Hi all,
Although this is not strictly a typography question, it occurred to me that someone on TypeDrawers might be able to help.
I am looking for a source for something that I remember reading about years ago. It is a teaching from the philosophy of, I believe, Chinese calligraphy, and states essentially that the most beautiful, unimpeachable composition is a blank white page. Writing on a piece of paper is thus an act of cruelty or mutilation because it ruins the perfection of the blank page. A written text must therefore reach a very high threshold of beauty or importance to outweigh the damage inflicted on the paper.
This is my own summary, and likely not very accurate. I am not sure where I came across this sentiment. It may have been in a Bringhurst book, though I haven't been able to find it again.
I greatly appreciate anything that anyone can do to point me in the right direction.
Josh
1
Comments
And perhaps parallel to something I've opined: using a font degrades it, because no usage could ever fully express the font's potential. (But we must use it nonetheless, because that's why it exists.)
To be fair, there's a lot of expression in a single horizontal stroke.