4 comments about The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order, Book 4.

1. This book is a free, original expression of nonduality, or non-separation, which is to say nothing is separate from existence. If you love art, architecture, color, light, inner light, incorporation of the tears and sadness of "the cares of the world," living a natural and open life, this book will show you how that love meets up with the truth of your existence.
   
   How can you "feel" non-separation or nonduality? By knowing that you exist. This is your sense of "I" that Alexander speaks of throughout this book. Or call it "I Am." Since everyone can know that they exist, their most fundamental nature is this "I" or "I Am." Valuing that you exist, valuing this "I" brings a sense of unity with all people, their creations, their appreciations, their failures, sadness and tears. It brings a sense of union with humanity.
   
   This feeling of existence is the crux of this book. It's not just feeling existence, but valuing existence. It almost sounds silly: "valuing existence." Such valuing leads to wonder that never ends and all works being done as a gift of existence to existence, or to God. It makes you focus on existence so that you create something that communicates multiple layers of meaning, the totality of existence, in a building or an artwork.
   
   Religion, art, physics, quantum theory, and mostly the "I," the true you, come together in this unusual, delightful, beautiful to hold and read, art book full of vibrant color photographs, pictures, and illustrations.
   
   If there is another edition or another volume, perhaps some of the more direct teachings of nonduality can be included. For example, the words of the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi turn one toward a disposition most favorable for the understanding, absorbing, and integrating of Alexander's confessions about art and existence: "Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. If you enquire 'Who am I?' the mind will return to its source (or where it issued from). The thought which arose will also submerge. As you practice like this more and more, the power of the mind to remain as its source is increased."
   
   Jerry Katz
   One: Essential Writings on Nonduality



2. Alexander's Pattern Language series was/is a great accomplishment. It made the mysteries of good architectural design accessible to everyone. It attempted to liberate home- and town-building from the arrogant priesthood of professional architects and exposed the bankrupt values behind so much of contemporary building. It offered a deeply human alternative much more in tune with the way we really live.
   
   Not surprisingly it did very little to change professional practices. Even the few architects who are sympathetic to his viewpoint largely dismiss his ideas and methods as economically impractical, except for wealthy clients who can afford the time and money needed to build a home with such individual attention to every idiosyncratic detail. The one area Alexander has had a major influence on is computer program design -- there economic factors are not a constraint and his notions about recursive patterns and sequences have been taken seriously and had a lasting effect.
   
   Having made hardly a dent in his chosen profession, Alexander now appears to have turned his attention elsewhere - to the future and to his own posterity. In The Nature of Order, and especially in the final Book 4, he babbles on and on about his Holy Grail - an "astounding" new world view that will supposedly revolutionize civilization (and vindicate Alexander as a Prophet crying in the modern Wilderness), in which Science and Art, object and subject, ornament and function, beauty and practicality will at last be seen as One Living Whole, inextricably bound together in mystical union like the interwoven threads of the Turkish prayer rugs he is so enamored of. Then and only then will buildings express the True Self and Blaze with Spirit and Inner Light and Centers and Beings and "I-stuff", blah, blah, blah.
   
   The art history illustrations are lovely (by comparison, most of Alexander's own paintings and drawings look rather second-rate), but the half-baked metaphysical ramblings, dressed up as pseudo-science, are very tedious, overly intellectual, and hardly new. The 2500-year-old Buddhist canon and many other spiritual traditions, like Sufism, Taoism, the Hindu Upanishads or Native American and Aboriginal religious cosmologies, have all expressed this vision far more eloquently and effectively. Alexander gives these venerable traditions barely a nod of acknowledgment, except as visual evidence supporting his own vague and untestable theories - since they make no claims to Scientific Truth, as Alexander does relentlessly, he just ignores or co-opts their immense contributions.
   
   Give Alexander credit for his emphasis on personal feeling, but educating our feeling to make ever more accurate side-by-side discriminations between "degrees of life" can take us only so far as an aesthetic method. Being an artist is more a matter of life-long discipline and *practice* - above all, learning how to cultivate the right state of mind - natural and open, free from fixed concepts, beyond even the most refined intellectual judgments of good and bad, beautiful and ugly. It's not something to rattle on about for page after repetitive page, it's something to do - to discover how to do through doing, through direct experience. In my own work, books like John Daido Loori's Zen and Creativity and Chogyam Trungpa's Dharma Art, or Suzuki Roshi's Not Always So have been much more helpful and to the point.



3. I'm not an architect, though I do paint a bit and presume to teach. A friend from Ohio undertook one of Alexander's architectural courses, 20 years ago, and posted me notes on Alexander's colour theory. I've used them ever since. But the articulation of this guru's understanding of the experience world & how we process it & make art in and for it, has become keener, more subtle & concise over the years. This is a very, very profound teaching without any messianic overdrive. Indeed, its the patience and humility of Alexander's process of discovering essential rules & roles for making art, that are most profound and the enduring feature of his presentation. And the book's own look exemplifies his quest for the beautiful.I'm not so taken with the reproductions of his own painting, however. I can't quibble with the twentieth century masters he reproduces as evidence for enduring beauty. A fabulous book!



4. *** Original review: May 20, 2004 ***
   
   Those who know me know that I am not prone to making either quick judgements or vacuous statements, so my friends (at least) will know that both the title of this mini-review and the few words that follow are far from whimsical: Alexander's Nature of Order, and in particular this fourth volume which I have recently received and simply cannot put down, are in my humble opinion, destined to rank as one of this *world's* great literary/philosophical achievements. What Alexander has produced is nothing short of a brilliant vision for the transcendent reality that lies beneath and beyond conventional categories. I write this as a Ph.D. physicist, with two graduate-level mathematical physics texts under my belt (both on complex systems), and semi-pro photographer with 30 years of experience of trying to capture "beauty" in nature. Alexander's work has provided a tentative -- but oh so deep -- glimpse of an answer to my own philosophical struggles as scientist and artist: physics and art are but two sides of a vastly richer coin, and are merely pointers to an infinitely rich *life* that pervades this universe; indeed, the life that *is* this universe. Every human being who has ever sincerely pondered the question "Why?" when looking up at the sky, while admiring a pretty flower, or looking into a mirror, can do no better than to curl up by a fireplace with a hot cup of tea, open up volume four of this incredible set of books and start using the musings lovingly offered here to look within for answers. Truly a remarkable achievement. I have never met Christopher Alexander, but can honestly say that I have been deeply touched by this preternaturally wise soul.
   
   ***** Musings added Sep 1, 2005 *******
   
   Having now read the entire opus (I-IV), and currently on my 3rd reading of volume I, I am fully convinced that Alexander's Nature of Order is an absolutely stunning achievement of the highest caliber. I also concur with a quote that appears on the inner flap of the books, to the effect that while very few (if any) philosophical/conceptual works (and their authors) are likely to be remembered 500 years hence, there is a strong possibility that Alexander's Opus WILL be remembered as a precursor to what our present day (only partially overlapping fields of) "science" & "art" will have evolved to in 500 years (a unified, wholistic body of "Sci-Art" in which the schism between objective & subjective / inner & outer no longer exists).
   
   What Alexander presents in these books is a tentative first stab at a magnificent new CONCEPT; not a mathematical or physical theory (though rudiments of what might go into a more formal description are also discussed). Although many of Alexander's ideas are quite subtle and require thoughtful reflection to fully comprehend and integrate into (ironically) a whole (new worldview), the basic thesis is original and profound: EVERYTHING that exists contains "life", and the degree (lesser or greater) to which life is manifest in "X" can be *objectively* determined by probing one's *subjective* (inner) world. Nature is seen, in this view, simply as the totality of life, continually unfolding; and beauty (as generated by local life-forms such as humans), as a resonance between outwardly objective forms and (the very deepest) subjective inner feelings.
   
   Western science's longstanding divide between "what's out there in the world" and "what is in here, in our hearts and souls" is exchanged for a new worldview in which our understanding of the cosmos is predicated on an active unity between objectivity and subjectivity; between dispassionate form and intensely personal beauty; between "eye" and "I"; between the deepest inner feeling and continually unfolding outer life. If this sounds radical (and perhaps even a bit strange), that is because it IS radical; Alexander is proposing a sweeping idea that is both revolutionary and (only in hindsight, after having read his extraordinary Opus) obvious! For it really cannot be any other way! Every thinking -- no, every FEELING -- creature who wants to know our cosmos and his/her unique role in it needs to read these books. They are truly remarkable! The next great strides in art and science will be made (simultaneously) when, one day, an EINSTein-Alexander appears and uses the ideas expressed in these books to develop (using a mathematics not yet created) a rigorous new theory of "Sci-Art-Beauty-Life". These are ostensibly books on "architecture"; but they far -- FAR -- transcend that field; they speak, collectively, about everything that exists.

5 comments about The Graphic Designer's Guide to Portfolio Design.

1. I was very happy with this book! I took a Portfolio class in college and it did little to help me build a
   digital portfolio. This book covered a number of questions that I had about the various computer
   design programs. It also offered ways to create navigations once the digital port is created and some
   of the things that can go wrong.
   
   The book is well structured. It is logical and clear. There were tons of examples. In addition to the
   chapters on creating a digital, there are some great chapters on how to create a traditional portfolio as
   well. I also learned the best ways to create resumes, how to take interviews and what to do when
   asked difficult or illegal questions.
   
   This book has plenty of useful information interspersed with just enough technical info to keep you
   feeling informed but not overwhelmed. If you are trying to create any kind of portfolio, buy this book!



2. This book is incredibly irritating to read. It made my brain hurt. Another review described her style as "ebullient." I would describe it as "unfocused and unedited."
   
   As I randomly flip open the book, I find typos and simple grammatical mistakes that should have been caught by a decent editor.
   
   Page 14: "Write down answers to the following questions. Don't be modest, but be realistic. Put yourself inside the head of the potential employer as you consider how you will come across during an interview?"
   
   Empty phrases:
   Page 23: "A good rule of thumb for establishing the length of the resume is to balance economy with appropriate depth and detail."
   How exactly is that a rule of thumb?
   
   Page 49: "Any discussion of electronic design begins with the question, which format should I use to create my portfolio? Should I create a Web site? Or produce a CD-ROM? The answer is, it depends. In fact, there is not much difference between the two formats."
   Gah! Really, the answer depends?
   There's not much difference between CD-ROM design and web design? That's news to me.
   
   Irritating parenthetical trivia:
   Page 49: "For all intents and purposes, a CD-ROM (remember, this acronym stands for compact disc read-only memory) can be considered, simply, a storage device for your designs and resume."
   
   In a word, the book takes a rambling shotgun approach, it's littered with irritating mistakes, and there's not much insight into the subject matter.



3. I must say I had high hopes for this book, but it didn not deliver. Everything in it was obvious and I didn't feel like I learned anything at all. For instance, Myers goes on for a while about file formats and the different softwares and what they do. If you were a graphic design student and you were reading this book, wouldn't you already know all this stuff about what software like Adobe Illustrator does?
   
   Her design samples are boring, they lack creativity, and they just plain drag the book down. I do not reccommend this book, though unfortunately, there aren't many if any good portfolio books out there... Maybe next time, Debbie.



4. During my stint as a librarian in a university art school several years ago, I encountered many young graphic design students who were creative and talented; however, they seemed at times a tad clueless about the real world that crouched in the darkness ahead, waiting to pounce. Back then, there was no shortage of materials on the theory and technique of graphic design, but there was not exactly a glut of practical information on how one successfully breaks into the graphic design field after graduation. To accomplish this goal in today's competitive job market, the graphic designer needs an effective portfolio as well as the skills to market it to perspective employers and clients. Debbie Rose Myers gives aspiring graphic designers the vital information necessary to succeed at this daunting yet crucial endeavor.
   
   With an ebullient style, Myers describes the process of planning and implementing all facets of the portfolio. Different portfolio types are explored, from the traditional to the digital. The text examines every facet of the process, including professional resumes, job interview skills, the fundamentals of elegant Web site design and the importance of being prepared for computer malfunctions. Included are portfolio examples, pertinent glossaries and a bibliography. Myers's choice of success stories are sure to inspire the creative personality, such as the artist whose portfolio included herself clad as a 1950s waitress and achieved five job offers.
   
   Though the title implies a small audience, this spirited book will aid job-seekers in a broad spectrum of fields, not just in the arts but in business and the sciences as well. At the very least, The Graphic Designer's Guide to Portfolio Design should be a permanent resident of not only academic art libraries but the designer's personal library too, for this is a work that will be consulted again and again. There is always a place in the world for artists; they merely need to know how to find it. Myers illuminates the path.



5. I was very disappointed by this book. The design examples, with an occasional exception, are very weak; and the content is so generic and obvious that it yields virtually no valuable insight at all.

1 comments about Art History ValuePack, Portable Edition (3rd Edition).

1. I would have given this set 5 stars if it actually came with the case that it shows. The material is very useful.

2 comments about Pinstriping Masters 2.

1. I love my new book. It has some great stuff. Not so much for beginners like I'd hoped but still a good addition to the learning library. :)



2. I'm into pinstriping, and I wanna get tips, infos, and ideas from the best. Got the Pinstriping Masters 1, and I was happy to see the released of a second opus.
   Not deception at all, great book, great pictures, good explanations, go ahead, will be a great buy for yourself or as a present for anybody who's into pinstriping.
   My only "negative" note..?? the book is too shoooooooooort...
   :o))))..
   Keep it wet.

1 comments about Art in Theory: 1815-1900 An Anthology of Changing Ideas.

1. This text, like its counterpart Art in Theory 1900-2000, serves as an indispensable resource for those studying the birth of modern art. A superbly organized compendium of 19th century art criticism, it further incorporates secondary material from noteworthy contemporary art historians. Artists and historians: don't leave home without it!

1 comments about Marilyn Minter.

1. Lots of high gloss images mixed with mirrored and frosted papers. This is a slick book full of color. I am not very familiar with Marilyn Minter though so I can't comment on the selection of work. This book turned me on to the artist!

4 comments about Children and Their Art: Methods for the Elementary School.

1. The book looks brand new and I received it in less than a week. I am very satisfied and would highly recommend.



2. I am beginning art teacher and I have found this book incredibly helpful. What I like most about it is that it is thorough, but condensed. It covers a lot of important information in an accessible and easy to read way. A great overview on child development, and practical methods for the Elementary Art Classroom. A great reference.



3. Children and Their Art is the most comprehensive textbook available for teaching art education methods. This bestselling textbook covers all aspects of teaching art in the elementary classroom: the basic principles and goals of art education, the characteristics and needs of children as learners, the core principles of art as a subject-aesthetics, principles of design, art history, art media-and all aspects of instruction-curriculum planning, sample lessons, classroom management, and assessment. The seventh edition has been thoroughly updated and includes coverage of the National Standards for Art Education as well as the impact of postmodern thought on the practice of art education. It also provides a concise overview of child development theories and the latest findings on child development and brain research, including Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences.



4. This is a great book to use in a pre-service teacher education program. However, I am a long-time art educator and I still refer to it because it has a wide range of information on issues we encounter every day. This year I am teaching the art class for undergraduate elementary teachers and it is proving a very valuable resource. It is written in a readable, highly practical way with lots of examples that make adding art into an elementary curriculum not seem so foreign or so daunting. I do feel that there is a need for other supplemental reading and resources to accompany this text, but it is a great overall art education text, especially for the generalist teacher.

4 comments about Film as Art.

1. Read as an essentialist treatise on the nature of film as art, Rudolf Arnheim's "Film as Art" may feel like something of a dead end or a historical curiosity -- there was a period during which some of the major questions for cultural and art critics interested in film were: is film a new art form or does it draw its artistic potential from other more traditional art forms that can be said to be integrated into film? If it is a new form of art what is new about it? how should art critics approach this new medium? To these questions, Arnheim offers a powerful and convincing defense of the idea that film is its own art form, with its own distinctive artistic potential. Now that "we" no longer need to be convinced that film is an art form, or is at least capable of rivalling any other art forms on occasion, his detailed and meticulous argument that draws upon a broad familiarity both with the history and techniques of film to his day may appear dated and reactionary. I think this need to prove that film is an art against a number of prominent art theorists is really what one of the other reviewers ("vampyroboy," in an otherwise quite interesting review) is detecting when he describes the book as characterized by "self-hatred."
   
   On the other hand, Arnheim's book is not merely a reactionary treatise intended to prove that film really is a unique art form. Moreover, the book does more than merely defend one of the classical positions in the "realist" versus "formalist" debate -- Arnheim's position in this debate is much more nuanced than the standard histories of film and film criticism tend to attribute to "formalist film theorists." According to "formalism," the essence of film art lies in the formalist techniques available to the filmmaker, and that allow her to manipulate and transform film from a merely mechanical reproduction of reality into something genuinely creative and meaningful. This is supposed to be in contrast with "realism," according to which the essence of film art (and what makes good film art good) is its capacity to capture reality directly in its raw form. But Arnheim's position is much more interesting than either opposed position seems to allow.
   
   First, he argues that the apparent limitations of film -- the fact that it is two dimensional, that it was originally lacking sound (and later that sound had to be captured with great difficulty and lacking in the multidimensions that our experience of sound possesses), and that film is always a selection from what is visible within a frame, etc. -- these apparent limitations are precisely what open the space for and require creativity and manipulation on the part of the film artist. Because the filmmaker can't show all of reality or even a strict simulacrum of experience she needs to be creative in deciding which aspects of reality to select in order to capture the essence of a reality, and in order to convey the precise meaning that she intends from each shot. On the other hand -- and here is where the division between Arnheim's "formalism" and the so-called "realism" of Kracauer and Bazin begins to break down -- Arnheim insists that the very best filmmakers use the formal techniques of editing and selecting available to them in the service of reality. The very best filmmakers don't simply use their creative freedom to break free from the constraints of reality but employ that freedom in order to reveal something important about the reality they film. This is true even of experimental filmmakers who seem to break beyond representation completely -- there is something missing if their work does not in some way teach us to see the world anew and more clearly. This critical perspective on film remains valid -- and explains, for me at least, what I find unsettling about some of the virtuosic CGI effects in film that ought to impress me, and the difference between films that use their effects selectively to convey a genuine experience that would be otherwise difficult to imagine (e.g. Memento) and films that use their effects as mere dazzling artifice (the examples are too numerous to mention). Arnheim's Film as Art remains important and engaging reading for anyone interested in the nature and potential of film.



2. This book must be read by anyone with interests in film critiques and in Cinema in general.Arnheim argued that film comes from limitations , and ideed, I believe that he was absolutely right. Because film is not an unique art, but is builded up from other fields. The first thing that an artist must know is that you always have to leave something to be interpreted, you have to send a message. And how can you do that if you show everything?How can you possibly consider art something that does not need interptretation? Because like Arnheim said "what does not have a meaning has no place in art" Indeed, in his book , he explains that the composition of the film must be intermetiated between the margins of the screen. Also, that the black and white image is far superior to the coloured one.And here you can ask yourselves that how it is possible that the black & white photography is still used even nowadays? I believe that anyone interested in film should read this book.



3. Rudolf Arnheim's "Film as Art" is an important work of the cannon of cinematic theory. It should continue to be read, if for that reason alone; its influence on subsequent film scholarship is unquestionable and profound. It provides great insight into the aesthetics of the silent era, opening a window on the intellectual climate of the Weimar Republic. Paradoxically, it is, at once, both Comtian and Kantian. On one hand, it invites us in: Film is photography in motion and, as such, exists in the realm of the visual sense. On the other hand, it shuts us out: Film ART is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The shot is greater than the sum of its frames. Montage is greater than the sum of its shots. The finished opus, production of the auteur's complete intellectual and emotional capabilities in perfect harmony, is greater than the sum of all of its episodes. In other words, to be considered art, film must demonstrate not only the perfection of each element, but the perfection of those elements in relation to each other... melody, harmony and overall composition. Each frame must serve the whole; one frame more or one frame less and the work would be irreparably damaged.

   And yet... how odd it is that the vast majority of "Film as Art" focuses on filmic techniques, the very idiosyncratic building blocks upon which the 19th century artist-photographer once mused. In a desperate attempt to justify the medium as capable of high art, Arnheim descends into a technical-scientific argument that, in effect, nullifies his efforts to establish its end product. That is to say: If film art is truly the production of the heart and mind in concert, such devices would merely be means to an end, the bridges crossed on a journey deep into the soul. Still, Arnheim time and again returns to the theme of the mechanical: "Three dimensional images projected onto a two dimensional plane," distortions in time-space via cutting, lenses, filters, emulsions, etc. Vainly, he struggles with the idea of art in opposition to the mechanical reproduction of reality by enumerating the mechanical tools employed in dodging it.

   I find Arnheim thoroughly unconvincing, not only for the aforementioned reasons, but, more importantly, on a purely intuitive level. To Arnheim, the spectator is reduced to recepticle, the end-user of artistic production. Both the Kantian and Comtian in him should have provided the viewer with a more active role. He should have realized where the perception of light sensation resides; he should have understood that it is the mind that receives such perceptions that fashions them into complete images, actions, episodes and so on. Instead, he focuses intensely on cinematic tricks and devices which, by present standards, are part of the cinematographer's toolbelt. He is captivated by the means to the end rather than the end in itself. For example, he explains montage in terms of its formal aspects, failing even once to discuss what "montage" actually is (in the manner of Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, etc.) Curiously, the cinematic end becomes more of an afterthought than anything.

   I also find Arnheim's assertion of the universality symbolism (much like Eisenstein's artistic notion of ideograms as fundamentally monadic) rather silly, at best. Black is bad; white is good. For some reason, Arnheim never stopped to think of other paradigms or the very possibility of their existence. At worst, the book is downright dangerous. The blond-haired, fair skinned matinee idol is inherently striking whereas the brunette begins with a decided disadvantage. And this from a man of Jewish heritage amid a rising tide of Nazism! Can we forgive this the product of a "pre-semiotics" Eurocentric modernism? Or would such forgiveness, in itself, give substance to the insidious zeitgeits, serving as yet another relativist apology for the brilliant-yet-flawed?

   As a Jew, I sense "Film as Art" as the product of self-hatred. I sense that Arnheim was part of an intellectual community and yet APART. The pain derived, in that sense, from reading the book is interesting. Ultimately, however, it is another universalist blind alley: An attempt to speak in immutable terms about an ever-shifting medium of motion pictures. It argues for the preservation of the already-gone (e.g., black and white, silent film, etc.) It is illiberal, ill-conceived, unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. It can only read as yet another volley in the ongoing (and futile) battle between the formative and realistic schools.




4. An amazing analysis of the perceptual principles involved in film viewing. Arnheim provides a fascinating and scholarly look at the psychological and physiological aspects of cinema. A profound and thought-provoking work.

1 comments about The Visual Culture Reader.

1. indeed a very nice collection of important text into the visual culture around us

2 comments about Language of Flowers (From Stencils and Notepaper to Flowers and Napkin Folding).

1. Greenaway was famous for her fanciful, humorous, delicately colored drawings of child life. This little book was originally written in 1885, and it lists over 200 plants and their meaning in alphabetical order with 85 illustrations as well as some poems in the back of the book.
   
   The only problem I have with this book is that the printing is very small.



2. This is a fun book to read if you like symbolism, and even if you don't, it's fun to read the poems in the back. In this, almost every flower, clover and herb has a meaning and just about any flower you can you'll find in here. The illustrations are sweet, and this is a great reference if you're looking for something sentimental to give a friend.