T H E C O M P O S I T I O N of T W O - D I M E N S I O N A L S P A C EAnother potential source for helping people in our writing classes design for the Web is writing that analyzes the composition of paintings and other two-dimensional representations. As a counter to the book-design disembodiment I have just described, I consider here a strand of art theory that finds the base for its analysis in our bodies, these fleshy upright moving things; these writings ask how we represent the world to ourselves as we swing ourselves through it, breathing.
In talking about the order imposed by book pages I turned from political order to speak of formal order; I will do similarly here with images. Instead of talking about the effects on us of looking at the numberless images of (for example) thin, light-skinned, lightly-dressed women and men we consume daily in paper and on screens, the writings I examine here discuss what are usually called the formal aspects of two-dimensional surfaces, and the kinds of order we read into and take from them.
