Celia Wilson
VISUAL LITERACY
Lecture Four - Perspectives
DR. TERRY SPEAKE
Perspective (noun): a picture drawn in such as way, appearing to enlarge or extend the actual space, or to give the effect of distance.
A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
Although an object is not seen, it falls within our visual ray because it does not come within our intellectual ray i.e. we are not looking for it, so, in the largest sense we find only the world we look for.
Indexicality:
Unless we know the conventions, we have no means of guessing which aspect is presented to us. Which brings us to the wisdom of Philostratus, who made his hero Apollonius say that no one can understand a painted horse or bull unless he knows what such creatures are like.
The Renaissance: 14th - 17th Centuries:
From the renaissance onwards, visual composition became dominated by the system of perspective, with its single, centralised viewpoint. The work became an autonomous object, detached from its surroundings, movable, produced for an impersonal market, rather than specific locations.
At the same time, images became more dependent on the viewer for their completion, their closure, and the viewers became more distant from the concrete social order.
Leonardo's Problem:
Working on such a scale in a particular building, he clearly became acutely conscious of the problem of viewpoint. Theoretically, the painting should be viewed from one ideal position. By placing the viewpoint at the level of the heads within the painting he hads already conceded that the spectator will not be viewing his illusion from the ideal position.
Four types of perspective:
-
Aerial perspective
-
Perspective of receding planes
-
Perspective of scale
-
Linear perspective