Pit House Revival: An Exercise in Composition

Abstract

Composition is an approach to "art through structure" (Dow, 1997). Following Arthur Wesley Dow's work, Composition 1997, this thesis consists of a series of photographic and architectural exercises, demonstrating each of Dow's elements and principles of composition. Though Dow does not define his work as theory nor go to any length to establish one, he strongly advocates for training in the fundamentals of composition. Oneness in art is the study of synthetically related spaces across an array of disciplines. This is the main idea behind what this work has come to call Dow's Theory of Oneness. That composition as a structural approach to the space-arts can act as a Rosetta stone, giving artists a broad spectrum of discipline, being "at once architects, sculptors, decorators and picture-painters" (Dow, 1997).