Most theories try to
explain this constellation of forces relative to the education, more precisely
the habits of literacy. (This should therefore indicate that the eastern
cultures are wielding an inverted set of meanings for left and right, which
hasn't quite been believably proven at all.)
It is my belief that differentiation
between these sides is founded on some physiological, or at least biological
reasons. No need to call upon the division of human brain to rational and
intuitive quite yet. Still, I can clearly recall some impressions from
as far as early childhood that have witnessed to nicely defined attributes
of two sides. The memory of even the first and most innocent reactions
to the concepts of sides always remembers the right as something dark,
solid and earthly, and the left as light, spiritual, and so much closer
that the distance was always more possible with the right, which could
then be - handled. A bit of encouragement to this thinking could be found
in the linguistic observation of the words for right - always sinesthetically
dark and solid sounding, while the words for left have the opposite flavor
- light and airy, impossible to catch, like a spirit itself.
As far as
attention to the literacy is concerned, I'd rather try to argue that westerners
therefore write "from inside out" and easterners " from the outside inwards"
- and this could be found in accord with the differences between western
and eastern thought itself. Seemingly, these contrary orientations are
bound to introduce a nightmare of ambivalent inputs. However, the opposite
information is interpreted by equally opposite system (as long as images
stay within the area of origin...), so the end result is the same - mostly
agreeing on differentiation between the directions of inward and
outward.
So, even though a very "inductive" (as opposed to "deductive" of the west)
character, or the particular compositional organization can lead
the currents inside the frame to flow from right to left, a westerner's
eye will still, in the vast majority of practical cases "read an image
from left to right" - recognize a constant flow of forces in that direction.
That means that every object aiming left will look as if resisting something,
while the one aiming right will let itself go with the flow of the whole.
Frequent example can be seen in the image of the leaning square (pict.
a) and b)): the square leaning right appears to be "blown away".
Possibly the best example we can found in car ads: to figure out the
car company's attitude, no need to go further than the direction the vehicle
is pointed. Almost all airlines' logos have planes going toward the right,
since nobody is silly enough to fly "upwind". And probably the most famous
is question of the side Madonna holds the little Jesus on. Picture definitely
unfolds from left to right - and this doesn't necessarily indicate the
path of our eye. This old-time favorite composition analysis tool is just
an unexistent materialization of the general structure of image,
construction built by the all forces of the composition.
Of course, the influence of "intuitive" and "rational" side of image
doesn't stop at determining the general flow direction. There is a very
efficient mapping at stake here, down to the nuances of every point in
between of the two extremes, the left and right edge. Mapping sometimes
so pronounced, that we can pull the line down the center, clear as a border
between night and day.
Just as we could check the effect of up - down orientation by turning
the image (and so the all of our accompanying illustrations) upside down,
we can also view the same pictures using the mirror, or perhaps thru the
paper against the light. And all this so that it will never again be the
same weather we want to flop an image just for the sake of the layout,
or not. |