The Supremacy of Line, 1.
by Prof. Michael Leyton. Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University
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Anyone who knows my paintings, my architectural designs, my musical compositions, and my mathematical theorems on shape, knows my obsession with line - how emotional expressiveness changes along a line, how tension can vary between lines, and what happens when lines cross. For example, in my architectural projects, my work has been to decompose the conventional phenomenon of a building mass into a complex system of lines; and my musical compositions, particularly my piano sonatas and string quartets, are formed out of cross-tensions within systems of lines rather than simplistic counterpoint. In 1992 I began a long series of paintings studying the enormous range of expressiveness that can be achieved with lines. It is convenient to decompose the entire series into 3 successive series, which correspond to successive advances I made in the invention of techniques for integrating line. I will discuss the 3 phases in turn. The first series, called The Supremacy of Line is named after one of its culminating paintings - that shown below. On the next page, I will start to look at some earlier paintings that lead up to this one. The canvases are all fairly large, 5' by 4' gallery canvases on heavy stretcher bars, and therefore the reader should note that the apparent bending of the canvas edge in these images is due to the .jpeg image compression used in the digital photography. This bending does not exist on the original canvases. 
Email address: MLeyton@msn.com
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