REPRESENTATION AND WESTERN CONQUEST

The perspective, as it blossomed forth in the Renaissance, worked with newfound rational thinking.  Suddenly the world could be explained with the idealized constructs of math, science, logic and the linear perspective.  With those tools, the world suddenly could be understood and explained.

And let’s not forget religion.  These rational constructs brought theistic belief right along with it.  The logical spatial ordering system worked to bolster Christian moral authority.   At the time, the perspective was seen by the population as a tool to help bolster the Church’s hold over society.  The message was, this is the way the world is, and by God, we can prove it.  With the perspective, your place in the world was now established.

No more of this fuzzy, infinite Byzantine Spacetime in which the locus of observation could be anywhere.  No more of this relativity nonsense.  Nope, the linear perspective produced an ideal geometry which represented how God saw the world.  And suddenly your place in the cosmos was outside of it;  for the first time, you were looking in.

“Why was linear perspective so unique to Western civilization? …the advent of artificial linear perspective in the West had much to do with an idealized geometry that seemed to reveal the workings of God’s mind, and thus, when applied to the making of holy pictures, should reenergize Christian faith.”

And let’s not forget military conquest.  Artists, with the newfound tool of the linear perspective, could now produce religious themed frescoes and paintings which served as inspiration for the Crusades and the retaking of Jerusalem.  Apparently, it was the accuracy of the religious images that inspired military conquest.

In sum, this vast societal ordering, dare we say the triumph of the west, this cultural mindset of how the west saw itself, including conquest thru war, manifested in representation, the linear perspective, and opacity.

Now that God has entered the picture, it is no wonder that linear representation is a nearly immovable bedrock of the west.

1.  Perspective – Renaissance Style Linear Perspective. Retrieved from:Perspective – Renaissance-style Linear Perspective – Eye, Mirror, Picture, and Perspectiva – JRank Articles http://science.jrank.org/pages/10636/Perspective-Renaissance-Style-Linear-Perspective.html#ixzz4xH0TjSXM