PROFANE REPRESENTATION

Let’s say you are an artist in the Middle Ages.  In that guise, you did not want your drawings or paintings to look representational.  Instead, you deliberately constructed your images in a non linear manner.  Why?  You did it to keep your images sacred.

Your religious beliefs kept you from sinking to the profane level of linear representation.   When you made “realistic” depictions, you were operating within the sinful and fallen world.  Only sinners employ the linear perspective.

To keep your images sacred, you discarded the fallen world and instead drew (pun intended) closer to God.  The assumption was that God’s view is multiview.  Which makes sense;  you would think that God sees everything at the same time.  You would think that God is not limited by any sort of linear, one or two point perspective system.  The vanishing point is within you.

Scolari has this to say regarding the Middle Ages / Byzantine mindset:

“It was a way of leading the spectatory beyond specific places, toward a mystic space and an interior time.” p87.

The space was mystic.  The time was interior.  Because of this non holistic geometric world, there is no viewpoint anymore. There is no vanishing point.  Wouldn’t you rather operate as if space was mystic and time was interior?

Byzantine spacetime essentially creates a multi-view relationship with the viewer. You might say there are infinite viewpoints, given the myriad ways in which the geometries interact and overlap.

The Byzantines were after the idea and only the idea.  They did not care if the spectator could easily place themselves before the spacetime of the painting.  Rather, the central point was inside the viewer, rather than outside at infinity.  It was the mystical that was important, not the rational.

There was a wonderful human subjectivity to the artist of the Middle Ages. The artist was more wholly engaged with the world. Whereas in the modern perspective, you are essentially standing outside the image and looking in. There is less participation and engagement of the viewer. Being on the outside looking in might very well summarize a common modern angst.

One way to describe Transparent Drawing is Multiview Drawing.  Transparent Drawing allows for this multiview approach. And this multiview experience is provided within a consistent, rational axonometric or perspective construction.

1.  Scolari, Massimo. Oblique Drawing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.