Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1920
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 213
Description: Foreword: Some twenty years ago, the writer, being impressed by the incoherence of modern design and convinced that there must exist in nature some correlating principle which could give artists a control of areas, undertook a comparative study of the bases of all design, both in nature and in art. This labor resulted in the determination of two types of symmetry or proportion, one of which possessed qualities of activity, the other of passivity. For convenience, the active type was termed dynamic symmetry, the other, static symmetry, It was found that the passive was the type which was employed most naturally by artists, either consciously or unconsciously; in fact, no design which would be recognized as such - unless, indeed, it were dynamic – would be possible without the use, in some degree, of this passive or static type. It is apparent in nature in certain crystal forms, radiolaria, diatoms, flowers and seed pods, and has been used consciously in art at several periods. […]
Notes: "The present volume is the first work published on the Rutherford Trowbridge memorial publication fund."
Table of contents: title: Vitruvius on Greek symmetry.
pagenum: 9; title: Prediction by Edmond Pottier in 1906 relative to Greek symmetry.
pagenum: 10; label: 1.
title: The basis of design in nature.
pagenum: 11; label: 2.
title: The root rectangles.
pagenum: 19; label: 3.
title: The leaf.
pagenum: 30; label: 4.
title: Root rectangles and some vase forms.
pagenum: 44; label: 5.
title: Plato’s most beautiful shape.
pagenum: 59; label: 6.
title: A Brygos kantharos and other pottery examples of similar rectangle shapes.
pagenum: 65; label: 7.
title: A hydria, a stamnos, a pyxis and other vase forms.
pagenum: 75; label: 8.
title: Further analyses of vase forms.
pagenum: 91; label: 9.
title: Skyphois.
pagenum: 105; label: 10.
title: Kylikes.
pagenum: 114; label: 11.
title: Vase analyses, continued.
pagenum: 123; label: 12.
title: Static symmetry.
pagenum: 138; title: Appendix: Notes.
pagenum: 143