Work by Peter Deij
Unwritten law
How do we know about unwritten laws? Have you ever heard anyone recite them before they suddenly became applicable? No. They seem to sometimes pop up out of nowhere. Of course you are already familiar with some of them. The people who break the these laws you endorse usually try to act as though they don’t apply to them because they didn’t know they existed. Easy enough. In much the same way you respond when confronted with an unwritten law that is new to you. You are bound to ask, ‘Show me where that is written in law?’ fair question?
Unspoken truths are like unwritten laws. The kind of truths that we all know about but don’t ever utter. Are these truths too painful to be mentioned out loud; a silent version of the unwritten law?
Golden ratio
Why should we care? Well in the arts you can find more unwritten laws and unspoken truths than anywhere else. Aesthetics are a minefield in their own right. Tomes have been written on composition and the balance and play of lines in Greek architecture and Egyptian tombs. Perhaps unremarkably there appears to be a link with stone.
After the first laws had been conveyed by word of mouth they were not written down but carved in stone. Smart really, because they were obviously difficult to erase or amend or scissor out. Laws were later written on parchment, lately on paper. Why? Well every school child knows. Paper beats rock.