CHILD’S VIEW

As humans, we first understand the world without words.

“Seeing comes before words.  The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”

There is nothing like a John Berger quote to get the blood flowing.  The one above is from his book, Ways of Seeing.  Berger continues:

“But there is another sense in which seeing comes before words.  It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.”

Seeing establishes our place in the world.  The visual has primacy.  We are surrounded by it.  Our knowledge of what surrounds us comes principally from seeing.  We draw so as to understand the world.  And in this cycle of seeing, knowing and drawing happens without words.  And we draw even what we can’t see so as to understand it better.

This is not the first John Berger quote which we have found inspiring.  Another of his thoughts can be found at STONES IN YOUR POCKET.  And you might try BERGER: WORDS DON’T COUNT.

One of the refrains of these pages is the misplaced primacy that our culture places on words.  The unfortunate educational construct of words before vision has been decried and is a human tragedy.

These pages at least attempt to give a new way to acquire knowledge thru vision and drawing.  These pages start with the fact that knowledge is seeing.  Drawing is knowledge.  And the greater knowledge that our drawings have, the better.  Representational drawings are ignorant, see INFORMED OR INVENTIVE.   Transparent Drawings are informed because Transparent Drawings contain the most knowledge.

1.  Berger, John.  Ways of Seeing.  Penguin Books, London.  1977.