Volume 2. Chapter 11. Forms

Letters

Elements of the construction of the town R. are rearranged into the letter R. Also, if you like, you might make out the rest of the letters, whatever they are: everything made of bricks and tiles.

Waves

Resisting vacuum, resisted by surface tensions, each molecule of air moves a molecule of water but is lost in a vortex of whirls and eddies. How waves assume regularity is too complex to model.

Complex number

A number emerges from the waves. Jagged forms add up to an indivisible sum, part real, part imaginary.

Interpretation

The tools of the graphic artist are the tools of the scientist. Scale, weight, measure, and dimension beg for interpretation.

City gardens

Autumnal yellows pinks and oranges transcend a jumble of walls and fences.

Quilt palace

Islamic palaces feature intricate repeated geometrical designs, not this random array of simple squares, arches, and triangles, although its teasing textures and colors—soft purples, oranges, and greens— compose a pleasing scene.

Painted archways

You want to interpret these architectural elements as though they could be built, but walls here are windows, archways are cupolas, as though a child’s tower of wooden blocks were a palace, bigger on the inside, if only the arched doorway were not merely painted on.

Portal

It’s not debatable as to whether the portal is representational. Enter here for the ultimate embrace,TS loving, rhythmic, and symmetrical.

Perspectives

In the mind, too, different perspectives fill the space, overlapping here and there.

Hall for singers

The great edifice is made of tinted glass, edge to edge, hung together on the barest of necessities. Inside, which is also outside, steps lead to a stage for singers, bearing in mind that pure oral tones are fragile and transparent.