Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

Robert Irwin is the Los Angeles artist whose work has been stripped down to its pure essence: lines, dots, discs, and light. The concept of progressive reduction is fascinating, but I find the reading to be hard to grasp. For one, I don’t know anything about the artist and his art before reading the book. For two, the author, Lawrence Weschler, keeps the narration very conversational. Readers get to hear the story from Irwin’s own voice, but the flow isn’t so smooth.

As for the book design, Sandy Drooker has done an excellent job of combining Adobe Garamond text with Univers display. These two classic typefaces make the reading experience pleasurable. I’ll definitely revisit the book in the future when I learn a bit more about Irwin’s work.