Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Michael Kubovy
ii
4 Brunelleschi’s peepshow 31
8 Marginal distortions 73
iii
iv CONTENTS
List of Figures
v
vi LIST OF FIGURES
4.2 Fra Andrea Pozzo, St. Ignatius Being Received into Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.3 Mantegna, ceiling fresco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.4 Peruzzi’s Salla delle Prospettive seen from center of room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.5 Peruzzi’s Salla delle Prospettive seen from center of projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.6 Focus and depth of field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.7 Experimental apparatus for Smith and Smith’s experiment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
10.1 Definitions of two elementary camera movements: pan and tilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
10.2 The moving room of Lee and Aronson (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.3 Predictions for speed of “reading” letters traced on the head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
10.4 The Parthenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
10.5 Horizontal curvature of Parthenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
viii LIST OF FIGURES
ix
x LIST OF TABLES
List of Boxes
xi
xii LIST OF TABLES
Chapter 11
107
108 CHAPTER 11. PERSPECTIVE & THE EVOLUTION OF ART
denial that linear perspective has a catholic or not, thus became the symbolic form of
or “ultimate” veracity. They are especially the Italian Renaissance because it reflected
put off by Panofsky’s reference to perspec- the general world view of the Italian people
tive as a “symbolic form,” which is to say, at this particular moment in history. (1975,
a mere convention. . . Unfortunately, Panof- pp. 156, 157–8)
sky never explained definitively just what
he meant by the phrase “symbolic form.” As Edgerton so well explains, Panofsky’s position
However, he certainly has in mind a more was not blithely relativistic: It is more important to
subtle meaning than a “system of conven- understand why the artists of the Renaissance were
tions [like]1 versification in poetry.” [This interested in perspective than to determine whether
is how Pirenne summarized Panofsky’s the- it is the “correct” method of representation. In this
ory.] Indeed, Professor Pirenne and other book, I have attempted to convey the variety as well
scientist critics misunderstand the ingenu- as subtlety of the reasons why Renaissance artists
ity of Panofsky’s approach as much as they were interested in perspective. I hope I have per-
find Panofsky himself misunderstood classi- suaded the reader that “truth” was not at stake
cal optics and modern perceptual psychol- here. To be sure, perspective was a system that
ogy. (1975, pp. 153–5) enabled artists to represent space according to ge-
ometric rules. Mainly, however, it was a framework
Edgerton proceeds to show how Panofsky’s notion within which originality without arbitrariness2 could
of symbolic form is inspired by Ernst Cassirer’s Kan- be achieved.
tian philosophy, which he capsulates as follows: Nelson Goodman took the issue a step further by
marshaling all his philosophical arguments in support
The symbols man uses to communicate of the relativistic conception of perspective. Good-
ideas about the objective world have an au- man’s sustained analysis of the notions of represen-
tonomy all their own. Indeed, the human tation, realism, and resemblance is also an impas-
mind systematizes these symbols into struc- sioned defense of the argument that perspective is
tures that develop quite independently of not an absolute standard of fidelity, that it is but
whatever order might exist in the natural one of many methods of representation. According to
world to begin with. . . Goodman, depictions are analogous to descriptions,
The real thrust of [Panofsky’s] essay was and descriptions need not resemble the things they
not to prove that the ancients believed the describe. Indeed, sometimes they cannot resemble
visual world was curved or that Renaissance the thing they are describing because that thing sim-
perspective was a mere artistic convention, ply doesn’t exist (e.g., a unicorn). Why then do we
but that each historical period in West- think that a picture should resemble the thing it rep-
ern civilization had its own special “perspec- resents? Goodman answers that conventions of rep-
tive,” a particular symbolic form reflecting resentation are responsible for this misapprehension.
a particular Weltanschauung. Thus linear From the correct observation that a picture usually
perspective was the peculiar answer of the resembles other pictures of the same kind of thing,
Renaissance period to the problem of repre- we tend to infer that a picture resembles the kind of
senting space. . . thing it represents. The key argument is here: Good-
In the 15th century, there emerged man asks himself whether
mathematically ordered “systematic space,”
infinite, homogeneous, and isotropic, mak- the most realistic picture is the one that pro-
ing possible the advent of linear perspec- vides the greatest amount of pertinent infor-
tive. . . Linear perspective, whether “truth” mation. But this hypothesis can be quickly
1 Edgerton’s interpolation. 2 The term is Wimsatt’s (1968 p. 80).
109
and completely refuted. Consider a realis- “correct” representation of space in Renaissance art.
tic picture, painted in ordinary perspective We ham also seen that Goodman’s view, on the other
and normal color, and a second picture just hand, is the most radical position on this matter that
like the first except that the perspective is one can take precisely because it makes the “correct-
reversed and each color is replaced by its ness” of perspective into a central issue, thereby im-
complementary. The second picture, appro- poverishing our understanding of perspective in Re-
priately interpreted, yields exactly the same naissance art rather than enriching it. We turn now
information as the first. . . . The alert abso- to a third view, which shares some of the features
lutist will argue that for the second picture of Goodman’s approach. Suzi Gablik, in her book
but not the first we need a key. Rather, the Progress in Art, has presented a cultural analog of
difference is that for the first the key is al- the classical embryological law, “ontogeny recapitu-
ready at hand. For proper reading of the lates phylogeny,” according to which an embryo, in
second picture, we have to discover rules of the course of its maturation, goes through stages dur-
interpretation and apply them deliberately. ing which it takes on the appearances of its evolu-
Reading of the first is by virtually automatic tionary ancestors. Gablik has proposed a similar law
habit; practice has rendered the symbols so for the evolution of art, which I call “sophogeny re-
transparent that we arc not aware of any ef- capitulates ontogeny,” namely, that the evolution of
fort, of any alternatives, or of making any cultural wisdom parallels the development of the in-
interpretation or all. (1976, pp. 35–6) dividual. I will argue that Gablik, to make her point,
emphasizes only one of the goals of Renaissance per-
I believe that I have provided us with the tools to spective — the representation of objects in space —
refute Goodman’s radical relativism.3 I have shown and that she implies that art cannot achieve this goal
that perspective is not a thoroughgoing, arbitrary ap- without being rigid and inflexible, rule-bound and
plication of the geometric system of central projec- lacking in true conceptual autonomy.
tion. Rather, it is a geometric system tempered by Gablik’s point of departure is the theory of cogni-
what perception can or cannot do. It has evolved tive development of Jean Piaget, the celebrated Swiss
into a system adapted to the capabilities of our per- psychologist. Piaget proposed that it is possible to
ceptual system. To respond, Goodman would have to discover milestones in the development of thinking,
claim that what perception can do depends on what perception, problem solving, and all the other cog-
it learned to do, and that there is no limit to what nitive abilities. He distinguished three major stages
perception can learn. But that argument is false. in cognitive development. In the preoperational stage
There are clear limits to the extent of perceptual rear- (which ends at about 5 years of age), children have a
rangement (induced by wearing prisms, mirrors, and very poor grasp of causality and reversibility. For
other devices that modify the form of the optical in- instance, if you pour a liquid from a tall, narrow
formation reaching our eyes) to which human beings glass to fill a squat, short one of equal capacity, re-
can adapt. We cannot arbitrarily change the way we fill the tall glass with liquid, and then ask a preop-
perceive optical information, nor can we arbitrarily erational child which glass contains more liquid, the
change our motor responses to it, regardless of the child will say that the taller glass contains more. The
amount of time or effort we might invest in doing so child does not understand the concepts of conserva-
(Welch, 1978, pp. 277–9). tion (the amount of fluid) and of compensation (the
We have seen that Panofsky’s view on the conven- trade-off of height for area of the cross section), which
tionality of perspective may not have been as extreme are physical expressions of the formal concept of re-
as some have interpreted it to be because it does not versibility. In the concrete-operational stage (which
exaggerate the importance of the role played by the runs to about the age of 10), children understand
3 See also Gombrich’s (1982) broader attack on Goodman’s the reversibility underlying certain physical opera-
conventionalistic position. tions but are unable to deal with the logical con-
110 CHAPTER 11. PERSPECTIVE & THE EVOLUTION OF ART
cepts that are their abstract representation. Finally, infinite number of possibilities and positions
in the formal-operational stage, children can under- which can be taken. (1976, pp. 44–5)
stand abstract logical and mathematical structures
that underly reality.
At this point, we should let Gablik to speak for
herself:
Table 11.1: Stages of cognitive development and megaperiods of art history. (Source: Gablik, 1976, p. 43.)
Figure 11.4: Kasimir Malevich: Left: Suprematist Elements: Squares (1915). Right: Suprematist Element:
Circle (1913). Pencil. Sheet: 18-1/2 × 14-3/8”. Composition: 11-1/2 × 11-1/8”. Collection, The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
sense this immutability of things: a world the visible world could be reduced to math-
is portrayed in which chance and indeter- ematical order by the principles of perspec-
minacy play no part. From this vantage tive and solid geometry. (1976, p. 70)
point, we can sec how a totally mathema-
tized philosophy of nature was the dominant These views stress the rigidity, the rationality, and
influence on the course of Western painting, the immutability of the laws of perspective. Un-
and how these processes of mathematics of- doubtedly, there is some truth in Gablik’s portrait
fer themselves as a bridge from one stage in of an era fascinated by geometry. But fascination
the development of art to the next. is not fetishism. During the Renaissance, geometry
was always subordinate to perception: I have shown
In the Renaissance, geometry was truth how the geometry of central projection was routinely
and all nature was a vast geometrical sys- violated to counteract its perceptually unacceptable
tem. (The book of nature, Galileo wrote, effects. We have seen that perspective was far from
is written in geometrical characters.) Per- being a single, closed, logical system that was re-
spective images were based on observation, peated over and over. Gablik has produced a cari-
but they were rationalized and structured cature of Renaissance art, which even with regard to
by mathematics. For Alberti in 1435, the its use of perspective was far from being rigid and
first requirement of a painter was to know uncompromising. To be sure, perspective was used
geometry; and Piero, in De Prospettiva Pin- for a representational purpose, and in that respect
gendi, virtually identified painting with per- it remained tied to the concrete objects it served to
spective, writing three treatises to show how represent. But it also served to explore other aspects
113
Figure 11.5: Piero della Francesca (attrib. doubtful), Perspective of an Ideal City (ca. 1470). Panel. Galleria
Nazionale delle Marche, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino.
Figure 11.6: Gentile Bellini, Procession of the Relic of the True Cross (1496). Canvas. Accademia, Venice.
114 CHAPTER 11. PERSPECTIVE & THE EVOLUTION OF ART
as “symbolic form.”