“Well, it's a world within our world, but it is something to pay attention to, just as in orienting to light. I use light by isolating it, and often not very much of it. I try to do it without a heavy hand, as in the piece you saw at the Einsteins which is seemingly a very simple situation, but it does have something to do with our perception and our relationship to this ocean of air.”
- James Turrell, interview with Richard Whittaker of Works & Conversations
“Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.”
- anonymous
“For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.”
- Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 – 1956, American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, student of American English
Simplicity and Complexity: Pondering Literature, Science, and Painting
Floyd Fenly Merrell, University of Michigan Press, 1998, 0472108603
VCU Cabell Library | Amazon
Behind every apparently placid surface there lies an unruly ocean of complexity. Fractals, chaos theory, and dissipative structures bear witness to these hidden complexities of the universe. Complementing these ideas in the sciences, fiction reveals our deep-seated desire for simplicity while we are obliged to learn to cope with complexity. And painting, especially since Paul Cézanne, evinces the complexity pervading what we often wish to take simply as what there is.
Simplicity and Complexity is about simplicity and complexity, order and disorder, as seen through the lenses of fiction, the sciences, and works of art. Floyd Merrell offers a nonmathematical account of chaos theory, fractal geometry, and the physics of complexity insofar as they are relevant to crucial facets of literature and painting created over the past century. Though his account is informal, he addresses technical concepts and philosophical questions, and sheds new light on the authors and painters he discusses. His radically interdisciplinary approach is within the mainstream of postmodern practices, yet it criticizes the tendency toward facile conclusions and sweeping generalizations regarding relations between the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. [from Amazon]
I'm drawn to work that appears simple, yet maintains a depth that can entice the viewer into it, use it's apparent simplicity to command attention, and reveals subtle, complex inner-workings. Sugimoto, Turrell, Lucier, and many others have created works that on first blush are quickly read, simple in format, execution and presentation. Upon easily entering into reading the piece (thanks to it's apparent simplicity), depth and subtly reveal a careful complexity. The power of the piece being in it's balance of simplicity and complexity. I want to tread that balance line.
