PLATO’S PREDICTION

The linear perspective was invented by the Greeks.  Simultaneously, illusionist depiction had it’s first critic, Plato.  In a previous page, Plato On Perspective, we took a first look at Plato’s objection to representational drawing.    Now let’s look at this more closely.

The crux of Plato’s critique is found in this passage from the Republic:

“Does a couch appear different from itself according to how you view it from the side or from the front or any other way?   Or does it differ not at all in fact though it appears different…” Plato. Gombrich 126.

What was Plato’s problem?  Truth.  With the famous couch statement above, Plato immediately saw the difference between the essential form of the couch, and the representational deceit of depicting the couch from various views.  Although it appears different from various sides, the couch form remains the truth.  Plato went on to criticize illusionist representation, specifically scene painting, as a moral weakness and stated that the contrivance was nothing short of witchcraft.

“The arts must go, we learn because they blur the only distinction which mattered to Plato, that between truth and falsehood.”  “…it is hard enough, he would have pleaded, to sort out scientific knowledge from myth, reality from mere appearance, without interposing a twilight realm which is neither the one nor the other.”  Gombrich p 127.

Contrivance.  Witchcraft.  Falsehood.  Myth.  Appearance.  Illusion.  How could we have lost the essential concept of truth?  How could we have gone down the path of Representational Spacetime for over 2000 years?  Why have we not, as a culture, demanded full knowledge, rather than illusionistic contrivance?  Why did Plato not then go further and say, well, all you need to do is depict everything transparently, and then you will be depicting truth?  Gombrich certainly shares the same questions that we do:

“The picture conjured up by art is unreliable, and incomplete, it appeals to the lower part of the soul, to our imagination rather than to our reason, and must therefore be banished as a corrupting influence.”  p 127.

So just as Representational Spacetime has been with us for eons, so has the understanding of it’s essential fallacy.  As soon as representational / illustrative drawing was created, Plato immediately saw the fallacy.

I selected the drawing above for this page given the use of linear perspective construction while admitting an overlay of a more Byzantine Spacetime, which I thought Plato might appreciate.   For a graphic analysis of the drawings according to The Four Spacetimes, I offer this graphic.  The analysis bulges for both Representation and Byzantine because it is an overlay, rather than an abject integration, of the two spacetimes.

1.  Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton University Press: Princeton. 1984.