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"Inverted Perspective in Visual Art and Controversy: A History of a
Critical Concept from the Past Century" (In Swedish), 304pp, + 80pp
pictures (Uppsala University, 2001)
Avhandlingen på svenska i fulltext htmlfil 1 Mb SUMMARY
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Throughout the past century the concept of an inverted perspective
understood as a stylistic trait in Late Classical, Byzantine and
Medieval art has been at the centre of a controversy. The dissertation
aims at giving a favourable presentation of "inverted perspective" as a
critical concept with a fairly well-defined frame of reference,
although efforts to make such a definition a reductionist, fixed
meaning tied to a stable system of geometrical optics will be regarded
as unnecessary. Instead, the concept with its various, diverging
meanings is understood as a vehicle, which might be sharpened and
defined through its specific use in the process of interpreting a work
of art. (picture 4d)
The concept is articulated through close reading and critical
dialogue with actual users of the concept, or more or less related
concepts. In the first part, the roots of a controversy are found in
the conflict between critical assessments of spatial values in
Byzantine and Medieval art, and an incorrect idea of evolution in art
and visual perception. Secondly, rhetorical uses of perspective devices
are contrasted with perspective analysis based on the central
projection through a plane. Here, a genuine conflict is located, as the
assessment of an inverted perspective element tends to make perspective
theory too complex to be handled in simple models, thereby weakening
its explanative power. The third part discusses various ways of
understanding perspective and inverted perspective as mediating between
pictorial art and perception. The usefulness of the concept of an
inverted perspective is demonstrated through a number of critical
discussions of paintings from different epochs and countries. Finally,
this constitutes the origin of the concept in a prevailing basic
operation of perspective analysis, reasonably termed "inverted
perspective".
The idea of interpreting the representation of pictorial space
in Byzantine and Medieval art as a reversed variant of perspective had
several different sources. The terms "inverted" or "reversed
perspective" were used by two art historians at the turn of the
nineteenth century as expressions to name deviance from perspective as
based on central projection through a plane. In France, Gabriel Millet
(1899) focused on a central feature of inverted perspective, noticing
architecture in Medieval mosaics set in a bird's eye view which was
contradicted by the fact that the inclination of receding lines
increased with growing height, instead of fading in accordance with
perspective rules. (picture 16a)
In Russia, Dmitry V. Ainalov (1900) used 'reversed perspective' as a
name for a stylistic trait connecting Russian Orthodox icon painting
with the Early Christian tradition, and understood it as resulting from
mistakes caused by the artists' inability to make correct
foreshortening. (picture 1c)
Wulff, in his seminal essay from 1907, elaborated on these observations
relating them to Alois Riegl's writing on style, and the comments of
Frans Wickhoff, an editor of Wiener Genesis in 1896. He set out to find
a psychological cause for the occurrence of reversed perspective, thus
making it a reasonable solution to an artistic problem and used the
concept "empathy", as it was coined by Theodor Lipps in 1903. In Wiener
Genesis, Joseph Interpreting the Dream of Pharaoh shows a scene
where foreshortening of figures as well as the receding lines in the
footstool seem to be functions of their distance to positions in the
background of the depicted scene, and not, as in Renaissance
perspective, depending on the distance from the eye of an external
viewer. (picture 5f) As when
reading we might experience such a scene through the eyes of the hero.
In a book on children's art in 1927, Wulff returned to the questions
raised. Empathy is not a result of reflection, but an aesthetic
primitive reaction prior to the understanding of something as an
object. Thus children, when drawing a barrel, regularly project their
"haptic" feeling to the object seen, giving it an horizontal standing
line, which, combined with the visual impression of its upper part,
results in a reversed perspective. (picture 7c)
Children also explicitly project themselves into the depicted scene
when they explain divergence of receding lines saying: 'But you see,
I'm on that street looking out of the picture.'(picture 7f)
In 1908, the philosopher of perception, Wilhelm Wundt, discussed a ring
figure which might be seen either in inverted perspective or in
perspective (picture 13f), and in the composition of Raphalel's painting The Vision of Hezekia, discussed by Wulff, he saw these two options combined. (picture 4c)
The clouds in heaven are presented as seen from below, indicating the
point of view of the earthly observer, but at the same time they
constitute a ground plane, on which the heavenly group is abiding. The same year, Curt Glaser found reversed perspective in
Japanese painting. A landscape from the fourteenth century, where the
trees in the middle ground are represented bigger than those in the
foreground, was his strongest case. (picture 12a)
Glaser mistook parallel projection, where parallel receding lines are
depicted without optical diminution as parallels, for reversed
perspective, and later denounced the relevance of perspective to the
analysis of East-Asian painting. (picture 12c)
There are examples of reversed linear perspective in East-Asian art,
although most of them are in a mixture with normal perspective, or
parallel projection. George Rowley attempted giving a non-perspective
explanation to the effect of inverted perspective in Chinese landscape
painting in his essay from 1945, but Lars Berglund recently named the
Chinese procedure inverted perspective. In 1996, Wu Hung gave an
argument for the existence of a binary imagery, where vision is
inverted between elements in the same picture, flowering in the sixth
century together with the 'birth of pictorial space' in China. Gregor
Paulsson (1917-19) argued that reversed perspective in close proximity
to the object may be truer to the visual experience than its ordinary
counterpart, which is valid only in the middle ground of a scenery. In
Medieval European art he found that space could be created by the
convergence of receding lines away from the central figure of the scene
depicted, thus leaving the background in ordinary perspective and only
the foreground in reversed perspective. Spatial relations between
figures in the scenery of a picture may be enhanced by optical
diminution in normal or reversed perspective. The use of reversed
perspective presupposes a level of abstraction that couldn't be reached
in those primitive cultures where it occurred in pictures, Karl
Doehlemann held in 1910. His argument was not fully consistent, nor
proven correct, but is widely quoted in literature on perspective.
Wladimir de Grüneisen (1911) understood reversed perspective in
Hellenistic and Roman art of the Late Classical period as references to
cartographic convention, as stylistic quotations, intended archaism,
and provincialism, or even as abstract symbolism. In his essay The Perspective as Symbolic Form,
Erwin Panofsky (1925) contrasted Hellenistic perspective with Oriental
influences in Late Antiquity resulting in an emphasis on the flat
surface of the picture. His categorical rejection of inverted
perspective with reference to Doehlemann was unfortunate, as the latter
denied the existence of perspective in art prior to the Renaissance,
but it was further based on the arguments by de Grüneisen and Hans
Berstl's essay from 1920 on pictorial space in Early Christian art. The positioning of cubical groups in three-quarter profile,
turned towards a common central vertical outside the picture plane,
might cause the effect of protruding, Berstl observed. But he held that
they were constructed in ordinary perspective with naturalistic
occlusion and placed on an unending flat surface and observed neither
perspective, nor relations due to occlusion, between the groups. A
sleeping figure in Pharaoh's Dream (from Wiener Genesis) is represented in front of an architectural device, which might be understood as a corner, either protruding, or concave. (picture 5f)
To focus on a primitive disregard for natural occlusion, Berstl had to
disregard the inverted recession of lines in the footstool,
understanding the sleeper to be lying under, instead of in front of, a
canopy, thus making the fact that the pillars are occluded by the bed a
sign of a primitive fear for occlusions. In fact, the twin scenes of Pharaoh's Dream and Joseph's Interpretation,
are set firmly on a ground-plane, defined by the furniture and the
positions of feet. Space is further defined by occlusion between parts
of different cubical groups. The heads of two priests cut over a tiny
portion of the footstool of Pharaoh, thus creating a spatial contrast
enhanced by the diminution of the figures in the foreground. Berst's
incorrect interpretation was almost exactly repeated by Panofsky in The Perspective as Symbolic Form.
Nevertheless, Panofsky's followers, addressing the field of reversed
perspective reproduce his dependence on Doehlemann et al., and talk
about Medieval perspective like Ernst Gombrich as a primitive
conceptual image enlarging things in accordance with their importance.
Thus, Mirjam Shild Bunim (1940) supposed that 'reversed perspective'
could be replaced by the term 'hierarchic scaling'. Bunim found in the
development of Medieval European art a process of flattening out, and
the decline of pictorial space. Every feature of a picture, which could
be understood in terms of reversed perspective was referred to as
optical shortcomings.
André Grabar (1945), on the contrary, related the perspective
solutions sought in Late Antiquity to the philosophy of Plotinus.
Reversed perspective based on empathy was here related to a philosophy,
where also St. Augustine found principles for Christian aesthetics. In
the 1950s, P A Michelis denied that perspective played any decisive
role in the forming of Christian art, which he instead described as
striving for the sublime away from material spatiality in opposition to
Otto Demus, who elaborated on a negative perspective, related to
optical corrections. (picture 3f) (picture 3e)
Pictures in vaults were distorted to make an impression on the beholder
of being faced by the depicted figure. Relationships between figures in
a scene could be combined with a frontal view of the actors by placing
them on facing sides of a vault, the space of the picture being the
actual room of the church. A possibility of experiencing the pictorial
space protruding from the surface of the wall opened here, and was
described as an actual impression by Wolfgang Schöne (1954) who gazed
at the architectural motives in the lower church of St. Francis in
Assisi. (picture 21e)
John White, who denounced inverted perspective as "a mythical
monster", on the contrary saw the same motives as surface compositions.
In this case the author ignored his own stated principle to let the
convergence of lines, which in reality would be parallel, be the
starting point of perspective analysis. (picture 7g)
Luigi Stefanini's 1956 presentation of inverted perspective was based
on an extensive list of examples in Italian art ranging from Late
Antiquity to Early Renaissance. He set out to find a deeper dependence
on philosophy in aesthetics. According to Stefanini, the innocent mind
regards the picture not as imprinted on the retina, but as inscribed in
the soul. Vision thus means depicting the soul projected on a screen.
Decio Gioseffi (1957) sought for a reconciliation of optics and
composition. Between two scenes set in perspective and placed in
sequence on the same picture-plane, an intermediate zone might occur
where perspective relations are inverse - the unintentional result of
ancient pigeon hole perspective. In Medieval art this evolved to an
overall composition in inverted perspective, with units in oblique
projection set symmetrically and converging. (picture 21e)
In Byzantine Aesthetics , Gervase Mathew (1960) summed up these
discussions understanding reversed perspective as grounded on optical
considerations and as protruding towards the beholder, but he also
stated that geometric composition was an essential part of Byzantine
art.
The ancient mosaicists adapted perspective to the fact that the
beholder is moving, St Pavel Florenskij held. Inverse perspective in
Russian icons often combines with perfection, which implies that the
optical oddities should be understood as advanced rhetorical or optical
devices related to the ancient tradition. (picture 15a)
His essay on inverted perspective was written in 1920, but not
published until 1967. In the 1920s, Florenskij gave lectures on
spatiality in the art and a viewpoint-analysis was developed by his
pupil Lev F. Shegin, who analysed space in the Russian icon as a result
of an object-related exposition of the pictorial content. In the icon,
several viewpoints are presented and combined in different ways. The
fusion of viewpoints changes pictorial space, as well as the apparent
relations between objects in this space. (picture 34a)
Shegin offered a possibility to decode the spatial layout of the scene
by dissolving it into a number of visual acts, combined according to
changing conventions. In several books from the 1970s, Boris Uspenskij
applied a semiotic perspective to the Russian religious controversy
over Orthodox-reversed contra modern-normal perspective. He showed that
a change from object-centred vision to subjective perspective had an
impact on the liturgy, as the left and right sides of the church were
simultaneously reversed. These considerations might be related to an
example from the Italian Renaissance: Taddeo Gaddi depicted the Last
Supper placing Judas in front of the table in smaller scale to the
right side of Christ (picture 19c),
and Andrea Castagno, using the same composition in an illusionist
perspective style, placed Judas to the left, scaling him up a little. (picture 19d)
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