Arnheim's essay discusses central perspective as a condensation of all space into one moment. The development of central perspective, he wrote on page 288, transformed art from a representation of being to one of happening. Similarly, Anderson argued that according to pre-industrial, religious concepts of time, "a connection is established between two events which are linked neither temporally nor causally--a connection which it is impossible to establish by reason in the horizontal dimension . . . . It can be established only if both occurrences are vertically linked to Divine providence" (24). Could central perspective--which employs a horizontal reference point; in fact, one that is based on the horizon, where all of space converges and diverges--have contributed to (or resulted from) this shift from temporal to spatial constancy that Anderson addresses?
Arnheim also wrote that no method of showing perspective in drawings or paintings is better than another and all are flawed. But what would he say about photography? I question what Bazin said about the camera "stripping away . . . all those piled up preconceptions" to reveal reality (15). He discredits perspective as an illusion, but if you look at something in a distance, your eyes too see illusions: the world appears to end, faraway objects appear smaller than closer ones, parallel lines seem to converge. So then, is perspective really a distortion aimed at fooling the eye, or is it true to it? Bazin distinguishes between "true realism, the need that is to give significant expression to the world both concretely and its essence, and the pseudorealism of a deception aimed at fooling the eye" (12). But is there a difference between being true to vision and being true to life as we know it? After all, don't we know it through our vision? Also, even abstract artwork comes from what the artist has seen throughout his/her life, since vision is necessary for mental imagery (people born blind don't understand sight, after all). And it can attest to emotions, thoughts, or stretches of time and space that neither the camera nor perspective can capture. Even with the camera, it was created to represent the world the same way our eye does, or else we wouldn't recognize the images it produces as real. Thus, I would argue that it doesn't show the referent; it shows, like all methods of showing space, a representation of it. Stated another way, a camera is based on peoples' concept of realism, a "preconception" in of itself. Or maybe not even peoples' concept; maybe realism is based on the Bourgeois ideology, the myth of visual reality that has inspired the invention of the Durer technique and then the photograph. Did the "real" world--the one we think we see in photographs--simply inform techniques of the "plastic arts" (Bazin's phrasing), or does it also work the other way around, with ideology of realistic art affecting our visual perception?
This question has been on my mind ever since I visited the Met over the summer and noticed that the only paintings, especially portraits, that look at all realistic are ones done recently (say, since the renaissance). I wondered if people before this time made the conscious decision to not represent the world realistically, or if I just have a culturally conditioned idea of what people and objects look like. If the latter is true, does the culturally relative representation of space extend to a culturally relative vision of it?
-Suzy
