About the Transition of Idea of the Perspective and Philosophy of the Gaze
About the Transition of Idea of the Perspective and Philosophy of the Gaze
Tadami Yamada
「遠近法の思想と視線の哲学の変遷について」 山田維史
Last year, in October 2016, the Siebold Museum in the Netherlands announced that six paintings of Japanese landscapes brought back by Siebold, which had been labeled "gifts from Hokusai" in Siebold's handwritten inscriptions, had been reexamined and confirmed to be genuine Katsushika Hokusai works.
One of the six is a lithograph, and all were created after studying Western painting.
What makes this painting significant is that it is not a copy of a Western painting, but an original depiction of an Edo landscape, likely a realistic sketch. It is also painted with accurate perspective based on theoretical understanding. It is important to note that perspective only entered Japanese painting in the 19th century.
Incidentally, the first oil painting in Japan is believed to have been Hiraga Gennai (1728-1780).
The painting, "Portrait of a Western Woman," painted in the late
18th century, is believed to be a copy.
Hokusai's Western-style perspective painting discovered at the Siebold Museum in the Netherland.
The one on the bottom right is a lithograph.
I just said that perspective is an "idea." "Ideas" change with the times. As the word "tide" suggests, "ideas" reflect the times, or rather, eras that reflect "ideas" change. Perspective was indeed a "technology" born out of the "ideas" of the times. There was also a time when it functioned as a "science" created by idea.
However, this did not mean that it was easily accepted. Over the course of several centuries, "perspective theory" critiqued itself and, after undergoing great conflict within European civilization, has now become an image that is completely commonplace in the eyes of everyone.
Perspective theory is based on the plane geometry of the ancient Egyptian Greek philosopher Euclid. However, in the 19th century, non-Euclidean geometries such as Lobachevsky's geometry and Gaussian geometry emerged, as well as Riemann's geometry, which dramatically changed the concept of space.
The question at stake was, "Is space straight or curved?" Riemann and Einstein provided the answer, proving that space is curved due to gravity. However, more than 100 years later, modern mathematics has deemed Riemann's space too narrow and is seeking a new concept of space.
Here, we will briefly explain the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry and Riemannian geometry.
Five principles of the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry:
1. Two points can be connected by a straight line.
2. A finite line can be extended infinitely.
3. For any point and distance, it is possible to draw a circle with the point as its center and the distance as its radius.
4. All right angles are equal.
5. If a line intersects two other lines and the sum of the interior angles on the same side is less than two right angles, then when these two lines are extended they will intersect on the side of the smaller angle.
In fact, "perspective" was born in the European cultural sphere and developed independently as a scientific idea and technology. It is an "idea" and "technology" that neither existed nor developed at all in Islamic cultural spheres or Asian cultural spheres, including Japan.
In what follows, I would like to delve a little deeper into the historical process by which "perspective" was born and which seems to have survived to this day. I would also like to explore what kind of visual experiences we are experiencing today.
First, let's look at paintings from ancient Greek (Hellenistic), Egyptian, Arab/Islamic, European, and Asian cultures to see how people created images (pictures) of what they saw and thought before the concept of perspective emerged.
(Left) Ancient Egypt: "Book of the Dead" papyrus
(Center) Polygnotus, the greatest painter of ancient Greece. Active mainly in Athens, circa 475-450 BC.
(Right) Byzantine art Mosaic from the Daphni Monastery. Circa 1100 AD.
(Left) Ancient Roman Period: Pompeian Wall Painting "Reading the Marriage Mysteries" (Before 79 AD)
(Center) European Cultural Sphere: Early Middle Ages: Saints Writing the Gospels on the Clouds of the Celestial Castle
(Center Right) Islamic Art: Sultan Suleiman's Battle of Sighetbar, 1566
(Right) Burziyeh, Returning from India and Summoned to Nushirvan
(Left) Islamic Art: Construction of Karnak Fort / "The Rose Garden of Pius Jami" 1553
(Center) Arabic geometric patterns are a prominent feature of Islamic art
(Right) Indian Art: Krishna and Radha on the Azumaya Mountains, c. 1760
(Left) Indian Art: Elephant and Soldiers Procession, c. 1800, Kashmir
(Center) Chinese Art: Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420)
(Right) Qing Dynasty (1644-1912)
Chinese Art: Song Dynasty Zhang Shantang (1085-1145)
(Left) Jaapanese Art: "The Tale of Genji Illustrated Scroll," attributed to Fujiwara Takayoshi, Late Heian period (late 12th century)
(Right) "Kasuga Gongen Illustrated Scroll," Volume 3, Kamakura period, circa 1300 (Enkei 2)
Utagawa Hiroshige, "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo: A Thunderstorm at Ohashi Bridge," 1856-1858 (Ansei 3-5)
We notice that images from each of these cultures are flat and lack depth. Egyptian paintings do not depict people from the front, and the same is true of Greek paintings. However, these two ancient civilizations produced excellent three-dimensional sculptures. While they recreate the appearance of human and animal forms, we can also see a clear desire to express sublimity, dignity, beauty, and the heights of the ideal.
This gap already had the potential to create a conflict among artists, architects, and scientists about how to best represent reality on a two-dimensional surface.
However, research to resolve this issue began not in Egypt or Greece, but in Europe, which imported scientific thinking and medicine from those two civilizations.
Europe aims to the unification of knowledge
What was happening in the European cultural sphere? Or rather, what was beginning to happen?
It was the "unification of knowledge." All knowledge was beginning to be organized into large systems, rather than fragmented, around the question of what it means to be human. The conflict with religious doctrine was a long battle.
There is probably no need to go into detail about the Protestant Reformation, but I will briefly explain its relationship to the unification of knowledge.
Martin Luther (1483-1546), who traveled to Rome as an emissary from Germany, confronted the irrationality of the authoritarian papacy. In 1517, Luther submitted a 95-point treatise protesting the Pope's sale of indulgences. Luther's argument was that faith alone was the way to the kingdom of God, and that the Bible alone could show the way, with no need for papal authority.
The main points of the Reformation were as follows:
At the core of the Catholic Church and the papacy at that time was the mysticism of scholastic philosophy. The Protestant Reformation first and foremost meant liberation from such a church and papacy. In other words, it meant gaining a state and civil society and turning one's eyes to nature and reality. Faith was not imposed by church authority, but rather called for each individual's autonomy and self-awareness, and asserted a purely human right based on one's own conscience and one's own conviction. This prophet also believed that salvation must occur within one's own heart, and that one was to perform atonement for sins and purification on one's own initiative. This rejected the practices that had previously been carried out by priests under the authority of the church.
Luther founded the Protestant church to rival the Catholic Church, and the light of Reformation quickly spread throughout Europe. The issue was resolved in Germany with the Peace of Augsburg in 1559 and in France with the Edict of Nantes in 1598.
Along with the storm of the Protestant Reformation, the ancient adage "Know thyself" motivated Europe to break away from the Middle Ages.
At this time, perspective was considered a component of all knowledge, following an idea that encompassed the entire universe from the smallest to the largest.
During the Renaissance, there were five items that a perfect humanist had to have in his study. These were not three sacred treasures, but five essential tools for any intellectual.
First, a compass. Second, a square. Third, a sextant. Fourth, the scalpel of Ambroise Paré, the first to discover arterial ligation. Fifth, a set of a fixed eyepiece, a glass plate or lattice window, and a small amount of thread used for perspective painting. Later, a sixth, the telescope, was added.
Compass, Sextant, Nautical Telescope
A set of drafting tools used by a 16th-century architect and stonemason.
Collection of the Galileo Museum, Florence.
Thomas More published Utopia in 1516. 100 years later, in 1623, Tommaso Campanella published The City of the Sun.
The 15th century ended, and the European Age of Discovery began. I am tempted to call this the "discovery of the horizon." Of course, this is in anticipation of the horizon as the focal point of perspective, that is, the vanishing point of the line of sight.
Earlier, I said that perspective is based on Euclidean geometry. In fact, this vanishing point (focal point) of the line of sight intuitively contradicts the "parallel postulate" of Euclidean geometry. In other words, painters realized that the visual experience of their eyes as they viewed reality was completely at odds with the basic principle of Euclidean geometry, which states that space expands infinitely in three dimensions.
It is said that the accuracy of binocular parallax, the three-dimensional perception of human vision, is limited to 500 meters. Beyond 500 meters, the sense of depth as well as the sense of three-dimensionality of objects is lost, and positional relationships become unclear.
So, how can we recreate the reality we see on a two-dimensional plane? Is there a principle that makes this possible for anyone? Is there a method?
Here lies a major religious problem.
Perspective can be said to have developed with the discovery of the horizon, but in fact, in religion, the gaze was also directed from the earth to the sky. Painters made the most of the effects of perspective, depicting fantastical views of divine rule in the domes of cathedrals and the ceilings of royal palaces, which expressed the divine majesty of kings. This perspective has changed over time, but let's put that aside for now and first discuss the history of the development of perspective.
(Left) Giotto (1267-1337) Ceiling painting in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi
(Right) Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) Ceiling painting in Camela degli Sposi 1465-1474
The History of Perspective Theory
Artists created paintings that looked up to the gods in the sky, but at the same time, their experiences revealed a truth: the center of the universe is each individual's perspective. In other words, it's each individual's willful position.
I recently gave a lecture on "Drawings by the Mentally Ill" at the first of a series of art courses at a medical clinic. At the time, I introduced "Landscape with A Witch" by August Netter, who worked as an architectural draughtsman until he developed severe schizophrenia.
Let's take another look at the painting.
Each building in this painting is drawn in fairly accurate two-point perspective, but Netter's position varies throughout the painting, suggesting a fragmented state of consciousness. I would like you to understand this point in conjunction with what I said earlier: "The truth grasped by painters' experience is that the center of the universe is the individual's perspective."
Now, the "discovery of the horizon" also means the "discovery of landscape."
You may find this point surprising. However, until the early Italian Renaissance, there was no such field as "landscape painting" in art. While it was common for landscapes to be depicted in the backgrounds of religious paintings and portraits, they were not clearly recognized as independent "landscapes."
It may be said that the first independent study of "landscape painting" was by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo left behind a vast number of sketches in a variety of fields, including studies of landscapes.
However, these landscapes were not real landscapes. He longed for a world beyond the Alps. This longing led him to paint imaginary landscapes. However, as a result, his sketches became pure landscapes, unrelated to either religion or human figures. I believe he bestowed a special meaning on landscapes as backgrounds -- a philosophical significance as a microcosm of the world. The landscapes in Leonardo's paintings include rugged rocky mountains, steam-filled swamps, and vast lakes and marshes. They are depicted in a mysterious way using aerial perspective.
(Left and Right) Leonardo da Vinci, "Landscape Drawing for St. Maria della Neve", dated August 5, 1473
Leonardo da Vinci,"Annunciation" Gallerie degli Uffizi (Right) detail
The currently leading theory is that the first independent landscape painting was by the German artist Albert Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538).
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538)
(Left) Donaau landscape, c.1520 Alte Pinakothek Museum
(Center) Mount Range, 1530 Tokyo Fuji Art Museum
(Right) The Battle of Alexander, 1529 Alte Ponakothek Museum
The first medieval paintings seen in various cultural spheres depicted distorted objects. The distorted perspective and incorrect proportions in these paintings can be attributed to a lack of ideology, style, and technique.
"Paint what you see as you see it" is a common refrain in modern Japanese schools, but in reality, it is not that easy to recreate real-life three-dimensional objects and spaces on a two-dimensional surface. One reason is that technical training is necessary. Additionally, as can be seen from the drawings of infants and children, I believe that real-life perspective (spatial understanding) is heavily influenced by psychological and cognitive development.
Now, 200 years before Leonardo da Vinci, there were painters who, albeit at a slow pace, began to put the idea of perspective into practice. These were the medieval Italians Giotto (ca. 1267-1337) and Pietro Lorezzetti (ca. 1280-1348).
A hundred years later, the Flemish miniature painters the Limburg brothers (Hermann, Jean, and Paul; 1376-80 to 1416) came next.
Around 50 years later, France's Jean Fouquet (1420-1480) and, 200 years after Giotto, Italy's Ambrogio Bergone (ca. 1470-1523/24) came next.
It can be said that these painters gradually contributed to the systematic development of perspective technique. And there were contemporaries of the French Limbourg brothers, and the first architect of the Italian Early Renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1445), and fellow Early Renaissance humanists and architectural theorists, architects, mathematicians, and painters Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Piero della Francesca (1412-1492). These three figures of the Italian Early Renaissance were the first to express a desire to clearly record the facts.
Giotto : "Nativity of Christ, Adoration of the Three Kings" "Pentecost"
(Right) The architecture of the Duomo of Florence, architectural design sketches, and the current bell tower
(Left and next to Right) Pietro Lorexxetti, "Annunciation to the Sovachesh" 1328-29, National Gallery of Siena.
"Flagellation of Christ"
(Right and next to Left) Limburg brothers (Hermann, Jean, and Paul) From Illuminated manuscripts
Jean Fouque (Left) "Division of the Kingdom of the Cloel" 1460
(Center) From "Knight Etienne's Book of Hours"
(Right) ”King Solomon orders the construction of the Jerusalem Temple" 1470-1475
Leonardo da Vinci "Perspective study for the Magi" c.1481, The Uffizei Galleries
”The Last Supper" 1495-1498, Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan
Ambrogio Bergognone
(Left) "The Virgin and Child" 1488, The National Gallery, London
(Right) "Meeting of Saint Ambrose and the Emperot Theodosius" 1490, Academia Carrara, Bergamo
Filippo Brunelleschi (Left) Desigh of Holy Spirit Church, Florence.
(Right) Dome design of St. Mary's Church, Florence
Leon Batista Alberti
(Left and Right of Top) Book of Alberti's The Architecture, 1565, and from illustrations of the book.
(Left of bottom) From the 1804 edition Della Pitura Alberti, description of perspective vanishing point.
(Right of bottom) Alberti's Visual Pyramid in "Della pitura" 1435
Piero della Francesca (Left) The Nativuty, 1460, The National Gallery, London
(Right) The Brera Madonna, 11472, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Filippo Brunelleschi gave organized demonstrations. Leon Battista Alberti and Piero della Francesca wrote treatises. The importance of these treatises lies in the elevation of technical procedures into sophisticated humanist prose.
What is meant by the writings of a sophisticated humanist is that the theory of perspective was incorporated into the system, the accumulation of all knowledge from the Italian Renaissance, creating a situation in which opinions for and against it were raised from all sides, like a carp on a chopping board.
Viateur's Achievements
The first publication on perspective in art was a Latin text by Jean Perrin (also known as Viateur; before 1445–1524), published in 1505 in the free city of Tours, a Holy Roman Empire town in northeastern France, in the early 16th century.
Viateur followed up with a subsequent publication in 1509, entitled "On the Artificial Perspective." This work was quickly translated into German in Nuremberg and republished in Tours in 1521, a success that continued unabated. However, in 1626, 17 years after the first edition, an enthusiast who believed Viateur's work was still valid added illustrations and republished it in both Latin and French in a smaller, more modern format than the original.
This book contained illustrations for the entire repertoire of perspective-related books published with illustrations over the following centuries.
Incidentally, all of the pages of this extremely valuable book can now be viewed on the website of the University of Tours Library.
Two things stand out to me about the illustrations in this book.
First, everyday objects like carts are depicted with no distinction whatsoever between grand buildings and modern architecture.
This means that, from the very beginning, the characteristics of perspective portrayed the author's area of interest. To put it more simply, the layout and furnishings of the author's bedroom are on the same level as majestic buildings and their environments.
Second, while illustrations in later perspective manuals actually include guidelines for constructing images to help students avoid any confusion, Viateur's illustrations are simply geometric plans viewed in perspective. This suggests that Viateur was more interested in how perspective worked than in proving the validity of the technique.
The world was still too early to fully embrace the technique of perspective, but Viateur was less an artist than an observer, interested in all that geometry had to offer.
But I believe he was certainly aware that he was walking alongside the great masters of artistic creation - architects like Bruneschi and Alberti, and painters like Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo.
Here, we take a look at an illustration from a book by Abraham Bosse (1602-1676), a generation after Viateur.
Unlike Viateur, perspective is presented with precise construction guidelines to leave no doubt in the student's mind.
Abraham Bosse (Left) FRom "Perspective"
(Center) "Banquet of the Chevalier of the Holy Spirit" 1634
(Right) "Printing Company" 1642
My explanation may be a bit back and forth, but there was another German painter of Viator's generation who was also working on practical research into perspective: Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528).
Albrecht Dürer was fascinated by the concept of "divine proportion." I said earlier that the distortions of perspective and errors in proportion in medieval painting were due to a lack of ideology, style, and technique. Dürer believed that reality was in "divine proportion," and traveled to Italy in search of scholars who were familiar with its secrets. An Italian book on perspective was translated into German and published in Nuremberg in 1522, paving the way for Dürer's work. Dürer devised the use of threads and lattice screens to obtain correct perspective, and published an engraving of this in 1525.
This illustration was reproduced many times and remained in circulation for a long time. Books on perspective theory were soon translated into many languages, leading to mutual influence between European countries.
Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594) who born in Venice nine years before Dürer's death, Tintoretto's paintings show a mastery of perspective, and he created dramatic scenes using this technique.
Jacopo Tintoretto "The Removal of the Body of Saint Mark" 1562-66, Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia
Italy, the birthplace of perspective, welcomed Dürer's scientific development. However, both Italian architecture and art were still influenced by the Renaissance. While they were pleased with Dürer's contributions to the development of perspective theory, they also criticized his work as "Gothic barbarism." They did not want to enter into the new order of beauty. This was the general feeling among Italians at the time. To Italians, everything beyond their borders was barbaric.
Thus, perspective spread throughout Europe, and its development can be said to reflect the national character of each country.
In Italy, perspective was seen as a universal element in everyday life.
In France, perspective was pursued as a way of life and way of thinking. This can be seen in the quick translation and distribution of ideas that originated in Italy.
In Germany, research into abstract geometric shapes was pursued, and through hard work and study, it was applied to ivory carving, precious crafts, and German-style decoration, as well as research into printing formats. In other words, Germany confined perspective to the realm of specialized work.
Northern Europe followed the path of geometry, while southern Europe followed nature, but both north and south renewed themselves under the banner of perspective.
Italian Revolutionary Ideas for Urban Landscape
Though Italy had dismissed the German Gothic style as barbaric, it created a revolutionary approach to urban landscapes through its perspective-based approach to universality.
This was born in the field of theater. A completely new view of the theater space was created, with a line extending from the slope of the auditorium to an artificial vanishing point. Behind the framed stage, a street appeared, with buildings fading into the horizon. Actors no longer stood in front of merely painted backdrops; they were fully integrated into the landscape behind them.
Theaters are acutely aware of what their audiences desire and what they come to enjoy. Italian audiences now realized that they, along with the actors, had been absorbed into the theatrical space and were standing at the very scene of the play.
This was the beginning of a transformation in Italian urban landscapes. Ultimately, European urban landscapes began to transform into theatrical spaces. Today, when we travel to Florence or Venice, we are captivated by their cityscapes as theatrical spaces, created by the perspective theory of the late 16th century.
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy
（Left) Urban Landscape idea. (Right) The still-remaining landscape of Piazza Signori in Vicenz
The Bibiener family, Italy's greatest theatre architects
(Left and next) Ferdinando Galli Bibiena From Texistbook for art Schho Students. Quater-length drawing of elaborate architectual decorations in perspective.
(Center) Francesco Galli Bibiena Perspective of Large Architectual Space.
(Right) Giuseppe Galli Bibiena Collection of Architectual and Perspectives Dedicated to Charles VI ofHabsburg.
These urban landscapes were created in a short period of time. Architects, stage designers, painters, and everyone else believed in the power of perspective. They felt they had that power in their hands. They created similar spatial environments using the same structural laws of perspective.
And yet, in reality, the painters felt a certain threat from this theatrical space. A sense of crisis that the place where they stood—that is, their painting as a likeness of reality as captured by their eyes, the center of the universe—might disappear.
But the painters also realized that perspective had another side. A work painted using perspective demands that the viewer stand in the same position as the artist. Artists knew that in the course of their creative endeavors, certain obstacles would creep in and occupy their spaces. In other words, within a painting controlled by a single perspective viewpoint, a second space would secretly appear, disrupting the first space.
One hundred years earlier, Leonardo da Vinci wrote: "The painter's imagination is stimulated when he searches for the shapes of faces or landscapes in the stains and mold on the wall."
Leonardo's words point to Salvadori Dali's specialty, double images, for example.
Threatened by the new theatrical space, artists turned perspective to their advantage, creating a second space within a single painting, causing a rebellion of the image and breaking down established painting theories. This type of painting is known as "anamorphosis."
Hans Holbein(1497/98-1543, German-Swiss) "The Ambossadors" 1533 (Right) From A practical guide to anamorphosis.
(Right) Simon Vouet (1590-1649, France) "Eight Satyrs Celebrating the Anamorphosis of an Elephant" c. 1625,
Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Hesse
By the mid-16th century, perspective theory and techniques had firmly established themselves in various fields across Europe. However, perspective treatises continued to evolve, often engaging in self-criticism. This did not mean that specialists in various fields mutually respected each other. The style of the era shifted from Gothic to Neoclassical, and architecture, for example, began to strictly use right angles and straight lines. New and innovative designs were eliminated.
Jacques Androuet du Querso (1515-1686), who wrote treatises based on images of the Arc de Triomphe and other monumental ancient buildings, published a book entitled "The Greatest Architectures of France." In a dedication to Catherine de Medici, he wrote, "The knowledge of perspective guarantees the production of works of art that combine great knowledge with great pleasure." He seemed extremely confident in his perspective exercises, writing that they distilled the essence of all perspective-related books published up to that point. They seemed to think that perspective was a straightforward practice, that it was easy to practice.
But then a lawsuit was filed with the Milan Cathedral Church Council. The lawsuit, between an architect and an architect, claimed that the defendant's bas-reliefs misappropriated what should have been sacred. The court ruled that the plaintiff's claims were invalid.
The plaintiff architect later published the proceedings, revealing the true nature of the lawsuit. It was all about perspective. The key question was whether a work of art must have only one horizon line, or whether two were acceptable. The defendant's bas-relief had two.
Was perspective theory lacking in precision? Is "perspective" a science at all?
Theorists passionately believed that painters did not fully understand their own field of vision and needed to be taught more. Like lamenting a poor student, they felt that these people could not understand common sense. Mathematicians who could neither paint nor sketch claimed that they could paint because they had a thorough understanding of perspective.
On the other hand, one painter recounted that he had received careful and thorough instruction from perspective theorists for many years, but had learned nothing as an artist. In other words, painters knew from experience that coherent works of art did not need to follow strict geometric laws.
In 17th-century France, a battle over the artistic question of what is true about perspective raged for 30 years, with two factions divided.
Clergy and mathematicians claimed that perspective was a scientific truth. Artists claimed it was false.
The crux of the issue can be summed up as follows:
The discovery of strict geometry, or perspective painting, enhanced by the artist's "eye," in order to increase the precision of one's technique for capturing "reality."
The reason why this issue was debated for 30 years in 17th-century France was because the era placed "faith" within "reason." What kind of faith? Faith in rationality.
No one could escape the scrutiny of whether they had this faith or not. Every work has its laws, and with the right laws humans can stand above all phenomena -- this could be called reason, but it is also faith. The bearers of this reason were mathematicians, physicists, and geometers. Artists were not allowed to think that, if they were lucky, they might be able to escape their grasp.
René Descartes published his "Discourse on the Method" in 1637, near the middle of the 17th century. Descartes advocated a view of man as a machine based on mind-body dualism. This promoted the development of modern medicine and led to one direction of modern cutting-edge medical care. It is also an idea that is under attack from the philosophical perspective of modern medicine. In 1641, Descartes published "Meditations" in Paris. His fame was growing by that time, but Voetius, a professor of theology at Utrecht University, harshly accused him of being an atheist. In 1645, the city of Utrecht issued an edict banning the publication or discussion of any books related to Descartes' philosophy.
These facts about Descartes shed light on the true belief in rationality in French society. It's a rather complicated mental structure, but humans must be rational and follow laws. This does not mean the "I think, therefore I am" kind of rationality that Dürer did, but rather a belief in "divine proportions."
In 1636, the year before Descartes published "Discourse on the Method," Girard Desargues, considered the father of modern projective geometry, published a book with the lengthy title, "A Method of Placing Really Given Objects in Universal Perspective, or Quotation." Desargues devised a novel method: projecting three-dimensional objects onto a two-dimensional plane at their actual spatial locations.
Previously, painters had relied on abbreviated and imprecise structures that required complex and cumbersome procedures. While the abbreviated structures were visually compelling, Desargues's invention emphasized absolute mathematical precision. Desargues forced many artists, who still maintained the primacy of their "eye" and "sensibility," to accept their own views, to their frustration.
The debate, which also involved the French Royal Academy, came to an end in 1670. Political maneuvering and kowtowing to superiors also played a role in the perspective debate.
Grégoire Huret, a copperplate engraver of works by Rubens, Simon Vouet, and Sébastien Bourdon, published "The Vision of Portraits and Paintings," in which he refuted Desargues and his school of thought.
However, French Neoclassicism placed ancient monuments on the same level as Paris's slums and artisan workshops. For the French, Parisian life and the ancient Roman Arc de Triomphe were culturally equivalent. This could be said to have directly inherited the Italian spirit of the previous generation. In other words, during the reign of the Sun King Louis XIV, from the mid-17th century to the early 18th century, France believed that a "system of thought" had emerged that would bring about a complete alignment between their own form of existence and past models.
And, with perfect timing, a French translation of Euclid's book "Perspective" was dedicated to Louis XIV with great joy. As a scientific nation, this legitimized the concepts of Euclidean geometry.
Like Italian theaters, French urban spaces were built within perspective and became theaters. Furthermore, perspective was placed within the royal court, allocating positions within social space according to class. This was also strictly enshrined in Christian etiquette books. The etiquette manual written by La Salle in 1713, after which the Japanese school is named, continued to be reprinted for 112 years, until 1825. The extreme rigor in perspective characterized the French.
Perspective treatises continued to be written well into the 18th century, with a back-and-forth, if you like. At the very beginning of the century, there was criticism that the function of perspective was merely to recreate ancient landscapes.
However, this was not the case. The 18th century was fertile ground for perspective. This was not the age of palaces and classical buildings, but the age of cities. People no longer sought to recreate ancient cities in urban spaces. Ruins were recognized as ruins and depicted as such. People extended the theater form to their own living spaces, even to the suburbs. It was believed that spaces set in perspective could be experienced by the entire population.
The following optical illusion is caused by the use of forced perspective in real architecture.
(Left) Francesco Polomini (1595-1667, Italy) "The colonnade at Palazzo Spada in Rome." The colonnade appears to be long, but it tapers off in a funnel shape as it recedes, giving the impression of being about 37 metres deep, but in reality it is only 8 metres.
(Center) Ferdinando Galli Bibiena "Frescoed portico for Villa Fontanelli, c. 1687
(Right) Ector Leffille "Design of Napoleon II Room at the Louvre" 1854~1861
Contemporary anamorphosis
(In progress) (Completed)
(Left) Eduardo Llero (1955- , Argentina) A contemporary artist, he creates giant 3D optical illusions on the streets and in city squares.
(Right) Ferris Varini (1962- , Switzerland) He is working on an art project that creates giant geometric shapes that appear to float in urban spaces.
Among the paintings of this period, there are many depictions of European cityscapes, as people were passionate about collecting views of all European cities.
The most famous painter is the Venetian Canaletto, who built his career as a scenographer.
The collection of another Venetian, architect and painter Giovanni Francesco Consta, contains a remarkable figure leaning against a "camera ottica," also known as a "camera obscura," or "optical camera." A camera ottica is an optical mechanical device used to obtain correct perspective.
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal; 1697-1768,Venecia)
(Left of Top) "he Plazza San Marco in Venice" c. 1723-1724, Musseo Mational Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
(Right pf Top) "The Grand Canal from SAn Vio in Venice" c. 1723-1724, Musseo Natuonal Thyssen-Bornemisza
Giovanni Francesco Costa （1711・1772/73, Venice, Italy)
(Left) ”Landscape painter using a camera obscure under a parasol" (Right) emlargement
Isaac Newton published his book "Optics" in 1740. Newton paid special attention to light and color.
The "camera ottica" resembled a modern combination of a telescope and a wide-angle lens. It featured a box fitted with mirrors and lenses, onto which a rough glass plate was inserted, onto which a real-life landscape, person, or object could be projected in two dimensions. All that remained was to permanently fix the image. Photography was just one step away.
Artists often used this new optical device to render various landscapes with meticulous precision, but in fact, those who used it did not occupy a high position within the official artistic hierarchy. It seems that it was quite some time until Canaletto was accepted as a member of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts.
But our modern eyes and knowledge recognize that Canaletto's landscapes vividly capture the 18th century. Moreover, his paintings were used to reconstruct Warsaw after its destruction in World War II.
(Right of Top) Georg Friedrich Brandel (1713-1783 : Germany) "Depictions using camera obscura" 1769
(Bottom) Camera Obscura
I said that perspective gained strength in the 18th century, but the old arguments continued into the 19th century. Some argued that "perspective belongs to geometers," and Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes declared in his 1800 Revolutionary Calendar that "geometers know nothing about painting."
Valenciennes became interested in the panorama, a large-scale landscape invented by Scottish painter Robert Baker in 1792, towards the end of the 18th century. It offered a real 360-degree view.
I mentioned earlier that "space set up in perspective was believed to be experienced by the entire population." However, something began to happen in people's minds: they realized that traditional perspective techniques made it impossible to see the space behind them.
Robert Baker unveiled his "Panorama of the British Fleet at Anchorage between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wye" in London in 1792, which was met with tremendous praise from Londoners, with long lines forming daily at the panorama pavilion. Then, in 1798, he unveiled his "British Siege of Toulon" in Paris, which thrilled the Parisians.
One commentator stated, "This is an ingenious way of presenting the current state of an entire country or city without violating the laws of perspective, and this new approach to painting is a valuable contribution to knowledge."
While this was certainly true, painting, which did not offer a "rear view," was now threatened by the panorama.
Worse for painting, advances in perspective techniques once again made it obsolete.
In 1822, the Frenchman Louis Daguerre invented what he called the "diorama." This was created by arranging painted fabrics on a transparent screen. He organized a group of perspective artists to assist him in the military vision of regiments.
This was Daguerre's true masterpiece. It seemed that this practical invention would finally put an end to the confused thinking of landscape painters.
But things really are uncertain. Both the panorama and the diorama were destroyed in a fire. Nowadays, we often see small glimpses of panoramas and dioramas in museums, but nowhere is there a circular exhibition space that offers the total vision that Robert Baker built.
As mentioned above, the century of photography, which began in the first half of the 19th century, had its prologue in the Camera Ottica. The phenomenon of silver compounds, such as silver chloride and silver halide, the basis of silver plate photography, changing color when exposed to light was known in the first half of the 18th century. However, this silver compound's photosensitivity was not considered to be linked to photography at the time.
The earliest modern photographs in photography are considered to be those taken of prints by French inventor Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce in 1825. After Niépce's death, his research notes were entrusted to his collaborator, Daguerre, who invented the famous diorama. Although he had no background in chemistry, he pursued chemical research with the sole desire to create images that resembled the real thing, and invented silver plate photography. The daguerreotype was named after him.
Artists Begin to Abandon Perspective
Thus, perspective had developed in painting, but artists began to explore ways to abandon it. Perspective left painting and found a home in photography and television screens, continuing to live on. And so we gained entirely new horizons and perspectives. When we reached this point, what happened to us, and what is about to happen? Let's take a look at that.
With the advent of photography, painters felt that "realism," which made full use of perspective, had lost its effectiveness. At the same time, some artists keen to explore new forms of expression actively used photography in their work.
As if rebelling against the French Academy under Napoleon III, which regarded history paintings and portraits of royalty and aristocrats as the highest form of painting, these 30 painters, who sought a new style in outdoor light, later to be known as the "Impressionists," held their first exhibition in the studio of photographer Nadar. It seems strange to those of us who have been exposed to perspective, but it was Cézanne who initially joined the Impressionists but eventually left them.
I think it's fair to say that Cézanne pioneered the idea of 20th-century painting, and that means liberation from perspective. Of course, this does not mean that all modern painting in the 20th and 21st centuries has completely eliminated perspective. Rather, they have used it quite normally, blended it with contemporary art trends, or even taken advantage of it to sharpen it.
Let's take a look at their works.
First, we'll focus on Cézanne (1839-1906), followed by Claude Monet (1940-1926), who was one year younger and lived 20 years longer than Cézanne; Matisse (1869-1954), who was exactly 30 years younger; Utrillo (1885-1955), who was 50 years younger; the Dutch artist Escher (1898-1972); and Dalí (1904-1989), who was born two years before Cézanne's death.
Cézanne uses multiple viewpoints, or the artist's eye position for bifocal perspective, which was bound by the perspective of previous landscape and still-life paintings, within a single painting. By destroying the validity of perspective and composing his subject using color fields, he can be said to have created a unique world that is possible only in painting. The struggle he undertook to achieve this can be inferred by looking at his works side by side.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906 : France) Monet, who was of the same generation, is said to be a master of Impressionism, but in fact he was very slow to gain recognition even within the Impressionist movement.
Monet attempted to capture the subtle changes in external light over time with paint. Cézanne was amazed by Monet's eye. However, they each carved out their own entirely unique paths. In terms of perspective, Monet's landscapes are within it.
However, I think this is only natural, as light changes between perspectival distances along the time axis of the sun and moon's movement. Even at the same time, the light beyond the horizon and the light bathing the foreground are different. The color tones of the objects are also completely different. Monet was not trying to paint a conceptual landscape. Although Monet's works were largely based on perspective, he expressed subtle changes in light that this theory could not capture. It is understandable that Cézanne was amazed by Monet's eye.
Matisse's works are bright and airy, a style that is typically French. His designs, which anticipated modern advertising graphic design, were unparalleled in his time.
However, Matisse's paintings from his younger days are a far from the light and airy style he would later develop. They are also somewhat dark. For example, if you line up several of his paintings of women indoors, you can see that they all follow the laws of perspective. Even as his works became brighter and airier, it is clear that he struggled to break away from perspective. However, he eventually began using paper cutting, or perhaps around the same time, his works began to move away from perspective and become more decorative, with color fields.
Let's take a look at the Parisian landscape painter Utrillo. He actually began his career as a painter, painting as part of his treatment for alcoholism, but his descriptive abilities were recognized. However, he was not a complete amateur. His mother, Suzanne Paradon, was already a well-known painter at the time.
However, his landscape paintings never completely escape the principles of perspective. However, I should quickly add that, from a scientific standpoint, these are highly intellectual paintings that demonstrate a thorough understanding of the chemical properties of paints from the perspective of oil painting materials. His recognition was far from based solely on his descriptive abilities.
Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955 : France) (Left) Cul-desac of Montmartre" c. 1931.
(Right) "Rue Pontoise-Lebron and Rue des Couterries"
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), mentioned at the beginning, was 80 years older than Cézanne, but he studied perspective based on Western painting, which was imported around the same time as the aforementioned French painters. One was struggling to break away from perspective artistically, while the other was just beginning to embrace it. (*Hokusai's works are listed top.)
Escher studied architecture and decorative arts. His talent was recognized by Samuel Mesquita at a school in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and their relationship continued until Samuel's family was murdered by the Nazis. Inspired by the Arabic geometric patterns of the Alhambra, which he visited with his wife in 1934, and a paper on the continuity of crystalline structures in a crystallography book recommended to him by his brother, a crystallographer, Escher published his own paper, "Regularity of the Division of Planes." While Escher's work incorporates the aforementioned anamorphosis, it also incorporates optical illusions. In fact, there is a predecessor to his work: "Satire in False Perspective," in which William Hogarth's (1697-1746) meticulous sketches were transformed into etchings by his student Luke Sullivan. Hogarth captioned the work: "Design, in any case, without a knowledge of perspective, would be as absurd as the picture shown here." Escher's work exploits this absurdity to create something "interesting."
M.C. Escher (1898-1972 : The Netherlands) (Left of Bottom) "Waterfall" 1961
William Hogarth (1697-1764 : English) (Right of Bottom) "Satire in a False Point of View," published in 1754
Dalí was a painter who developed intellectual fantasy, but his novelty and unusualness can be seen as a brilliant application of classical techniques. He is a painter worthy of being called a technician. He made excellent use of perspective. For Dalí, perspective was the perfect technique for expressing the deep wells of the unconscious advocated by Surrealism. Like Hans Holbein, he used the double image that creeps into perspective to feign paranoia.
Salvador Dali (1904-1989 :Spain) (Left) "The Collapse of the Persistencs of Memory" 1952-54 (Right) "Christ of Saint John of the Cross" 1951
Theoretically, the Surrealists could be said to have advocated the exact opposite of perspective theory. I believe they believed that perspective rigidifies the mind. Social systems, urban spaces, architecture, and art are bound by perspective—they believed that essential human freedom lies in what lies beyond.
Surrealism was an art movement; its role in its time was fulfilled and the movement's ideas faded away. However, I believe its legacy to art was significant. From then on, art came to be entirely dominated by artists' self-confessions. To put it bluntly, "anything goes" became recognized as an expression of individuality.
The Philosophy of the Gaze
Now, I would like to consider perspective from the perspective of the "philosophy of the gaze."
Earlier in this essay, I noted that while painters focused their vision on the horizon to expand their field of view, their gaze toward the sky, looking up at God's throne, also followed the theory of perspective. In these cases, the painter (and the viewer) stood on the ground. However, eventually, or perhaps simultaneously, kings who promoted human rule under the divine right of kings, acting as commanders of God, commissioned artists to create paintings that provided panoramic views of battlefields and to record their military exploits in history. Using their imaginations, painters established viewpoints detached from the earth, like the eyes of God. This is where the theory of perspective comes into play.
Bruegel's viewpoint is also high up on a mountain. As the title suggests, we can see Icarus's feet plummeting into the sea. The next example, "The Tower of Babel," was recently loaned to Japan by the Boismans Museum and an exhibition was held there. This was the artist's second visit to Japan. The viewpoint in this painting is quite high.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (C. 1523-30-1569 : Dutch and Flemish)
(Left) "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" c. 1560. Collection of Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Blussels
(Right) "The Tower of Babel" c. 1568. Collection of Museum BVB, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
The following three paintings depicting Icarus' fall have an interesting viewpoint. They are clearly in the air, but they are not looking down on Icarus. Rather, it would be fair to say they are at the same height as the falling Icarus.
All three of these works were created by the mid-17th century.
(Left) Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640 : German-Belgian) "The Fall of Icarus" 1636-37
(Top of Right) Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620 :Italy) "The Fall of Icarus" 1606-07
(Bottom of Right) Hubert Cuerinus '1619-1687 : Flanders) "The Fall of Icarus" 1663
The following 18th century was the age of intellect and rationalism. It was the era of Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Goethe, d'Alembert (who wrote the preface to the Encyclopedia), Helvécius (author of "On the Mind"), d'Holbach (author of "Systema Naturae"), Buffon (author of "Natural History"), and Casanova (author of "Memoirs").
At the same time, Marcel Brillon says that their century of light was also "an era in which magic, pseudo-mysticism, and a bizarre level of supernaturalism were actively rampant." In other words, it was the era of Piranesi and Goya, who peered through the darkness of night into the depths of human consciousness. It was also the era of the Marquis de Sade, who spent 27 years of his life imprisoned in over 10 prisons.
Michel Foucault called this the era of the "Great Confinement." The classicism of the previous century had imprisoned human irrationality. But it was not just irrationality that was imprisoned. Foucault says:
"On the surface of society, the fortress of confinement separated reason from irrationality, but deep within that fortress, various images were stored in which reason and irrationality blended together to form one whole." This fortress has functioned, so to speak, like a great memory that has long remained silent, preserving in darkness the imagination that people believed they had banished.
Giovanni Battista Oiranesi '1720-1778 : Italy) (Left and Center) From "Prison" series 1760. (Right) From "View of Rome"
Francisco Goya (1746-1829 : Spain)
(Left of Top) "Plague Hospital" 1800. (Right of Top) "A Way of Flying" c. 1819-1824
(Bottom) "The Meadow of San Isidro on his Feast Day" 1788. Collection of Museo del Prado
Perhaps it was because of this era that a man emerged who sought to realize his dream of leaving the earth and flying.
At the beginning of the 18th century, in 1709, Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Guzmão invented the hot air balloon. However, he was accused of heresy.
Seventy-four years later, in 1783, the French Montgoffier brothers invented the hot air balloon. Named the "Réveillon balloon," after further experiments and improvements, it successfully reached an altitude of 2,000 meters and stayed aloft for 10 minutes. The Royal Academy of Sciences took notice, and a public experiment was held at the Palace of Versailles, with King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette looking on. Sheep, chickens, and ducks were placed on board, and the balloon flew approximately 3.5 kilometers at an altitude of 460 meters, staying aloft for eight minutes. Just two months later, the Montgoffier brothers' hot air balloon was large enough to carry humans
I believe that it was at this moment that something important happened for the theme of the "philosophy of the gaze."
When viewed from high above in an airplane, humans must have seemed so tiny. It may have been a God's perspective, but these tiny, pea-sized humans, faceless and without individuality, swarming about like a flock of sheep driven by a sheepdog. Fighter pilots were now able to commit mass murder with less psychological stress, so to speak, than killing and being killed on the hand-to-hand battlefield.
Here is a work by a British fighter pilot and artist depicting his own experiences.
This war painting is clearly different from the battlefield paintings that artists of the past drew on their imaginations. There is no human "smell" here. No smell of soldiers' sweat, blood, leather, or gunpowder. Nothing connects it to the fighter pilots themselves.
And so, in contemporary art, humans began to be represented as a faceless group, as symbols. I believe this is the emergence of perspective without a baseline. Visually, this is true because distant objects are depicted as small.
Modern society can no longer rely on human physiology. This is where the "electronic eye" came into being.
I don't think I need to explain this. Instead of our own eyes, humans can now even identify a pencil lying on the ground here on Earth from across space. Human slaughter is carried out with the exact same sense of fun as computer games. This was brought to everyone's attention during the Gulf War, when missiles were shown flying around lavishly on our home televisions like fireworks.
(Left) The Wright Brothers made the world's first successfulflight in the Wright Flyer, December 17, 1903
(right) An airship from Los Angeles over the Empire State Building under constructio.
(Left) R.A.F.Colonel A.E. Cooper flew his airship over London on July 11, 1919, crashing a weel later.
(Center) Alexander Rodchenko '1891-1956 : Russia) "The Future War" 1930.
(Right) Aerial photograph of metropolis. Photographer unknown.
(Left) Tullio Clay (1910-2000 :Italy) "Screwing into a Target Deep in the City" 1939.
(RIght) Richard Ernst Julich (1903-1992 : English) "Fighter Convoy Attack" 1941.
(Left) Kamino Teruo "The Great Tokyo Air Raid, March 10, 1945, Sumida River" Kamino Teruo Personal Museum.
(Right) Dino Buzzati (1906-1972 : Italy) "The End of the World" 1967.
(Left) Aerial Photograph of a city. Photographer unknown.
(Right: from left to right) Kumita Ryu. Artist unknown. Narahara Ikko " Tokyo Marunouchi, 1950s." photograph.
(Left) Screenshot from a modern 3D fighter jet attack simulator.
(Right) Aerial combat shooting game from Google Play.
(Left) The First spacewalker, Ed White 1963, NASA
(Center) The space probe Juno flying over Jupiter's south pole 2016.
(Right) A photograph of the north polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus taken by the unmanned probs Cassini. Oct. 2015.
Here we have a fantasy work by 19th century British Pre-Raphaelite Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914). Then there is a more recent computer-generated work by an unknown artist. Whether or not you can believe this work as part of the reality of the human world is up to the viewer.
DEcember 30, 2025 (Japanese original, 2017)
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