yet, but it's coming. Issued by the University of Chicago Press, it will soon be available in hardbound, paperback, and E-book formats. The title peaks my interest: STUDIO SEEING: A practical guide to drawing, painting, and perception. It is due out in September. The author is Michael Torlen, a painter, printmaker and writer who retired from teaching in 2012, and now resides in Maine. A graduate of Ohio State University and Cranbrook Academy, he taught courses in visual arts for many years at the University of Georgia at Athens, and at Purchase College in New York.

How do I know him? I don’t, or at least we've never met in person. But we are well-acquainted “online,” as they say, because about ten years ago, by chance we discovered that we have a common interest in, not just art and vision, but in the writings and teaching practices of an artist / teacher (in the 1940s and thereafter) named Hoyt Sherman. At OSU, Sherman was the teacher of Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein. But he was also the teacher of one of my most influential teachers, a man named David Delafield. Torlen’s link to Sherman is far more direct: he earned an MFA at OSU and actually worked closely with Sherman.

My additional interest in Sherman is through his connection to artist and optical physiologist Adelbert Ames II, who invented the Ames Demonstrations, about whom I have written, and more recently made a three-part documentary video on.

At OSU, Sherman reconstructed many of the Ames Demonstrations. But the achievement for which he was famous (or, as his detractors would probably say, “infamous”) was his attempt to teach drawing in the dark. He devised a method of teaching drawing in a pitch dark studio (called a “flash lab”) in which his students drew from abstract images that he projected on a screen, using a tachistoscope, for a fraction of a second. His students included members of the OSU football team, who (it was claimed) improved their passing accuracy by wearing a hooded contraption called a “flash helmet.”

Judging from its table of contents (as well as the title), the key concern in Torlen’s book is perception in relation to art, from the view of a long-experienced teacher. You can learn much more about him as well as updates on his book at <https://www.michaeltorlenauthor.com/>.

the offense of telling the same thing twice

Alan Fletcher

Above Alan Fletcher [British designer], model of one of twelve proposals for outdoor drinking fountains (made in stone, one meter high), in which each fountain is shaped to form the silhouette of a famous cultural figure, through reversible figure-ground. This one is the silhouette of Albert Einstein. As reproduced in Fletcher, Picturing and Poeting. London: Phaidon, 2006, p. 103.

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Vyvyan Beresford Holland [the second son of Oscar Wilde], An Evergreen Garland. London: Cassell 1968, Page 156-157—

My next case [of how to deal with boring people] is that of the horrible habit of repetition, often known as "twicing." This is the offense of telling the same person the same thing twice. Unfortunately, everyone over the age of forty is to some extent a "twicer," because he refuses to remember to whom he has told his stock stories, and he is apt to forget any new stories he has heard. He is also apt to be much too interested in his past life to care very much whether his victim has heard his stories, so long as he can get someone to listen to them once more, particularly if they happen to be true, or were true before they were embroidered out of all recognition. And it is almost worse if he says, "Do stop me if I’ve told you this before," because one should never run the slightest risk of repeating oneself to other people. On the whole, it is far better not to tell stories at all unless either you invited them yourself or they are very short.

The remedy for "twicing" is contained in: 

Rule VI.—As soon as one is certain that a case of "twicing" is about to occur, one should interrupt the "twicer" roughly by telling him that his story reminds you of another one, and then proceed to tell him his own story, with added detail. That is, if he will let you.

graphic design / indispensable tools of the trade

Above and below Still frame excerpts from a video talk, titled Art Design and Gestalt Theory: the film version (2023), about the organizing principles that are fundamental to human vision, including accents (above), unit-forming factors, and closure (below). Nothing is more indispensable to design-based organizing skills, including graphic design. 

age-old Japanese motif in Kamerick Art Building

I became interested in the design of the Kamerick Art Building (on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa) on the first day I saw it in 1990. As a job applicant, I had been invited to speak in the auditorium that day, and, while giving that talk, I recognized the logo-like pattern with which it complies. In my most recent online video talk, I conclude by telling about my realization that day, and how it would later contribute to the experience of teaching design in that building for the next three decades (from 1990-2018). I say 38 years in the film, but it was only 28 years (further confirmation that I have never been good at math).

I was never certain who designed the building (the firm was credited but not the designer). But later, around 2015, while giving a Humanities Iowa talk in a library in Des Moines, I shared that story with the audience. After the talk, a man came up from the audience and introduced himself as the building’s architect. I was delighted when he told me that all my suspicions were accurate. 

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: Video Version

Recently completed: Our most popular video talk, titled Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version (40 mins). It traces the emergence of Gestalt psychology (c1910), as well as its connections to holism, Taoism, yin and yang, displacements of attention, contrast illusions, color, camouflage, graphic design, and architecture. Ideal for classroom screenings, and library discussion events. Non-monetized, free full online access for anyone at YouTube.

gestalt theory, attention, and problem-solving

Thinking Outside the Box (2022)

musings about digital art and gestalt theory

Newly published: Pandemic Images and Gestalt Theory: Introspective musings about a series of digital art-works, in Gestalt Theory (2021). See also this online exhibition.

Phänomenal / Journal of Gestalt Psychotherapy

I could not be more pleased to find that four of my recent montages (above and below) have been published in the current issue of Phänomenal: The Journal of Gestalt Psychotherapy (2/2021), published in Vienna.

in Naples / street games of joking make-believe

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Spycraft. Digital montage © 2021.

Fritz Heider, The Life of a Psychologist. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983, pp. 74-75—

When I think of those summer days in Naples [Italy], I have a dim memory of noisy movements of masses of people, a surging of multitudes with much laughter and cheerful, restless activity. People wanted to get in touch; everywhere one felt that they had a need for human contact. And this seemed especially strong when a stranger appeared—he stimulated them and aroused their curiosity. Perhaps the frequent cases of young people who begged may have stemmed less from poverty or greed than from a compulsion to get involved with a stranger and establish some sort of contact. What they seemed to love above everything were little games of joking make-believe, and begging provided lots of opportunities for that. Once I passed two boys sitting on a wall, and when they saw me, they begged for cigarettes. I had seen that one of them had a box full, and I said: “Why do you beg? I can see that you have lots already.” They protested, “No, no”; and one of them took the cigarettes out of his pocket and handed them to the other. He knew that I saw what he had done, and he said, laughing, “I have no cigarette!” When I told him that I had seen him give them to the other boy, he answered, “Those are my father's cigarettes.” All this was spoken in a sort of theatrical comic way, with much laughter and many playful gestures, all as if they were telling fairy tales and hoping that the listener would join with them in the game.

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VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

if you want to see the sisters in their wimples

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Baseline Shift. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Lawrence Crumb—

If you want to see the sisters in their wimples with the pimples on their dimples, making laces for the faces of the acolytes in surplices, with purples for the trimmings of the cassocks of the canons of the bishop of the diocese of Fond du Lac—you’re too late! They just passed by.

a crow crowd in the morning and made a noise

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Baton Rouge. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Alex Osborn, Applied Imagination. New York: Scribner’s, 1963—

What is a double petunia? A petunia is a flower like a begonia. A begonia is a meat like a sausage. A sausage-and-battery is a crime. Monkeys crime trees. Tree’s a crowd. A crow crowd in the morning and made a noise. A noise is on your face between your eyes. Eyes is the opposite of nays. A colt nays. You go to bed with a colt, and wake up in the morning with a case of double petunia.

metaphor / two things come together as one

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Bird Repair. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Robert Frost—

Man likes to bring two things together into one…He lives by making associations, and he is doing well by himself and in himself when he thinks of something in connection with something else that no one ever put with it before. That's what we call a metaphor.

the one way by which new ideas come about

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Carry Out. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Francis A. Cartier—

There is only one way in which a person acquires a new idea: by the combination or association of two or more ideas he already has into a new juxtaposition in such a manner as to discover a relationship among them of which he was not previously aware. An idea is a feat of association.

the unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Bid Adieu. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation—

The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings—of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse—whose union will solve the previously unsoluable problem.