fields
Erwin Panofsky (blast-agent@forum.documenta.de)
Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:44:08 -0400 (EDT)
the history of perspective may be understood with equal justice as
a triumph of the distancing and objectifying sense of the real, and
as a triumph for the distance-denying human struggle for control; it
is as much a consolidation and systematization of the external
world, as an extension of the domain of the self. Artistic thinking
must have found itself constantly confronted with the problem of
how to put this ambivalent method to use. It had to be asked
whether the perspectival configuration of a painting was to be
oriented toward the factual standpoint of the beholder (as in the
quite special case of 'illusionistic' ceiling painting, which goes about
laying the picture plane horizontally, and then drawing all the
consequences from this 90-degree rotation of the whole world);
or whether conversely the beholder ought ideally to adapt himself
to the perspectival configuration of the painting.