An edition of (Help Yourself to a) Blue Banana
(2005)
(Help Yourself to a) Blue Banana
Awakening your eyes to art, design and visual living
by Michael Adams
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(Help Yourself to a) Blue Banana: Awakening your eyes to art, design and visual living
2005, revised and updated 2008, Behind the Scenes Books
Hardcover
0977087905 9780977087907
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Help Yourself to a Blue Banana
Awakening your eyes to art, design and visual living.
An introduction to the nine lessons of light.
Michael Adams
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This book has nine chapters, and each discusses one of the nine lessons of light.
You may purchase this book on ebay, or at the Strand Book Store (the oldest and largest book store in NYC), or at the book store at the Montclair, New Jersey, Museum of Modern Art, or at other locations.
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From the dust jacket:
Presents a joyful new look at art and design . . . . . and shows us how to do it!
In this cheerfully written work, designer Michael Adams describes the basic building blocks that anchor all visual expression.
Each chapter reveals one of the nine secrets (called lessons of light) that bring emotional meaning to visual experience. At the same time, a new and intriguing way of life, called “visual living,” is illuminated, with dozens of surprising examples of how the visible world changes forever when we enthusiastically embrace it. This is art and design made easy, even for people who rarely read books!
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Reader evaluations:
“I felt like a new born baby, opening my eyes for the very first time.”
“When I finished the book, I smiled. . . . because for the first time, I actually TRULY understood art.”
“It felt like I was on a secret adventure that no one around me could ever possibly know about.”
“It’s a new, stimulating way to look at art.”
“ . . . an approach that must be applauded.”
“There is nothing on the market that is quite so understandable.”
“This isn’t a rehash of Bauhaus or Swiss or modernist principles.”
“ . . . right on the mark in explaining the visual creative process.”
“The points made are universal, and that is wonderful.”
"The book is refreshing in its simplicity."
"If you want to know what I think, I think it could be a classic."
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Preface
After opening these pages, you'll know what artists know.
Welcome to my book. If you have imagination I’m sure you’ll like it!
This book is about art, design and visual living, three things that are closely related.
“Visual living” is something enjoyable, a lifestyle that happens when you become aware of how your eyes see and understand the world. Visual living is fun! On the following pages, in addition to learning about art and design, you’ll learn ways to try out visual living, and maybe make it a part of your own everyday experience.
Even though art, design and visual living are closely related, trying to define them is hard to do. But here’s a way to explain what we mean: to start, try to remember if you’ve ever seen a statue that you liked (or hated) in a park, in a museum, on a fountain, or decorating the front of a building. Take a moment to do this. If you can remember that you once liked or hated a statue, then you probably know enough about “art” to read and understand this book.
Now consider this: Have you ever worn a shirt that made you feel good, or did you ever try to draw an eye-catching poster? If your answer is yes, then you probably sense enough about design to begin turning these pages. And lastly, if you ever said, “Wow, look at that!” when you saw a pretty sunset, or a full moon, or a beautiful cloud, well, that’s a start to visual living.
Visual living is a frame of mind that lies somewhere between living your life as a non-artist (possibly where you are now), and living a life in which you express yourself visually to others (which is where you’ll be if you become an artist).
It’s an easy frame of mind for anyone to enjoy. It’s between not being an artist, and really being an artist.
In visible matters, you could say that art is the serious stuff, design is the cool stuff and visual living is the fun stuff.
We’re going to learn about all three.
* * *
I said above this is a book about art, design and visual living. True. But there’s one more thing you’re going to read about also. Actually, although art, design and visual living are important parts of this book, they are in fact not the primary topic here. The primary topic here is the thing that connects these ideas together. And the thing that connects art to design, and design to visual living, and then visual living back to art again is the visual language. It’s the common thread. When you understand the visual language, then art, design and visual living begin to define themselves. All this connecting of visual things is a process which, all during your life, from cradle to grave, as they say, keeps going on and on and on.
The funny thing is I’m sure you use at least parts of the visual language everyday, probably without realizing it. Here’s why. It may sound too simple to be true, but I would guess that no one ever told you you’re using the visual language. So let me tell you now. There are parts of the visual language that you are already very familiar with, and all through this book you’ll read about surprising ways you’re already living with and using this unique kind of communication.
This book picks up wherever you are now in your familiarity with visual things. From that point, it leads you to knowing visual things even better. How far you go is up to you. You can use the information here to brighten up your bedroom, like they do on TV programs about interior design, or you can plan a whole way of life around it. If it really appeals to you, you can even explore a professional career in art or design (or photography or fashion, etc.) using the information you’ll read here.
(Much more about this is coming up.)
To summarize, this book is about understanding art, design, visual living . . . and the visual language, which is what connects them all together. It’s about bringing these things more fully into your life. On top of that, if you like being around art and design or you like being around crafts, or you like having these things in your home or making them yourself, or even if you’re just curious about why other people enjoy these things (including any artists you may know) then you’ll be happy with this book.
Since this book is primarily about the visual language, you should know from the start that the visual language has nine parts, called the nine lessons of light. You could call them the nine secrets of visual expression. The following chapters will introduce them to you.
You’ll read simple explanations of what the lessons of light are, and how they interact. To make it easy, there’s nine chapters here, and each chapter looks at one lesson of light.
To show you what I mean, here’s an example: in just a little while we’ll read about color, the fourth lesson of light. In that chapter, we’ll talk about things you already know about color, like how it influences the visual appeal of everything (including, for example, bananas). And we’ll also talk about things you probably don’t know about color, like how colors always strongly interact with other colors that appear nearby. The color chapter (and every chapter) is easy-to-understand, and it’s all fun to read.
More about visual living
and the nine lessons of light
The visual language and the lessons of light are the keys to visual living, which becomes the habit of using your eyes to explore and enjoy the visual characteristics of the world.
This isn’t something you hear much about.
What I mean is, “visual living” isn’t very widely discussed or practiced. People generally use their eyes for more ordinary things, like watching TV, looking for light switches or just taking out the garbage. I suspect, whether you’re at home, at school or at work, you very likely use your eyesight primarily to help carry out common everyday chores. That’s what most people do with their eyes.
Since visual living is not very common, what is usually said about art and design is often pretty superficial.
For example, you might hear a simple opinion about a new exhibit at a local art museum. A friend might say, “I really liked the art show. It was cool!” Or you might hear someone’s evaluation of the dress an actress wears to the Oscars, like, “Oh My God! Dakota Fanning looked soooo beautiful!” Or you maybe you’ll catch a comment about the design of a sports car (“Awesome L-F-A!”) or the layout of a web page, or the design of table flowers at a wedding.
Someone may compliment a scrapbook you created.
But it’s pretty extraordinary to hear anything said out loud about these things that’s actually visually meaningful.
As a case in point, consider texture, another lesson of light. You would probably agree it’s pretty unusual to hear anything like, “I really love the texture in your sister’s bedspread. It reminds me of Pollock and Basquiat.” (Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat [pronounced boss-kee-yot] are American artists who used texture as an element in their paintings. More about them later.)
A comment like that would mean someone is thinking about texture. And about Pollock. And about Basquiat. And relating them. And enjoying it all. Wow! That’s visual living. Usually, people don’t think about how they’re experiencing texture (even though we all continuously evaluate it subconsciously). And most people don’t realize that artists know how texture can impact visual expression, whether it is a real Pollock or Basquiat painting or only a bedspread.
Foreword – Some people are wrong about art
Although this book is about the visual language, let me ask you to start for a moment by thinking about . . . food. Imagine walking into a restaurant. The waiter hands you a menu which, oddly, looks like this:
Appetizer …… Whipped chocolate fudge cake
Main course … Steaming hot coffee
Dessert ………… Braised duck under glass
Beverage ……… Baked potato
No matter how often you eat out in restaurants, you probably have two reactions when you analyze this menu. And I bet they are reactions just about everyone can agree with. The first thing you might notice is that the food items on the right are not opposite the proper menu category on the left. What I mean is, the cake should be the dessert, not the appetizer, and the beverage should be coffee, not a baked potato, etc.
And, if you look a little more at this funny menu, this is the second thing you might realize: None of the four foods listed on the right is food we could even remotely accept in the category it’s listed in on the left.
In other words, if this menu said the appetizer was “baked potato,” (not cake) we could almost believe a strange restaurant is serving potatoes as an appetizer. Potatoes may be a funny appetizer but, hey, they could be an appetizer. But chocolate cake? Never! Never! Never! Chocolate cake can never be anything but dessert.
The same is true about the main course. Coffee is just simply not a main course. A main course is roasted chicken, or grilled steak or flounder, or braised duck, or a pretty substantial salad.
A main course is, after all, the main course.
So whatever it is, it better be main.
My guess is that it would be difficult to find anyone who did not agree with these criticisms of this menu. And that goes to show that people frequently share a common point of view about things, built up over a long period of time (or a long period of eating).
I am talking to you about this menu because there is another set of opinions, similar to these menu opinions, which many people also share. These are simplified opinions about visual expression. You could call them simplified opinions about art, opinions that people have built up over a long period of seeing.
Here’s one of them: Just like the main course at dinner, lots of people believe (but this time by mistake) that there is a main part of visual expression as well. You could call it the main course of visual expression. And they believe (also by mistake) that there are other less important parts of visual expression, parts you might call the “appetizers and desserts” of visual expression.
That is, by mistake, some people think that in art, as on a simple menu, there should be a place for everything, and everything should always be in its place.
People who say there is a “main part” (a main course) of art are speaking about content.
Content is one of the nine lessons of light, the visual characteristics of our world that are made visible by light. When the sun is out, or the lights are on, you can see these features of our world.
But even though many people mistakenly believe content is always the main part of art, and although there is an entire chapter about content later in this book, it’s never too early to start warning you how incredibly unhelpful this one lesson of light is when you try to grow more visually sensitive. For that reason, even though this is only the foreword of the book, let me start warning you about content right here and now.
Let’s begin by imagining a pretty oil painting.
Imagine this painting is reprinted as the cover of a new DVD movie box and it shows a beautiful young girl wearing a blue dress. She is sitting by a lake with mountains in the background.
In this case, the content of the image is the young girl.
The content is “what it’s a picture of.”
Content doesn’t have to be a person. If a group of statues in a garden recreates a battle scene, the content is “war” or, as we will see, depending on your own opinions, it might be “tragedy,” or it might be “senselessness” or “courage.” Likewise, the content of a photograph or a drawing might be a building or it might be a fish.
Content is “what it’s a photograph of,” or “what it’s a statue of,” or “what it’s a drawing of.”
Now think for a moment about color and texture. Color and texture are also lessons of light. They are also important parts of the visual language. In the picture of the girl described above, the color of her dress may be beautiful, and the texture on the surface of the lake (waves and/or ripples, etc.) may be full of energy, but for many people the young girl (as well as the war, the building or the fish in the other examples) remains the “main course.” People will usually think of these things as the most important part of these paintings, statues or photographs.
There are, in fact, billions of works of visual expression in which content is the “main course,” and many of them show young girls or battles or fish. And, in some of these, in order to organize things in their “proper” place, it might even be helpful to say that texture is “the appetizer” and the colors are “the dessert.”
But there is one GIANT difference between the things found on a menu, and how the visual language works. This is where it is common for people to make that mistake. And here it is: Although, in real life, chocolate cake can never be anything except dessert, in the special world of visual living, each of the nine lessons of lightcan be any course in a work of art.
That means that any of the nine lessons of light, including color and texture, can be, shall we say, the main course that is served for dinner on New Years Day.
Any of the lessons of light can be the “main part” of art.
So, in the picture of the young girl, ok, texture may be only the “appetizer,” however in other pictures, texture itself is the “main course.” Coffee can never be the main course for dinner, but scale (another of the lessons of light) can be the main course in the layout for an advertisement or in the design for a skyscraper.
And the same is true for the other lessons of light.
As you read, you will be constantly reminded there are eight parts of the visual language that can replace content as the main source of visual interest in the things you see.
That is to say, the “courses” (the lessons of light) that visually sensitive people “serve” in their work are not organized like the items on a menu. They don’t have a “proper” place in art, like chicken soup has a proper place at the start of dinner on Sunday.
Instead, you could say our visual world is more like a splendid smorgasbord or buffet table, where the most appealing selection within view is the one that catches the eye. And that becomes the main course of what we are seeing.
In the visual world, there are nine equally powerful varieties of visual experience that can create that special magic, and they are called the nine lessons of light.
Introduction
On the following pages, you will learn about one of the most important languages the world has (literally) ever seen. But it’s a language that throughout history perhaps only one person in five has had a meaningful understanding of. Even today I suspect many people, and often silently, wonder what they’re missing.
You may be one of those of curious individuals. If so, great! You’ve come to the right book.
The nine lessons of light
are the sources of visual experience
Every thought in this book leads to one idea: You can begin to learn about the visual language by understanding just nine basic concepts called the lessons of light.
In fact, because they are so basic, from time to time in this book, the lessons of light are called the sources of visual experience.
By reading about them here, you’ll gain the insight needed to genuinely begin seeing. You’ll open your eyes to visual meaning, possibly for the very first time. When you’ve finished reading, you’ll look at your life with a new perspective.
You’ll look at art and design . . . everything from the latest styles in fashions and clothes, to up-to-date paintings hanging in a trendy gallery, to the design of consumer products, to soaring modern skylines, to museums filled with Renaissance masterpieces, and even drawings you find in your local newspaper or the art made by you, your friends or your relatives . . . with a new confidence.
Believe it or not, you’ll finally begin to understand.
What are the
nine lessons of light?
The names of the nine lessons of light (the nine sources of visual experience) appear on the following page. Remember, any understanding you now have of any of these words may be different from what it means as part of the system you will read about.
The nine lessons of light
(the sources of visual experience):
DEPTH
FORM
ANATOMY
COLOR
CONTRAST
CONTENT
TEXTURE
SCALE
SPACE
There is no “order” to these nine words, and they are equals in visual power, and in their ability to anchor visual impact.
One of them, however, namely (again) content, is the most frequent source of visual experience. It is the most common lesson of light. In fact, content (unfortunately) dominates what we see hundreds of times more often than all the others combined.
The only hard part of “Help Yourself to a Blue Banana” is to become familiar with these words. Before you can visually identify and explore these ideas, you will need to review them many times in your mind’s eye.
That basically means you’ll have to memorize this list. But you may find it easy to remember the first letters. When they’re all written together, they make the interesting word DFACCCTSS. Then, if you eliminate the repeating letters, this becomes DFACTS. It may help to think of it like this: DFAC3TS2.
In many ways, these ideas can be studied separately (and some often are). But while reading about all nine together, you will also learn them as a system. As you read, you’ll learn each is always present in everything you see. And you will learn how to understand them together, and perhaps express with them together.
Even if you are a non-artist, only now intrigued by the idea of visual living, you’ll learn the basics of visual understanding. Even if you’re just a beginner, a bystander to art and design, you’ll at least and at last begin to know the secrets artists know.
Artists (and writers)
have a special power
Writers know how to use words to create moods and emotional responses in readers. They can make you feel happy, scared, stupid or angry. In the same way, anyone whose eyesight is normal makes emotional judgments about what they see. This book will show you how art and design make people feel those same emotions, and thousands more. It will teach you about the nine tools we rely on to create those emotional responses in people.
These are the visual tools of both fine artists and business artists (who help business people make money). And for non-artists, the nine lessons of light are the secrets to uncovering visual expression and enjoyment. The secrets to visual living.
The information within this book can lead you to the habit of “seeing” instead of “looking.” Experiencing your sense of vision rather than simply accepting it. After that habit is formed, you will probably want to put away the written lessons here, as you once put away the training wheels on your first bike. As soon as you understand the lessons of light, it’s time to stop reading; instead, it’s time to start seeing, to be free, to start living visually.
I have been thinking about how we experience our vision for about twenty-five satisfying years. The result is the information written here. My wish is that the pleasure I have found as a visual artist and teacher of design comes through and, most of all, that you also find the inspiration to appreciate your eyes more creatively by reading these pages.
Welcome to “Help Yourself to a Blue Banana!”
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- Created January 13, 2011
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| January 15, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
| August 22, 2020 | Edited by ISBNbot2 | normalize ISBN |
| June 5, 2012 | Edited by 69.124.4.31 | Added pix of new dust jacket |
| June 3, 2012 | Edited by VacuumBot | Updated format 'Hard cover' to 'Hardcover' |
| January 13, 2011 | Created by 68.193.139.107 | Added new book. |