College Art Association

Knowledge of Space Perception and the Portrayal of Depth in Painting Author(s): Jonas S.
Friedenwald Source: College Art Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Winter, 1955), pp. 96-112 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/772934 . Accessed: 14/02/2014 08:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College Art Journal.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 150.164.176.165 on Fri, 14 Feb 2014 08:03:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
OF SPACEPERCEPTION KNOWLEDGE AND THEPORTRAYAL OF DEPTH IN PAINTING

Jonas S. Friedenwald, M.D.
When your Committee did me the honor of inviting me to give the Brod6l Lectureit occurredto me that a suitabletopic for discussionwould be one that lay somehow at the joint boundarybetween your field and my own. Neither you nor I can claim full expertnessat that boundary,but, perhaps together we can discover some logical structure,some intriguing vistas. The slow growth of scientificknowledgeregardingspaceperceptionhas in the past exerted profound influenceupon the graphicarts, and artistshave from time to time contributedboth to the scienceand to the problemswhich the science has been requiredto elucidate.From the viewpointof visual sciencethe application of its discoveriesin the plastic arts representsa field of applied technology. To the artist this technology is one of the several foundationsupon which he constructshis visions of harmony.I believe that it is singularly appropriateto associatean inquiry into this technologic fundament of the graphic arts with the name of my old friend, Max BrodOl,for he was constantly searchingfor new modes of portrayalof space, volume, and texture.
MONOCULAR PERSPECTIVE
Let me begin with the familiarproblemsof perspectiveand illustratefor how the advancesin optical and visual science influencedthe developyou ment of the technologyof perspectivedrawing in the early Renaissance. The fundamentaloptical fact on which the theory of perspectiveis based consists in the rectilinearpropagationof light. From the objectsof nature,bundlesof rays-straight lines-reach our eye. Viewing these objects, but keeping our eye in a fixed position, we can imagine a pane of glass betweenourselvesand the objects. If we would trace on the glass the outlines of the objects which we see throughthe glass we would obtaina perspectivedrawingof the objects. Leonardosuggested such tracingon glass as an exercise for the beginnerand Diirer developed an ingenious device with the aid of which the student can learn to draw on paper or canvas. (Fig. 1)
This paper was read as the Brod0l lecture at the meeting of the Association of Medical Illustrators and published in the Journal of the Association of Medical Illustrators, No. 6, 1954, whose editor has generously granted us permission to reprint it. Dr. Friedenwald is on the staff of the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It will be immediately apparent to CAJ readers that he is also well in the informed representation of space in painting.
CAJ XV 2 96
L fd
~-~i: P ~~r(F~5~ C_;
?r -S
?-L-
c~iF1!; rl rY
ce
II'F)~n~-~?t~LS-~:~~
~
?~~7~C~
I ~11
il/,/-d.~,' 'YYZ-~ii~l~a\~-~6~
ILC~iliC~F~??CPS?_BB~~9~1~~
Fig. 1. DiJrer:Device for Drawing in Perspective
Now, as a matter of fact, Archimedesknew that light rays travelled in straight lines, and consequentlyGreco-Romanartistsknew how to draw in approximateperspective from a fixed model. So long as the artist draws to trace directly from naturehe needs no elaborategeometricalconstructions views in perspective.But for compositionalreasons, fantasy, or illustration, the artist needs at times to put togetherobjects in his picture space that are not together in his direct view. When he tries to put together such objectsof fantasyor memory,or even to combine sketchesmade from naturebut drawn from different points of view, he gets into trouble. Houses look awry, distances don't match, trees float in the air, figures of man and beast appear awkwardly defying the laws of gravity. All of this is so deeply in your bones and fingersthat I need not elaborate. You know, too, that after much practice,the skillful draftsmancan learn to trust his eye as to the rightness of his drawing. But put yourself in the position of the artistwho has never seen a more accurate perspectivedrawing than his own sketchesfrom nature,who has never had a teacherwho with a few deft strokesbroughtthe floating cow firmlydown onto the pasture.You might know vaguely that there was something the matterwith your drawing but would be hard put to decide what was wrong. Was it the cow or the pasture that was out of drawing? Was the trouble with your draftsmanship or with your space composition?Sometimes,the better the draftsmanship the worse the spacecomposition! There are frescos that have been unearthedin Herculaneum,sarcophagi from the Hellenistic period in Egypt, that show the struggles of the GrecoRoman artistswith these difficulties.They could draw from models figuresof to those of Renaissance grace and balancecomparable art, but when they tried to compose their drawings,things got out of line. With the decayof the RomanEmpire,and with the shift from pagan to Christianworship we find the emergenceof Byzantineart-an art radically differentfrom that of the Greco-Roman period.The Byzantines presenthuman
97 Friedenwald: Space Perception
forms in austere, rigid, awkward, or impossible poses. Groups of human forms are composed without foreshortening,without relation to the solid geometry of their environment.Expertson Byzantineart are convincedthat this change in style was not due to ignoranceon the part of the Byzantine artist of the techniqueof his predecessors. The change in style these experts attributeto the religious dedicationof the Byzantineartist. Figures are distorted and formalizedto add to their religious emotive content. These arguments are buttressedby the obvious fact that the immediateenvironmentof the Byzantineartistmust have been rich with relics of the Greco-Roman past, far richerthan the scantyremainsunearthedby modernarchaeologists. Moreover one encountersoccasionallyin the picturesof the Byzantinesan animal form or tree or flower drawnwith easy grace and exact perspective. For the purposesof our present discussionI can translatethe statement of these experts by saying that, on accountof the religious purpose of their art, they drew from fantasy,not from life, and lacking knowledge of the science of perspectivetheir fantasiesdefied gravityand space.This is no disparagement by Byzantineart as art. Free from the restrictionsimposed by the direct view of nature, they could compose their pictures in harmoniousflat patterns if not in spatial depth, and the emotive quality of their art vastly surpassesthat of the later Greco-Roman period.No doubtthe latterrepresents an epoch of artisticdecadence.We do not have any picturesremainingfrom the Pericleanperiod of the Greeks,and the sculptureof the late Greco-Romans lacksthe harmonyand graceof the Golden Age. It would take more time and erudition than I command to trace the course of art from the Byzantinethroughthe Middle Ages, but in the art of the Italian mediaevalpainters,in the illuminationof mediaevalmanuscripts, we find an almost complete loss of naturalisticpainting. Not only human forms but animals, trees, and landscapesare drawn from fantasy. Panofsky has suggested that the changes in pictorial space from the ancients to the Renaissanceartists parallels a change in the concept of infinity. There is, I between this analysisand the one that I am offering believe, no contradiction for our knowledge of space perceptiondependson our philosophicalconceptions of the nature of space, and our philosophical conceptions likewise depend on our scientificknowledge. The two are inextricablylinked. The science of the ancientshad been partiallylost to MediaevalEurope. It was preserved in the Arab countries, but when Mohammedanism overthrew Byzantiuma new religiousrestriction was imposedon the artistto make no images-and Mohammedanart contented itself with decorativedesign. The optical science of the ancientswas compiled by the great Alhazen about 1000 A.D. It was translatedinto Latinby Vitellio about 1300. The availability of this work to the small literateworld of the time sounded the death knell of the Mediaevalstyle of painting.
CAJ XV 2 98
With the recoveryof the optical scienceof the ancients,with the knowledge that light rays pass in straight lines from the object to the eye of the beholder, the techniqueof direct copy of naturewas soon re-invented.However, since painting was still suffusedwith the demandsof religious tradition and of design in flat pattern,the intrusionof naturalismdevelopedslowly in the 14th century.Moreover,these religious and decorativetraditionsrequired was much that the painting should be composedin fantasy.This requirement Greco-Roman more severethan it had been in the late and exuberant age. The need for geometric knowledge with which to compose in fantasy a realistic picturebecamemore and more exigent. The problem to be solved is largely geometrical,and even the Middle Ages commandedthe necessarymathematicalknowledge. However, artistic talent and geometricalknowledge are rarelycombinedin the same individual. The solution of the geometricalproblemcame slowly and piece-meal.Modern art expertscan argue with great eruditionas to whethera given painting was producedin 1400 or 1450 on the basis of the knowledgeof perspectivewhich it reveals.But the natureof the problemsto be confronteddictatesthe choice of careerto eager youth, and at the height of the Renaissance men who combined scientificacumenwith artistictalent found it possible to exerciseto the full their native endowments.Thus Leonardoand Diirer contributedto the geometricalscience of perspective.The geometricalrules were developed by Uccello, Brunellesco,Masaccio,and Alberti, who were geometers as well as text on perspectivewas written by Alberti in artists. The first comprehensive treatise and several generationsof further 1435. It is a tough mathematical contributionswere required to reduce this complex theory to easy practical rules of thumb. From basic optical theory throughgeometricaltechnologyto full applicationand the developmentof easy rules to be applied by rote by an unmathematical artist requiredalmost 200 years. Once the geometryof perspectivehad been solved it becameobviousthat the spatial depth in the picture could be enhancedby the use of light and shade. Here again one can copy directlyfrom nature,but if one draws from fantasy only geometricalcalculationwill determineexactlywhere the shadows should fall. This is a sort of doubling of the perspectiveproblem.One traces the illuminatingrays by viewing the scene in perspectivefrom the illuminatthe perspectiveview of these shadowpatterns ing source.Then one constructs from the view point of the observer. This double geometrical problem, though straightforward,is complicated and tedious. In applying themselves to its solution the artists of the Renaissancedeveloped the technique of making an underpaintingin monochrome which they later colored, often with transparentglazes. The technology of this double perspectiveby which forms are modeled in light and shadethey call chiaroscuro.
The portrayalof the depth of space can be further enhanced by socalled aerial perspective.In the natural world about us distant objects are veiled in a blue haze resulting from the light scatteringby dust and mist in the air between the object and the viewer. There are no simple geometric rules for aerial perspectivesince the intensity of the haze varies with wind and weather. The Renaissanceartists developed the technique of aerial perspective slowly by trial and error.We can see now as the result of the work of the Impressionists,that in this effort their progresswas impeded by the in monochrome and superimposed glazes of color. techniqueof underpainting
IMPRESSIONISM
There was little if any theoreticaladvanceduring the later Renaissance, but while some 18th centurypainterswere carefullyrenderingflesh tones in the color of Kraft paper to which, by that time the flesh colors of the Renaissance paintings had faded, visual scientists began to be interestedin color. Earlyin the 1700's, Newton using a glass prism, resolvedwhite light into its colors could spectral components. The fact that light of "complementary" be combined to yield white was soon discoveredand the scientificneed for a theoryof color perceptionbecameobvious. This phase of the historyof science is marredby the vituperativeattack that, in an upon Newton by Goethe. However, it is all the more remarkable epoch when the leading art critic of the day was involved in an excited controversyover the nature of color, the artists painted landscapes essentially in monochrome inside their studios. Once complementary colors were identified,the apparentenrichmentof color saturation when complementary colors are placed side by side was soon discovered.This phenomenonof "simultaneous was well recognized contrast" is and included the in 1750 first by theoryof color vision, forcomprehensive mulated by Thomas Young in the early 1800's. Young's theory was greatly elaboratedand refined by Helmholtz a half centurylater. A reflectionof this centuryand a half of scientificinterest in color is to be found in the work of some artistsfrom 1750 on. Delacroix and Constableused brokencolors in the 1820's, but it was a full centuryafter the discoveryof simultaneouscontrast that artistsbecameconsciouslyawareof its potential significancein their business. The impactof this long delayedawakeningwas explosive. Its direct imprint in Pointillism is known to all. However, I am not here concernedwith the influence of visual science on the portrayalof color in the graphic arts of space. but on the portrayal With the reawakeningof interestin color, astuteobserverssoon became awareof the fact that shadowsare not grey or brown as they had heretofore been painted,but that the shadowedareais illuminatedby light reflectedfrom nearbyobjects and enrichedby their reflectedcolor. Underpaintingin monoCAJ XV 2 100
chromehad to be abandonedand the Impressionists betook themselvesout of doors to paint directlyfrom nature.With sharp eyes and an enrichedpalette they filled their picture space with sunlight and air and achieved a depth of aerialperspectiveneverbefore even approximated. Let us pausefor a momentto comparethe Impressionists with the Chinese -their nearestcompetitorsin the art of aerialperspective.Knowledge about Chinese art and about the conventions under which it was produced is so limited that a non-expertmust hesitate to make statementsabout it. Nevertheless it seems to me that Chinese art never was subjectedto the very special combinationof forces and constraintsof the earlyRenaissance that compelled artists to be geometers and seduced geometersto try their skill in art. Consequently the geometricalscience of perspectivewas not developed by the Chinese, though no one has surpassedthem in the portrayalof the natural grace of the branchof a tree, a bambooshoot, or blades of grass bent by the wind. But since the Chinese could not connect differentportions of a composed scene by intervening land solidly constructed,and since they had the good taste to avoid the unrightnessof inept drawing,they filled the intervening spacesof their compositionwith lakesand riversand mistyvalleys.Making a virtue of necessity,and avoiding the false spatial clues of imperfect geometricperspective,they invite the viewer to wanderin a spaceof almost endless mists. The intense preoccupation with light and color on the part of the Impressionistssoon led to the discovery of another color-spacephenomenon. If there are no contradictingaspects in the geometry of the picture space, warm colors on the canvasappearto be closer to the observerthan cold colors. The reason why this is so is partly the psychologiccarryover of our daily experiencewith aerial perspective.More distant objectstend on the whole to be more blue, that is, colder in color. But there is an additionalphysiologic factor. The human eye is in some respectsan imperfectoptical instrument, its focal power for light of shorterwave length (blue) is greaterthan for light of longer wave length (red). If we view red and blue spots on a black backmore strongly to focus a sharp image of the ground we must accommodate red dot on our retinajust as if the red dot were closerto us than the blue. Much has been said aboutthis phenomenonby artistsand art analystsand I should like to say only that the spatial contrastof warm versus cold colors is relatively feeble. At most this can add only a very slight enhancementto the perspectivegeometry of the picture space. A competentartist can put a blue object in the foregroundand a red one in the rear.Moreover,everysign painter knows that bright, sharply outlined spots appear closer to the observerthan a darkerfuzzierarea. The Impressionistspainted directly from nature and reached supreme heights in portrayingvolume of misty air, but they paid a heavyprice for this achievement. Taking natureas they found her, they could select but they could
not compose the picture space. Earth bound and not fancy free, but gay in their new-found richnessof color and shimmeringlight, they were soon followed by men who sought to use the new techniquesto impresson the picture space their own vision of harmony.Thus in one quick turn, enrichedby many new discoveries,art returnedto the centralproblemof how to make the portrayalof spacethe servantof composition. Art has, I believe, its inherent laws of development,and the transition seems to me to be intrinsically from Impressionismto Post-Impressionism determined,but the time scale of the evolutionaryprocessmay be influenced by extraneous events. Impressionismhad the misfortune of being contemporaneouswith the popularizationof photography.What the Impressionists sought to do in the complete naturalisticreproductionof the environment seems to be done automaticallyand mechanicallyby the camera.Moreover, with the perfection of naturalismrenderedby the Impressionists and by the there was the sudden that the of in camera, discovery depth space the exact of somehow shallow is rendering perspective comparedto that of the real were thereforeconfrontedwith a double probworld. The Post-Impressionists lem: how to enrichthe space volume of their picturesbeyond that of classical perspective,and how to fill that volume with the song of their hearts.It is to the firstof theseproblemsthat we mustdirectour attention.
BINOCULAR PERSPECTIVE
Perspectivespace is shallow comparedto the richnesswe see about us. Monet, like the Chinese, making a virtue of necessity,said: "the flatterthe better." Among the moderns it was C6zannewho labored hardest to enrich the spatial depth of painting. Unfortunatelyhe has said little to explain his effortand we shall have to pursueour inquiryby roundabout means. to that Why do photographs presenta spacethat seemsshallow compared we see aboutus ? One does not need to have been veryboredby bad movies in three dimensions to know the answer. We see space with two eyes, simulis the pictorialview of the one-eyedobtaneouslyfrom two points. Perspective server. A photograph or a flat-surfacerecord of geometric projection of objects through a single point can give rise to striking depth effects if we view it with one only and if the observing eye is placed at or near the point of projection.Ordinarily,however, we look at such pictureswith both lack the stereoscopic eyes and find that they lack depth becauseour impressions enrichment of spacesense that is the gift of binocularvision. The stereoscope was inventedby Brewster one hundredand fifty yearsago. It has furnishedthe experimentalmeans for an analysisof the differencesbetween binocular and monocularvisual space. Though the science of visual space perception is still incomplete, exuberantwith unsolved problems,the productof a centuryand a half of studyis substantial. The nature of binocular visual space has been much clarified by the
CAJ XV 2 102
who died, unbrilliantanalysisof a young mathematician, RudolphLuneburg, happily with this work still incomplete,four years ago.' It is clear from his analysisthat binocularvisual space differsradicallyfrom physicalspace.Luneberg's mathematicalanalysis is difficultto follow and not suited to an after dinner exposition, but some of the facts that he makes clear are easily exemplified from everydayexperience. Let us first be sure that we understandeach other as to the enrichment in space perceptionthat comes with binocularvision. Supposeyou close one eye and look at a neighboringtable.Try to estimatethe distancefrom the near to the far side of the table. After you have made the estimateconsiderfor a moment how you reachedyour conclusion.Perhapsyou said to yourself: "I noticed when I came in that the table is round.The distancenear to far is the same as that right to left." Perhaps you said: "People are all of about the same size. Those on the far side of the table look smaller than those on the near side. They mustthereforebe fartheraway." Now open your other eye and you will find that you have a direct unequivocal apprehensionof the table's size and shape. You do not need any indirect argumentor guide to your apprehension.The size and shape, so to This is what I mean by the enspeak, jump directly into your consciousness. richmentin spaceperceptionthroughbinocularvision. If you repeatthis same experimentlooking at a more distantobject, say a hundredfeet or more away, you will find little or no differencebetween your monocularand binocular impressions.Binocularvision enriches the space locally, not generally. Like
'I have never had the fortune to meet Luneberg personally but have known about him through mutual friends as well as through his writings. I am indebted to Dr. Paul Boeder for the following biographical note. Rudolph Luneburg was born near Brunswick, Germany, in 1903. Having shown early in school a remarkable ability for mathematics, he went to study mathematics at Gbttingen where he distinguished himself under Professor Richard Courant (now head of the big new New York University Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics). He received his degree in 1930 and became assistant to Professor Courant. After refusing to sign the loyalty pledge to Hitler in 1933, he fled to Leyden, Holland, and came to the United States in 1934 where he became a Research Fellow at New York University. About 1937, he became chief mathematician at Spencer Lens Company, Buffalo, which is now the Scientific Instrument Division of American Optical Company. During the war, still an "enemy alien," he was invited by Brown University to give the Advance Optics Course sponsored by the U.S. Armed Forces. In 1946, he became interested in space perception and visited Professor Ames at the Dartmouth Eye Institute. During 1946-47, he served as research mathematician for the U.S. Navy, stationed at New York University, and the following year accepted an Associate Professorship in Mathematics at the University of Southern California. In 1949 he died from a kidney ailment on his way back to the West Coast. His mathematical interest was concentrated on applied problems of the most advanced type in the field of optics, (especially diffraction theory, reflective coating, phase microscopy, electro-magnetic waves, radar), shock waves, thermo-dynamics, and space perception. The latter subject became his hobby.
Billy Sunday, it brightens the corner where you are-but only where you are! The space of binocularvision is a peculiarkind of space rich in volume nearby, shallow and shrunkenin the distance. It is different from physical space. In physicalspace a cubic yardis just as big whetherit is here or a mile there and measureit if you like. In binocuaway. You can take your yardstick lar visual space the cubic yard here is big enough for you to hide in. The cubic yard a city block away is not big enough for a shoe box. The intrinsic measureof binocularspaceshrinksin the distance. love to frolic-at least This is the kind of space in which mathematicians and Riemannfirst analyzedsuch spacesover a centuryago. since Lobachevsky Luneberghas studiedthe intrinsicmeasure,or, to use the correctmathematical term, the metric of binocularspace, and finds it to be the Lobachevskian type. What does this mean? We know alreadythat it means in part that the space shrinksin the distance. When you look at the rising moon it appearsno farther away than the horizon. The whole infinityof visual space forms, so to speak, a shell around us beyond which we cannot penetrate.Distant space gets thinner and thinner the more distant it is, plasteredlike wall paper on the shell of infinity. The Greek concept of a flat earth coveredby a celestialdome is a good pictureof the space of our commonvisual perception.That celestial dome is not as far away as you think. In a planetariumwhere there are no perspectiveclues to guide one's judgment, no familiar objects whose apparentsize tells one of their distance,the starson the ceiling seem as far awayas the starsin the sky. The shell of infinitycan be so close thatwe can almosttouchit. You see in these paradoxesthe basis of optical illusions. Visual space does not correspondto physicalspace and our space judgments,unless guided by familiar clues, may be erroneous.Look out of the window of a skyscraper. The objects you see on the street below you seem not merely far away but diminutive.People look like ants. Automobileslook like children'stoys. The streetis physicallyfartherawaythan it appearsand, becauseyou underestimate the distance,you underestimate the size of the objects. There is a laboratory experimentby which this visual distortionof space can be demonstrated and measured.Place an observerin a darkenedroom and in two small lights the frontalplane before him. Now give him two other put whose lights position he can controlby ropesand pulleys and ask him to place those two movable lights so that, together with the first two, they form a horizontalsquarenot seen in perspectivebut whose sides are sensed as equal. The observerwill place the movablelights not on the physicallycorrectpoints marked by the dots but farther away and farther apart. He underestimates the depth of space beyond the fixed lights and compensatesfor this underestimateby pushingthe movablelights too far away. (Fig. 2) Supposewe makea map of the physicalspacein front of the observerand ask ourselveshow that spacewould have to be distortedso that, when viewed
CAJ XV 2 104
Compensatory Distortion X X Movable Lights Physical Space
Lights
OObserver
Fig. 2.
Observer
Fig. 3.
Observer
by the two-eyed observerunaided by any clues of perspectiveor of familiar objects, the distorted space would look like the real space-not as the real space looks, but as the real space is, for the real space looks shrunken in the distance. Evidently we must expand the distant squares in our map to of the observer. compensatefor the underestimation In the accompanyingdrawing, (Fig. 3) I have not attemptedto make the distortion conform exactly to the rules of Luneburg's mathematics,since this will vary not only from observerto observerbut also with the scale of distortion. the map, but have merelyindicatedthe generaltype of the necessary Areas distant from the observerare expanded. Straightlines become curves. Angles become narrowedor widened. Of course,this sort of mapping cannot be carried out to extreme distances. It is, for instance, psychologicallyimpossible to imagine a model such that the rising moon would look as large as the state of Texas. Now let me ask what will seem a very odd question. Supposein the real physicalspace on the left there is a landscapethat we wish to representin a the camera,would give painting.The Renaissance painters,the Impressionists, us a one-eyed perspectiveof the scene. The result, we know, will lack the spatial richness of our common two-eyed view. Instead of following these rules of monocularperspectivedirectly, let us first make a real model of the with the map on the right. (Fig. 3) Each landscapedistorted in accordance with the scale object in the model must be enlargedand alteredin accordance of that portion of the map in which it is located.Now let us make a classical monocularperspectivedrawing of the distortedmodel. The question I want to ask is "Would the resulting picture be richer in space than the direct of the real scene or will it merelyseem a grotesque representation photographic and bizarredistortionof reality?" I know of no theoreticalargumentby which to answer this question. Only experimentcan tell us. FortunatelyI do not have to make this experi105 Friedenwald: Space Perception
Fig. 4. John Rewald: Photograph of scene painted by Cezanne at La Roche-Guyon. Courtesy of Mr. Rewald.
ment myself and inflict on you my own inept drawing, becausethis, it seems, is the experimentto which C&zanne devoted his life's best efforts. We are fortunatein having a direct and unequivocalrecordof Cezanne'sexperiment. In recentyearsRewaldand Loranhave meticulously manyof the photographed landscapesthat C~zanne used as the subject-"motifs"-of his paintings and we can comparethese photographswith the paintings (Figs. 4 & 5). I shall not ask your judgment as to whether Cezanne'slandscapeconveys to you a richersense of spatialdepth than does the photographof the real scene. I would only wish to maintainthat there is a sensible, rational basis for Cezanne'sexperiment,that he was striving to portrayin the depths of his picturesthe richnessof space that we sense directlyin our binocularvision of nearby objects, and that art experts are in general agreement that he achieveda grandeurin picturespaceneverbeforeapproximated. CUzanne did not know about Luneburg's geometry;he died when Lunecould burg was only three yearsold. It is no wonder, therefore,that CUzanne not communicate in words what he was struggling to accomplishintuitively. In his letters and conversations he said over and over again that the picture space of classicalperspectivewas shallow and flat, that he was trying to make it deeper, richerin volume. Space,he said, is made of cubes and spheresand cones. "You must feel them in the picture."PerhapsGiotto would have spoken with similar vagueness about monocularperspective.One can imagine him saying, "Look at nature. The near is sharp and large, the distant dim and small. You must feel it in the picture."
CAJ XV 2 106
Fig. 5. Cezanne, La Route Tournante a la Roche-Guyon, Smith College Museum of Art.
CUzanne paintedin colors and attemptedto enhancestill furtherthe richness of his picturespaceby applyingthe doctrineof warmcolorsnearand cool colors far, but he applied this in a novel fashion.Eachsolid form in his picture he modeled in color from cool to warm,immersingeach object,whetherit was a barn or an apple, in its own local aerialperspective.He was a great colorist and the color sings in his pictures,but, as I have alreadysaid, this color effect can add but slightly to the spatialrichnessof the picture.He was however,fully consciousof what he was doing in this featureof his techniqueand told and wrote about it explicitly. Art analysts,awareof the richnessof his picturespace, have taken what he said about color as the key to his accomplishment. Apparentlythey have assumedthat his distortionsof spacewere dictatedsolely by his compositional demands. However, the compositionalproblems which he set himself were many and varied while the pattern of his space distortionwas regularlyrepeated from landscapeto landscape.Moreover,the special CUzannesque space qualityof his picturesis just as clearlyvisible in blackand white reproductions as in the originals. CUzanne's contemporariesand followers recognized that he had done something unique and important.There were imitatorsgalore, but most of them imitated his color modelling, not his perspectivegeometry. Some took only the negative aspects of his statements.Becausehe said perspectivewas
shallow they assumedhe meant perspectivewas no good at all. They pursued the logic of this negation into cubism and then into flat patternabstractions. I can only saythat the kinshipof these abstractionists to CUzanne must be under the bar sinister.
BEYOND THE HORIZON
Cezannewas an unhappyartist.Over and over againhe told his friends of his sense of inadequacy, of his dissatisfaction with the productsof his brush.It was not that he regrettedfailure to achieve fame and fortune, though in fact his life was hard and meager,but that he had failed to producethe art of his vision. Perhapsthis was just the modesty of the trulygreat artistwhose sense of beautycan neverbe revealedcompletelyin his work, but I would like to sugunsolved in CUzanne's gest that there is a technicalproblemin space portrayal have been the cause of his distress. paintingswhich may conceivably CUzanne's picture space is like a box. There is richnessof depth in the middle ground, but in the far distancethe mountains,clouds, and foreground and sky form a flat background like the backdropof a theaterset. In this repicturespaceconformsto the spaceof binocularvision bounded spectC&zanne's contribution by its shell of flatness. From the painter'sviewpoint CUzanne's be characterized as a solution of the middle distance. of the may problem Artistsbefore C&zanne had succeededin enrichingthe spaceof the foreground, but the problemsof middle ground alwayspresentedgreat difficulties,unless, like the Chinese,one veiled the middle ground in a mist. Ckzanne managedto extend the richnessof foregroundspace into the middle ground. This makes the far distant space all the flatter.The shallow but unboundedspace of monocularperspectivecan, in the hands of some artists,portrayinfinitevistas beyond the confinesof CUzanne's picturebox. The boundednessof binocularvisual space is in sharpcontradiction with our knowledgeof reality.We know thereis no spaceboundary at the horizonwe have been there and have seen what lies beyond.We know aboutspacenot merelythroughour eyes but also throughour hands and feet. We can feel the of objectswith our hands, test the glossinessof surfaceswith our roundedness fingers,becomeawareof the weightinessof objectsby the strainin our muscles. The view from the mountaintop has addedrichnessof spacefrom the weariness in our feet, the sweat on our flesh, the constrictionin our chest. There is a perambulatory space as well as a visual space, and the physicistwho measures and his surveyingrod as he perambulates. real space carrieshis yardstick At first sight this contradiction betweenour variousmodes of space perception would seem unresolvable,but in actual fact, we resolve this conflict every waking moment of our lives and synthesizethe disparatemessagesof our senses into a unified sense of reality.The mechanismof that synthesislies dimly apprehendedbeyond the horizon of present science, but the artist can
CAJ XV 2 108
Fig. 6. Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: The Harvesters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
take couragefrom the fact that the viewerof his paintingbringsto the viewing the full contextof his syntheticspaceperception.If the viewer can be enticed to wanderin spirit in the picturespace he will carrywith him his conceptof physicalspace so long as he is not affrontedby inept drawing.The viewer can fill the misty valleys of the Chineselandscapepaintingswith abundantspace, and will peer beyondthe horizon if not stopped by a wall of paint. Let us return to the problems of visual space perception.Whether we view the horizon with one eye or two it appearsto be a straightline. But we have only to turn our heads to see that the horizon is not a straightline but a circle aboutus. It is in part by moving our heads that we resolve the conflicts between visual and perambulatory space. Luneburg'sbinocular space is the spacewe see when we hold our heads still and look with both eyes, while the space of classicalperspectiveis that which we see when we hold our heads still and look with only one eye. In Luneburg's last paperhe shows that he was awareof this problemand sketchedout the mathematical expansionof his visual spacetheoryto include rotationof the head. It is most unfortunatethat his earlydeath cut off the development of his theory. So far as I am aware this problem has not been attackedby any other investigator. A simple way to portraythe roundnessof the horizonwhich we cannotsee (unless we turn our heads) is to distort the horizontalplane and paint the horizon as an arcinstead of a straightline. Again we can ask ourselvesan odd
Fig. 7. Wu Wei, River Landscape, National Museum, Stockholm.
question. Will such arching of the horizon invite the viewer to contemplate endlessvistas?Again we do not have to rest the answeron any amateurefforts on my part. This experimenthas been performedby manygreat artists.I shall show you two of my favorite examples,one by Brueghel (Fig. 6), one by a Chinese artist contemporarywith Brueghel (Fig. 7). Both of them have hidden the actualhorizon in a mist so that one cannottell with certainty what is land and what is cloud. But this is as it should be; for, if they wish to entice our perambulatory space perceptioninto the region beyond the horizon, they must at the same time avoid contradictingour visual space perceptionthat tells us the horizonmust be flat. Both these artistshave producedthese vistas of great space without the benefit of Luneburg's geometry.The combinationof such vast space with the enrichment is the task of some future master, but the aspiring CUzannesque genius should be forwarnedthat the more voluminousthe picture space, the richermust be the song with which he fills it, lest the viewer be repelledby its lonely emptiness.
THE MULTIPLICITYOF SPACE PROJECTIONS
The multiplicityof choices open to the artist portrayingspace deserves furthercomment.The matterhas some analogiesto the problemof cartography. In mapping some small region of the earth'ssurfacefar from the poles, the has a simple and straightforward cartographer procedure.He draws the rectangulargrid of lines of longitude and latitude to whatever scale he chooses and never has to deviate from that scale. But, if he wishes to map a continent or a hemisphere,the roundedsurface of the earth cannotbe represented on a
CAJ XV 2 110
flat sheet without distortion. The scale of his mapping varies from place to place. Depending on the purposewhich the map is to serve, he chooses among the varied schemes of projectioninvented by geometersto serve his purpose. has one single possible mode The artistdrawingin monocularperspective of spaceprojection.He is like the cartographer who deals with a small region as if the earthwere flat. But for the non-Euclidean space of binocularvision The system of comthere is no unique mode of perspectiverepresentation. followed monocular distortion, by perspective rendering of pensatoryspace the distortedspace,which I have suggestedas a meansof connectingthe visual geometry of Luneburgwith the painting of Cezanne,does not representthe only possiblewayof projectingperceivedspaceon to the pictureplane.Whether the other possible modes of perspective representationwill enrich or impoverish the picture space cannot be decided in advanceand must be tested like those of CEzanne. by experiments Panofskyhas indicatedthe multiplicityof is symbolic. very succinctly by statingthat perspective possible spaceprojections be or however, Symbolism, may appropriate inappropriate, intelligible or unintelligible. It may be merelyconventionalas, for instance,the conventionin comic strips that progress in time goes from left to right in the successive drawings. This multiplicity of modes of representationopen to experiment and choice on the part of the artist does not mean that every emotional squiggle is a representation of space. The facts of space perception,the logic of projectivegeometryoffer wide freedomsof choice to the artist,but the choicesare between specific and definable alternativesand do not include chaos or the mixture of mutually contradictory systems. The science of today invites the artistto experiment,but the invitationis restricted to thosewho can experiment with intelligence and integrity.I do not mean to imply that every artist must be also a visual scientist and a geometer. But those who wish to experiment with new modes of space representation should at least understandthe tools which the visual scientistsand geometershave placed in their hands.
CONTENT AND SPACE
Art is a form of communication. Buchartzhas said that the artist communicatesthe "likenessof harmony."That likeness may be represented in the lyric beautyof a snowflakeor in the deepest aspectsof man's relation to the universe.We learn of the Prometheanstruggle from Michelangeloand Beethoven, of the joys of the here and now from Breughel and Renoir, of the beautieswoven by strength and fortitude out of pain and sorrow from Rembrandt,of transcending serenityfrom Leonardoand Bach. If these are the true content of art, why have I wasted your time on the technologyof space portrayal? Why have truly great men from Leonardo to CUzannespent their energies on geometricalproblems remote from the likeness of harmony that
they wished to portray?Could not equally profound messages be conveyed in a less voluminouspicturespace? One might equallyaskwhy should the poet strugglemightily over an epic when the sonnetis so sweet. Why was Bachnot contentwith the solo song of a clarinet,what need had Beethoven for the polyphoniccomplexity of a symphonic composition.Some likenessesof harmonyare expressiblein a sonnet, a but the artist whose message reachesto melody, or a flat patternabstraction, the deep and complexroots of our being needs the richnessof space composition, of polyphonicmusic,or epic poetry for the fullness of what he has to say. understoodthat each enrichmentof the picture space Leonardoand CUzanne was a new pipe in the organ, a new voice in the choir that sings of the harmonies of space.There is neverenough spacein the picture,enough polyphony in the orchestra, to expressthe vision of beautyin the heartsof greatmen. Some art analystshave felt that, with the perfection of monocularspace and by the camera,the function of art in by the Impressionists representation the realisticportrayalof naturehad run its course. I hope that I have shown you that this is a mistake. The reservoirof scientific knowledge concerning space perceptionhas barelybeen tapped by the artist. These are problemsto tempt the manhood of a Michelangelo, the genius of a daVinci; and new waterstreamsconstantlyinto the reservoir from the springsof science.
ART VIEWS ON NON-REPRESENTATIONAL RUSKIN'S

Charles Dougherty
The author is an assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University. His doctoral dissertation (University of Toronto) is on Ruskin's theory of Art and Morals.
art is John Ruskin'sreputationas the apostle of truth in representational criticism of solid his is a work there well known, but scattered body throughout he considersthose developdevoted to non-representational art; particularly ments which were later to be called abstraction, cubism,and impressionism. Ruskinwas fully preparedto acknowledgethat the successfulcombination is beautiful.This is true whetherthe combiof form and color or chiaroscuro nation is the work of natureor of an artist, and it is true without reference to what the picturemight "say."Form and color exist within a pictureframe, and like any other materialobjects, they may be beautiful. "Form is form,"
CAJ XV 2 112

College Art Association

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Исходное описание:

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

College Art Association

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Knowledge of Space Perception and the Portrayal of Depth in Painting Author(s): Jonas S.

OF SPACEPERCEPTION KNOWLEDGE AND THEPORTRAYAL OF DEPTH IN PAINTING

~-~i: P ~~r(F~5~ C_;

Fig. 1. DiJrer:Device for Drawing in Perspective

Compensatory Distortion X X Movable Lights Physical Space

Fig. 5. Cezanne, La Route Tournante a la Roche-Guyon, Smith College Museum of Art.

Fig. 7. Wu Wei, River Landscape, National Museum, Stockholm.

ART VIEWS ON NON-REPRESENTATIONAL RUSKIN'S

Вам также может понравиться