Perspective

My last lecture featured a lot of images explaining perspective. This reminded me of an Art lesson many years ago when I was still at school when we were shown the painting below.

The Battle of San Romano probably about 1438-40, Paolo Uccello

This painting was one of the earliest examples of One point perspective using the lances and body of the soldier in the foreground. This was an early experiment of creating depth and presenting a 2d image as 3d to the viewer.

Different techniques can be employed to present an image which is flat to appear more like something we would see ourselves. Moving on from the above 1 point perspective came 2 point perspective.

2 point perspective also gives depth and as we the viewer recognises the lines shown, we interpret this as depth, accepting that objects get smaller the further away they are from the foreground.

Knowing how a viewer 'sees' and how images are interpreted by the viewer, artists can manipulate and confuse the viewer by breaking these conventional 'laws'.

The most famous artist to play with perspective laws was Escher, who must have studied perspective intensively.  Below is an example of his endless stairs.

Although he did toy with his false perspective, he did produce some exquisite studied works such as the hand with reflective Sphere which I do think is amazing.

On reflection, I'm starting to re address my previous ideas on Art. In today's time, images are everywhere. We are constantly bombarded by images in newspapers, TV, posters and online, and I used to take everything at face value. Actually 'Seeing' an image is totally different from viewing an image.

Deciphering what the Artist is trying to show you, the rules of form and the subtleties of manipulation is 'absorbing' the image, where previously I just classified the images I saw instead.