To my mind, aesthetics are very important. They do matter. Sloppiness, unless intended, is abhorrent and makes my skin crawl. So, on seeing some new road markings today I felt a burning need to ask questions. What is the point of removing the white lines identifying a long thin parking bay only to repaint them a little later slightly thinner? Can only lines of a certain gauge denote a long thin bay? Did the thicker ones imply something else? Furthermore did those thicker lines interrupt our view of the architecture surrounding them? Was the result as intended? Is it more aesthetically pleasing or less? Has the painter studied painting and is she/he making reference to one of Degas' barely erased legs?
While the planners have been busy putting their plans into effect: those of digging up the entire city centre where I work, to replace it with an idiosyncratic mixture of paving slabs and cobble stones (designed to keep fracture clinics busy) - the road department has been busy going off on a tangent to create a study in contrast.
It is interesting how one person's work might have an effect on how another's turns out. By co-incidence my lecture this week was about why it's worth carrying your camera at all times and researching into art and ideas. I began with Josephine Baker and ended on Andy Warhol (apparently A to B is back out in print). With a deviation in between via Iain Sinclair and a strange route to Bill Brandt.
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