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Perceptive Vision - Developing a Personal Style

 

Be open to all your senses

A fundamental overhaul of design theory took place during the 1920s in Germany at the Bauhaus. Because of its questioning and experimental approach to the principles of design, this school of art, design and architecture has had a major influence in contemporary design. Johannes Itten ran the basic course at the Bauhaus and it became famous as the foundation for modern mass media design. Itten's theory of composition was rooted in one simple concept: contrasts.

Contrast between light and dark (chiaroscuro), between shapes, colours and even sensations. The first exercise he set for the students was to explore contrast – they were to experience a subject with all their senses –

Feeling - smooth/rough, soft/hard, cold/warm, wet dry, etc.
Hearing – loud/quite, high/low, full/empty etc.
Taste – sweet/sour, bitter/salty
Smell – odorless/strong, mild/intolerable
Sight – warm and cool colours, vertical/horizontal lines, large/small, long/short, dark/light, , transparent/opaque, round/angular, etc.

His intention was - "to awaken a vital feeling in the student for the subject through personal observation".

Looking at my own work I can see example after example where I use contrasts.

 

Challenge yourself to look at contrasts in your own subjects -

Understand the subject on an emotional level
Imagine the landscape ha real feelings  - ask what these would be at this time.

Riley Lee, Australia's only Grand Master of the shakuhachi, commented that while rehearsing for a work titled “Goldfish Swimming in Cold Water”, the master instructed them all to stop playing and observe goldfish swimming in cold water. They were to spend hours doing this, they were to absorb the feelings the emotions of the fishes actions.  He also commented that while the performance was technically less proficient that if they had spent the hours practicing and playing, the work was charged with an emotional understanding in a manner that a technically proficient performance could never be.