Ron Weis: Million Dots

A simple but brilliant artist''s book that illustrates what one million looks like

We live in an age of numbers on a scale beyond conception. There are eight billion human beings on the planet, nine million in New York City alone. Twelve million millionaires inhabit the US, with 43 million living in poverty. Grappling with such scale is daunting and overwhelming.

This is where Million Dots comes in. Its pages, filled over and over with precise geometric arrays of black dots, help us grasp the scale of a number that is both commonplace and unimaginable. But while Million Dots serves as a vital conceptual tool, an intriguing plaything and a welcome gift, it is also a work of art, an embodiment of the view of its creator, American artist Ron Weis (born 1947), that “If you experience something and can’t find a category in which to comfortably place it, it’s probably art.