"You can draw. You just can not see." Renario Corbeletti my fine art foundation drawing teacher was looking over my shoulder in a Pratt Institute drawing studio in 1961. He later went on to be the Dean of the School of Architecture at Penn State. I went on to a 55-year architectural career traveling the world. I want to share thoughts concerning art, architecture and urban design in following posts.
I start with drawing and seeing. While we are all taught to read and write, count and calculate most of us are not taught to see and draw (or paint). An example of this can be measured by the behavior of people who visit art museums. Note that only about 3% of people n the United States visit art museums. So the observation I am about to share with you is concerning a very small portion of the population who choose to visit museums.
The average time spent looking at an individual painting in a museum is 15 seconds. This applies to a master piece as well as the random painting. Of this 15 seconds half is spent reading the small sign posted on the adjacent wall listing the name of the artist, date and name of the painting. Why? The reason is that people do not know how to read a painting. I post a painting below I undertook in Venice and explain how to read it in the next post.
Thank you for looking & reading. Ted
