Some new problems in perspective
pp. 303-316
in: Andrew Harrison (ed), Philosophy and the visual arts, Berlin, Springer, 1987Abstract
The title of this paper is a shameless pun. It plays on the polysemy of "in perspective." The essay attempts to put into perspective some problems which for the most part are generated by the new technologies which constantly spawn new candidates for artforms. (Of course, getting something in perspective is a curious metaphor for seeing it correctly. Perspectival techniques intentionally deceive. They don't show things as they are. Indeed, using this miscegenetic metaphor is part both of the shamelessness and of the strategy of the paper.) There is a sense, it can be argued, in which there are no new problems in perspective. The problem of perspective for the Brunelleschi, to Alberti, to Vasari, to Leonardo: the representation of deep dimensionality in perception, the illusion of three dimensions produced on a two dimensional surface. And the old problem has always had two prongs; how to produce the illusion, and how to explain it.