In earlier times, most images in the social environment were three-dimensional and made by hand. The unerring strength and authority of Egyptian, African, and pre-Columbian objects testify to the time, patience, and skill that went into their formation.

THE INDISPENSIBLE LINE If one ever tried to enumerate the various uses humankind has made of line, one would probably arrive at the conclusion that, of all the available elements, line alone is indispensable. Even color might be put aside as a means of expression. Color has been assigned a secondary role at times, even by artists of outstanding gifts as colorists. Even Matisse once advised student artists to give attention first to drawing.

Line, depending on its use, may recall, inform, describe, amuse, make fantasy, signify subjective forces, arouse deep-lying associations--all with impressive economy. Lines as pictograms, ideograms, or words--that is, lines as writing--signify things, actions, concepts, qualities, and conditions, across the spectrum of civilizations. Chinese script is an interesting case in point. It evolved supposedly from an ancient pictographic or ideographic writing that represented things in whole or in part; and, because it never broke altogether with its earlier phases, it has maintained some tie with drawing and painting--thanks in part to that remarkable implement, the brush. The discipline of brush and ink in both China and Japan applies to calligraphy and painting alike: A Chinese poet is, in a rather strict sense, also calligrapher and artist, and an immeasurable part of his poetry may reside in the quality of his brushwork . . . . In our phonetic alphabetic writing, which was already in existence before 1500 B.C. and was invented by a northwestern Semitic people of Syria-Palestine, words stand for sounds, for speech, before they stand for objects, ideas, qualities, or conditions. Neither they nor the letters by which they are formed bear any resemblance to things animal, mineral, or vegetable. Yet handwriting, a skill sadly neglected in the present day, partly because of the decline of the over-elaborate style of the nineteenth century, is one of the few uses of line in which many people may still take pride of achievement. One's handwriting is both a means of communication and a subtle reflection of personality or temperament . . . . In societies whose laws and religions have forbidden or inhibited the making of graven images (as the Bible refers to them), writing, ornament, and architecture have become the highest forms of visual expression. This has been true especially of peoples of the Islamic world. Their incredibly musical writing, Arabic, which evolved in ancient times from the use of the reed pen rather than the brush, is displayed with understandable pride even across great areas of their mosques.

Of course, most uses of line lie well outside the province of traditional arts and crafts, even if these uses do often produce very attractive results. Maps showing roads, paths, lakes, rivers, property boundaries, the rise and fall of the land itself, weather and sea charts tracing the flow of air and water over vast areas of the globe, are among the most interesting documents in the world. Certain devices made of bound bamboo strips and small sea shells by South Sea islanders, for the purpose of showing the direction of ocean swells and the location of small islands, have the appeal of charts and of works of art. Their purely visual-esthetic qualities equal their functional qualities.

That line may serve in ways often considered far removed from esthetic purposes is seen in the highly technical drawings made by or for technicians, scientists, and mathematicians--witness almost any issue of Scientific American Magazine. Theirs are specialist languages that the layman may not be able to appreciate, except on a purely sensory plane, as in the case of the bamboo sea chart. Nevertheless, they sometimes have more in common with drawings by artists than one would suspect . . . .

Drawing is the vehicle by which patterns of movement and mechanical principles are sought.

Line is the operative instrument: The transparency or one-dimensionality allows the draftsman to show form within form and the functions of parts and systems throughout the anatomy of machines, electrical devices, and living organisms--not to mention diagrams of things as yet unseen . . . . [it is] the most natural graphic equivalent of perceived or imagined form . . . . the straight line, whether absolutely straight or not, is a very human device, favored even by the child for all that it can make, do, or tell, and for its structural simplicity. As the ancient agent of measurement, of geometry, it is the father of architecture and mechanical invention. It describes flat planes, edges, and clear architectonic forms with efficiency. It is understandably less efficacious in describing rounded forms that turn away from the viewer slowly or swiftly, revealing only the horizons of their contours.

The articulation of planes, corners, and horizons is certainly not the only function of line in drawings. There are those nonexistent lines called implied lines or psychic lines between elements, and lines that follow the skeletal structure of forms--imaginary core lines, lines of an inner framework or thrust-system often seen in working-drawings by sculptors. Some objects in nature reveal their skeletal systems openly--leaves, flowers, various pods and seed heads, and the like. Others, like insects and small water creatures, do so by virtue of being transparent or wearing their skeletal forms on the outside. They and certain human-made forms are so very much like lines that they require little effort of translation into graphic equivalents. [ . . . . wire salad basket . . . . example of "container form" approaching "open form" . . . . note shadows and reflections . . . . ] Forms that are not of a skeletal nature or that reveal no definite inner structure from the outside are also treated by artists as though they did in fact contain a system of axes or radii tilting at various degrees through their centers--the longer axes signifying greater thrust outward, the shorter ones signifying lesser thrust. In the structures of living forms, whether hidden or revealed, lie the systems of growth that govern size, proportion, and function. Inasmuch as outlining--the use of contour line alone--is not always the most satisfactory way of representing curved surfaces, another kind of line may be used to reveal rotundity of form, "hills and valleys." This is the cross-contour line, which (like the skeletal line) is often purely imaginary or implied--not discounting forms and surfaces that do have bands, grooves, stripes, seams, or reinforcements running around them, across them. These are usually seized upon by artists as aids in realizing volume or rising and falling surfaces. These and a type of shading, are sometimes used, separately or together, to describe solid form and undulating planes.

LINE AND SPACE
If it is true that a mere point may appear to lie not on a surface, but "behind" or in front of it, it is even truer of line. It would be true of a line placed vertically or horizontally to the sides or top and bottom of a square or rectangular area and to the implied lines that describe a fictive cross at the center of such areas. It would be especially true of a diagonal line placed on a surface: Such a line would appear immediately to project forward and backward in depth: the surface would seem to give way to pictorial space, to some kind of perspectival space.

Moreover, when a line turns around upon itself, as in a loop, it creates a shape, a figure, and becomes outline. The figure so created will assume a curious density and relatively stable position in space. We speak of a figure--ground relationship, but this relationship should be understood as something more than that of an inert shape superimposed on an inactive background. If, instead of always thinking of delineated shape as outline, we could persuade ourselves on occasion to see it as Inline, we may move with greater speed toward recognition of dynamic interactions, give-and-take between forms and spaces.

Rudolf Arnheim, in his book Art and Visual Perception, says that "all percepts [specific patterns of general sensory qualities] are dynamic--that is, are described best as configurations of forces... A 'Figure' is not just a bounded area that lies on top. It spreads outward, pushing into and over the ground."

We must prepare ourselves to recognize systems of internal and external forces. Since the final years of the last century, artists, designers, and architects have shown increasing interest in form/space interactions, and, because they are so versatile, lines and planes have been employed with great frequency to define them--witness but a few of the hundreds of exploratory diagrams and sketches by Cubists, Constructivists, Suprematists, and Bauhaus artists and architects and their many contemporary descendants.

PERCEPTS, CONCEPTS, AND PERCEPTUAL CONCEPTS
A purist would insist that there are no lines in nature, not even in a single hair--only contours, horizons--rejecting the fact that the visual system tends to see contours as linear percepts. According to the Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, percepts give us general sensory categories or qualities, significant structural patterns that stand for the particular stimulus material out there in time, space, and light. We see, for instance, "dog-ness" rather than the "raw material" dog, as such. We assimilate the stimulus "apple" as a pattern of general sensory qualities: "roundness," "solidness," "greenness" (or "redness," as the case may be). "Squareness" seems to come with the stimulus square drawn on the paper or blackboard; and so on. Paraphrasing the old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees, Arnheim seems to be telling us that, if some incredible type of thinking isn't going on in the whole visual apparatus, the "forest" of the world would be an even more confused panorama than it is! Which leads Arnheim to declare that "eyesight is insight." Meaning that perceiving is a spontaneous type of thinking, a formation of perceptual concepts--not concepts in the usual application of the term (that is, ideas, theories, spectral entities), but in a creative activity of the mind, a thinking with forms, shapes, images. So then, "representational concepts," as Arnheim calls them, are an extension of this into the medium itself, whatever its properties may be (that of pencil, paint, glass, stone, wood, metal, and so forth), in the process of creating a work of art. Very likely Arnheim would agree with Henri Focillon's statement about the artist's "special privilege," which, he says, "is to recollect, to think, to feel in forms."

The perceptual psychologist Margaret A. Hagen . . . . offers what she calls a "generative theory of perception" that would embrace much more of what she believes perceiving and the making or art have involved across styles of art from the "rock art" of Altamira of 10,000-12,000 years ago, to ancient Eygyptian art, to modern art--not a theory of art, she insists, but "a theory of the nature of the perceptual information that makes successful picture making possible." An adequate theory , according to her reasoning, must conceive of visual perception as consisting of three interrelated components, three choices, that confronted the Egyptian artist and that still confront the modern painter and graphic artist:

(1) Station point or points (near/distant, central/oblique), an inherited and/or chosen projection system, extending to what is called perspective and even to "mixed systems";

(2) Relative degree of emphasis on variant (immediate, transitory) versus invariant (ideal, timeless) features of the object or objects; and

(3) Relative emphasis on two- versus three-dimensional components of objects and of the total pictorial environment, inclusion/exclusion, degree of transformation, abstraction, distortion, and the like . . . .

MARKS
Marks, in one medium or another, wet or dry, are the beginning of all pictorial expression for child and adult. Concepts (and whatever else) must achieve the quality of some kind of image-language. Lines as optical guides in space, coordinating elements, definers of form and space, and signifier of idea and feeling, tend to assume the principal role.

Study 7
We'll want as many tools or implements as possible for making marks--wide and narrow, wet and dry, firm and blurred, rough and delicate. We'll also want various kinds of paper--thick and thin, coarse and smooth, resistant and soft, "art" papers and ordinary papers. The difference between a line and a stain or a smear (all of which are kinds of marks) may depend on these qualities alone, and on whether the paper is used wet or dry.

We could try, in a number of "experiments," to explore two things at once: the physical and the esthetic potentials of our tools and materials as well as our innate powers of presentation, or making signs and images where previously there was nothing.

A good versatile brush (or brushes of different types and sizes) and black or colored inks or diluted paints (gouache or acrylics or regular watercolors) would serve for making wet marks, and various types of pencils, graphite, Conté or charcoal sticks, pastels, and crayons for making dry marks. Or why not wet and dry, as in the technique called wax resist: a drawing made first with a white or a light-colored wax crayon and then by a darker wash of a thinned-out water paint or ink? A simple design might serve as starter or primer, if need be. Variation and improvisation would follow. [Consider stamping with edges . . . . patterns & pressures]

I doubt that any artist has given more attention to line--its playful, expressive, rational or tectonic capabilities--than Paul Klee ['Pedagogical Sketchbook.' Paul Klee Notebooks, vol. 1 "The Thinking Eye," and vol. 2: "The Nature of Nature" . . . . edited by Jürg Spiller, NY: George Wittenborn, 1961/1973]. Much the same could be said of his use of color . . . . and . . . . lines occur in the most varied ways. They seem to range over the whole repertory of linear invention, reminding us of petroglyphs , of the first forms of written language, of children's drawings, of the drawings of the insane, of telephone doodles, of graffiti on public walls, of hobo signs, of sacred script, and of the most esoteric ciphers and symbols of mathematicians and scientists. Yet, in almost every instance, they emerge as his own creation, allied to a particular medium and to a kind of visual poetry. [allied] Klee was also a musician and, not surprisingly, brought to his art a special interest in melody, rhythmical patterns, and those marvelous interrelationships discovered in musical forms. His pictorial compositions, drawings, and writings reveal a musical-mathematical-poetical sensibility . . . . "Go for a walk with a line." . . . . a kind of line often seen in Klee's art . . . . one that is related to melody as a living entity--a single meandering line reminiscent of one of those long melodies known as plainchant or more commonly as Gregorian Chant, or of folksong, or an unaccompanied air by Bach. Or it could be compared to a leisurely walk through a woodland park, to the flow-pattern of a creek or a great river seen or imagined from above . . . .

Study 8
a. A slow, uncalculated movement of pencil, pen, or Chinese bamboo brush will result in the most interesting meanders. Try "going for a walk" with a very soft pencil, 6B or 8B, or an Ebony or Midnite pencil. It always seems easy; and it is easy to do when there is total relaxation in the process. Therein lies the difficulty for many people: being able to fall into a goal-less, effortless, almost trancelike yet functional state. One needs to become rather like an observer of the line making itself, curving slowly this way and that, moving outward and inward, almost (but not quite) doubling back upon itself. One would shift into a perhaps unfamiliar right-brain mode of consciousness, wherein there is sensitivity and control, but not of a rational, forward-looking, supervisory nature. One would seek to live in the moment of the movement, not ahead of it. This may take quite a bit of doing not for the purpose of developing skill, but for the purpose of slowing down and letting go of purpose.

b. Then five or six lines of this sort could be combined in a polyphonic arangement with lines allowed to echo one another, repeat one another above or below--converging almost to the point of touching at certain points and moving away at other points . . . . A kind of free-rhythm configuration with areas of inward and outward pressure. [See visual]

LINEAR RHYTHMS
Although the lines described above may remind us on occasion of melody and polyphony, a few will exhibit the kind of regularity associated with what is called (perhaps narrowly) rhythm. Rhythm, broadly defined, is more than just pulse or beat. Rhythm in music, at least, includes both dividual and individual ingredients. The basic meter is usually dividual throughout a piece (for example, 3/4 time, as in the waltz); the tune or melody that identifies it is individual (it is "The Blue Danube Waltz," not "The Missouri Waltz").

Rhythm exists in the visual arts as well. Indeed, no tradition of ornament or decoration seems to have existed without it. The more familiar examples in the Western world have come down to us from Greco-Roman sources and have been given universal currency and application in architectural embellishments, interior design, furniture, pottery, and mosaic design. The so-called Greek fret, an angular design of bands within a border, is perhaps an all-too-familiar type. That a similar running pattern did occur in several other parts of the world entirely remote from European influence is not so strange when one considers that craft techniques in weaving, knitting, and basketmaking, for example, almost certainly result in much the same kind of rhythmical repeat. A favorite motif originating in one craft frequently will be used in other crafts involving totally different methods and materials. Clear instances of this would be the way technical interweave motifs (deriving from ropemaking, knotting, and braiding) and symbolic animal, vegetable, and abstract motifs (relating to jewelry making and bridle, harness, and saddle hardware of ancient Celto-Germanic peoples) were utilizae on the splendid "high crosses" of eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland, which of course were carved out of stone.

Arnheim reminds us that each medium asserts its own "voice," its own range of possibilities: "A pencil creates objects by circumscribing their shape with a line. A brush, which creates broader spots, may suggest a disk-shaped patch of color. In the medium of clay or stone the best equivalent of roundness is a sphere. A dancer will create it by running in a circular path, spinning around his own axis, or by arranging a group of dancers in a circle. In a medium that does not yield curved shape, roundness may be expressed by straightness."

. . . . [an] example, "shows a snake pursuing a frog as represented in basketry pottery by the Indians of British Guiana."

A profound consciousness of rhythm in man and nature--in walking, running, breathing, in the seasons, the phases of the moon and the sea, in the voices of animals, birds, and insects--was a necessary constituent of life in old, psychoerotic societies of the world. Ceremonial dancing was evidently the principle way of coming to terms with the spirits that were believed to reside in all nature. [Ortega, the great Spanish thinker, in his last book, written in 1947, says that "the collective ritual dance, in the enthusiastic presence of the entire group, was what, in believing Greece, constituted the fundamental religious act in which man addressed God and God appeared to man," that "for the African Negro, to philosophize is to dance." And he continues: "Among the North American Indians it is even more so, because their dances, which are also social, arise out of individual invention obtained in dreams, and dreams are the metaphysical "way of thinking" of primitive men. So it is useful to remember that, before the perceptive-conceptual way of thinking which made philosophy possible [in Greece during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.], for hundreds of thousands of years men made use of other very different ways. Before, in fact, the emotive-imagist or mythological way of thinking dominated in humanity [in ancient Egypt, for instance, or in "believing Greece" or Homeric times, the eighth century B.C., or earlier] and even before that, tens of millenia earlier, the visionary way of thinking which these Amerindians and Chaminist peoples of northern Asia have largely preserved today." [José Ortega y Gasset, The Idea of Principle in Leibnitz (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1971), pp. 297-98]

EMBELLISHED LINE
Embellished line often exists in conjunction with rhythmical line, with what is called wavy line, William Hogarth's famous "line of beauty." It is found in greatest variety in the art of cultures of a more elaborate social development, where image-making is closely tied to ornament and description and to a more conscious concern with style, with taste. Linear embellishment, coupled with Hogarth's line of beauty, is one of the delights of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art, early Cretan and Greek art, Persian Art, Kufic script of the Islamic world, and Hispano-Moresque pottery and tile decoration. One can imagine that the daily use of brush or pen resulted almost inevitably in line of rare energy and grace in all sorts of point and line inventions. Botanical nature alone has provided an infinite treasury of source material for the artist-decorator. Ornament, so important throughout the nineteenth-century that even architecture was judged by it, is used now with great caution if at all. It is admitted only where it has a very precise role to play in the total fabric of a building, otherwise it is thought to look "tacked on" or to be a kind of indulgence.

Even the style known as Art Nouveau, which sprang up in the 1880s and 1890s as a welcome alternative to the long parade of historical styles, of unabashed eclecticism extending from the reign of Napoleon (Neoclassicism, Gothic Revival, neo-Egyptian, neo-Romanesque, neo-Renaissance, even neo-Moorish) to the end of the century, was brushed aside, because it also tended to become a "surface affair," and though based, at its best, on lean, spiraling forms discovered in plant life, it found application in few large structures. Reinforced concrete came along at the same time as Art Nouveau. Its tractable character would seem to have made it ideal for Art Nouveau expression; but it was not until the 1920s and the 1930s that major talents in architecture started to adopt it for broad curved structures, spiraling or tapering weight-bearing elements. Art Nouveau was also an art of fine craftsmen, therefore rather expensive. In any event, a more radically "new" art was emerging in the 1880s and the 1890s in the erotic-poetic atmosphere of Art Nouveau and Symbolism (rather like twin-sister movements) that would render all borrowed, decorative, or "cosmetic" solutions redundant.

Culture's pendulum was now swinging away from the deeply feminine (feminine and masculine) sensibilities of the nineteenth century in the direction of distinctly masculine and youth sensibilities of the twentieth century. Perhaps all this helps to explain why the term decorative has been used, rightly or wrongly, as the classic put-down throughout much of this century. Another vision and "vocabulary" began to appear to spatio-plastic formations in painting by Cézanne (1839-1906), and in the architecture and design of Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), Louis Sullivan (1854-1924), Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959). Rhythm was conceived as one of several ordering principles functioning at the very heart of a design.

Whereas there are a number of interesting similarities between our earlier art--Medieval art--and the art of the East, there is little in our sociocultural background to compare with, for instance, the dance of India; nor is there much in our tradition of athletics and physical culture to compare with the of the East. Therefore, we must start with the experience of the child in us and utilize free experimentation or improvisation, the basis of much contemporary art and dance. At a time when traditional values, visions, concepts, and usages seem to be vanishing or in the slow process of transforming themselves, the various signs and symbols by which humans try to communicate start to feel restrictive and inadequate. It would seem necessary to begin again at the level of play, with movement, with acting-things-out.

[ Harlan, Calvin. Vision & Invention, An Introduction to Art Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.]