Istruzioni. Parole e figure per le costruzioni geometriche da Euclide a Sol Lewitt

Abstract

In architectural and geometric drawing treatises, as well as in manuals and textbooks, the description of the graphic procedures through which the operations of ‘construction’ and tracing are carried out is generally composed by weaving a web of different codes, using above all synthetic images and concise explanatory texts. The superposition of the two different modes – the tendentially synchronic one typical of drawing and the diachronic one offered by the sequentiality of verbal language – manages to convey purposes, reasons, conceptual junctures, according to tested and effective methods that allow a precise attitude towards ‘geometric operations’ to filter through.
Without any claim to completeness, limiting the examples to a few cases, in this note the methods of communication of geometric constructions and the way in which their fascinating specificity has been a source of inspiration for some twentieth-century artists are taken into consideration.