DISSYMMETRICAL EFFECTS

• Hogarth (see lesson on Visual Complexity) wrote on the avoidance of symmetry: he says that painters select oblique points of view so as to represent symmetrical persons or buildings as dissymmetrical: 

• This is part of his aesthetics of 'variety' based on the 'line of beauty', the S double curve, which is symmetrical but changing direction, the two sides alternating as convex and concave, interior and exterior: see chs V and VII: 'the continuity of its variety' ... 'to inclose (tho' but a single line) varied contents'

• Narrative: projection of time on space

When landscapes are described, the narrative line transforms the regularity of space into the dissymmetry of time. The narrative perception of landscape thus adds irregularity.