LINEAR PERSPECTIVE – THE CRITICS

The development of the perspective should be seen as a natural component of the rational development of the human mind.  Certainly the development of the perspective can be understood given our propensity for mathmatization of anything that we dimly perceive as ambivalent.  We addressed the linear perspective earlier.  Now let’s take a closer look at some of the linear perspective critics.

Plato condemned even the halting Greek start of the perspective because of the inherent distortion.  The Greeks accused the perspective of being limiting because of the subservience to inviolate laws.

Panofsky writes that “the ancient Near East, classical antiquity, the Middle Ages all more or less completely rejected perspective, for it seemed to introduce an individualistic and accidental factor into an extra or supersubjective world.”   We have seen the Chinese reject the perspective.

Another criticism of the linear perspective is that it is an absolute time freeze.  A properly constructed perspective with mathematical foreshortening is one frame isolated frame, it is assumed, with one eye.  This abstraction, although accepted, certainly reveals other critical limiting aspects.  We see with two eyes in more or less stereo, or at least wide mono.  And absolutely never are we absolutely immobile.

Other criticisms are that the light that is focused on our retinas is falling on a convex surface.  Also, the fact that we see with two eyes that are not in the same point in space means that our essential vision cone is spherical rather than rectilinear.  PSF31.  All of these points are merely physics based challenges to what we unquestionably accept as reality.

Another central point of Panofsky is that we see in a more or less curved perspective rather than a linear perspective.  He bases this theory on some of the following concepts;  sterescopic spherical vision, convex retina, etc.  And he maintains that we have become conditioned to not notice this curvature due to our cultural acceptance of the perspective.  He also states that our use of photographs has also conditioned us to ignore the basic curvature of what we perceive to be reality.  Certainly the Greek propensity to construct their temples with curved rather than straight lines attests to Panofsky’s curvature theory.  The Greeks used entasis of columns and curvature of their buildings was done to make them appear straight.

There is a historical tendency for means of representation to become habitual.  And as it becomes a habit, it becomes part of the culture which created it.  The greater inclusion in the culture, the greater is the resistance toward change.  All of this discussion on the history of various methods of projection is to give you confidence to explore and choose.  It has never always been thus.