GESTALT of the image and the Mind

Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Window, 1920 (MoMa, NY)

In Leon Batista Alberti 's treatise De Pictura (1435), where he discusses for the first time in western literature the concept of optical perspective, he mentions, in relation to art that, "it is impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole."

Illustration for Book 2, p.15

More recently, the American poet William Carlos Williams, talks about what he calls action “pruned to a perfect economy”, and goes on:

" To make two bald statements: there is nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there’s nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character. In a poem this movement is distinguished in each case by the character of the speech from which it arises."

I believe the same applies to the concept of design, which is, like Williams says, a well tuned machine, made of all the necessary elements but nothing more, since, by logic, anything not essential would be taking the place of what is. A place where form and function are interchangeable and indiscernible from each other.

Alberti said, in his famous visualization of painting as a window that the observer, from a fixed point of view looks 'outside'. The role of the artist/designer, is to establish the continuity between those two seemingly separate worlds, breaking so to speak, the metaphorical glass that stands between them.

Now, Alberti was not refering to the surface of the painting as a whole as the "window", but rather to the square, quadrangolo de retti angoli, that you draw as a boundary, limit or predetermination of the shape, size, proportion etc where the outside will be seen, like a hole punched in the very fabric of reality.

I only wanted to share these thoughts to make you think about that window, about the possibility to break it, once you know it is there. Is it possible to maintain the coherence or continuity without it? What happens in our media world where the view is fragmented or distributed around millions of tiny windows that together are more than the sum of their parts?



All images, except Duchamp's Window are from The Painting of Leone Battista Alberti facsimile that you can find at the Science, Engineering and Technology Linda Hall Library

The Optical Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer, Art of Painting, c.1666-67

canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This is a response to Francesca's post about camera obscura used as a perspective aid in painting.

Vermeer is without doubt my favorite painter, having seen a very complete exhibition of most of his known paintings in Amsterdam, I can, without embarrassment, say that I had tears streaming down my eyes, caused by the enormous "aura" of his work. I mention aura as in Walter Benjamin seminal work The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction which you can (and should) read HERE.

I was not the only one, the exhibition was very crowded and many people had the same reaction as myself. One thing is to see (mechanical) reproductions of his, or any other artist's work, and another to be in the presence of the actual piece that contains in its very manufacturing and creation a substantial part of a genius life embedded in its pigment particles and jewel-like crystallized varnish, not to mention the time captured by the object itself.

If it is true that according to Benjamin, mechanical reproduction "frees" the work of art from place and ritual so that the masses could then benefit from its formal appearance, yet there is inevitably a great deal of loss for the viewer that does not have access to the original. There is a trade off here.

But this is about Vermeer's famous mastery of light and extraordinary quality of detail, that, when observed up close, reveal abstract patterns and dabs of paint that we would not, in isolation, consider realistic. However when seen in context, our modern eyes, cannot fail to see a modernity and exactitude of vision which would be hard to explain without the possibility that he used a camera obscura as an aid tool in deconstructing the elements of the scene.

Now, I know many artists that cringe at the idea that such a Master might have used such a trick. But ever since the discovery of perspective, everything we see is in fact aided by that "trick"without which we have a hard time making sense of space nowadays.

There are many studies however, that have carefully analysed his paintings according to optical laws and using actual reproductions of a camera obscura and sets replicating the conditions that Vermeer might have encountered in his paintings and from this studies one could conclude that Vermeer, might have indeed, like many of his contemporaries, used it as a compositional aid.

He of course, and this is clear in other careful analysis as well, used a variety of methods to achieve what he wanted, sometimes pinning strings to the wall and using them as a reference point, similar as the Dürer engraving of the early grid assisted perspective shows.

What is a question perhaps, is to think whether the use of the camera obscura influenced his artistic vision by showing optical artifacts that are not commonly perceived by the naked eye, such as glows around shiny objects, "circles of confusion", blurs and exaggerated scales in some cases.

The Hockney-Falco Thesis

Any discussion of theories of perspective is not complete without discussing the Hockney-Falco thesis. The thesis was developed by the painter David Hockney and the physicist Charles M. Falco.

from wikipedia:

As described in Secret Knowledge, in January 1999 during a visit to the National Gallery, London Hockney conceived of the idea that optical aids were the key factor in the development of artistic realism. He was struck by the accuracy of portraits by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and became convinced that Ingres had used a camera lucida or similar device. From there, Hockney began looking for signs of the use of optical aids in earlier paintings, creating what he called the Great Wall in his studio by organizing images of great realistic art by time period. What he saw as a sudden rise of realism around 1420, combined with Charles Falco's suggestion that concave mirrors could have been used in that period to project images, was the germ of the Hockney–Falco thesis.

M.C. Escher

Earlier today when we were talking about perspective upside down on the table and in the readings, especially with Roy Lichtenstein and the artist on the ladder, I naturally thought of Escher. He is, undoubtedly, the first artist I ever took note of. Waterfall was the first drawing I ever saw and it still holds the same "awesomeness" as it did when I was 11 and I didn't understand a whole lot about perspective and illusion.

If you are not familiar with his work and the other works that were inspired by his, I highly recommend taking a look. Here are some videos and pics I think are worth taking a look at.

Shigeo Fukuda has an interesting collection of sculptures recreating Escher's works, such as Waterfall. There are also several Lego sculptures (these, too) dealing with the same ideas of it.

What's even more exciting is how with all the advancement in technology, we are able to experience Escher's works through new mediums, for example, digital design and animation.

That's what is so great about design...you don't have to "recreate the wheel." Just slap some new rims on it.

The broken window

Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Window, 1920 (MoMa, NY)

In Leon Batista Alberti 's treatise De Pictura (1435), where he discusses for the first time in western literature the concept of optical perspective, he mentions, in relation to art that, "it is impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole."

Illustration for Book 2, p.15

More recently, the American poet William Carlos Williams, talks about what he calls action “pruned to a perfect economy”, and goes on:

" To make two bald statements: there is nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there’s nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character. In a poem this movement is distinguished in each case by the character of the speech from which it arises."

I believe the same applies to the concept of design, which is, like Williams says, a well tuned machine, made of all the necessary elements but nothing more, since, by logic, anything not essential would be taking the place of what is. A place where form and function are interchangeable and indiscernible from each other.

Alberti said, in his famous visualization of painting as a window that the observer, from a fixed point of view looks 'outside'. The role of the artist/designer, is to establish the continuity between those two seemingly separate worlds, breaking so to speak, the metaphorical glass that stands between them.

Now, Alberti was not refering to the surface of the painting as a whole as the "window", but rather to the square, quadrangolo de retti angoli, that you draw as a boundary, limit or predetermination of the shape, size, proportion etc where the outside will be seen, like a hole punched in the very fabric of reality.

I only wanted to share these thoughts to make you think about that window, about the possibility to break it, once you know it is there. Is it possible to maintain the coherence or continuity without it? What happens in our media world where the view is fragmented or distributed around millions of tiny windows that together are more than the sum of their parts?



All images, except Duchamp's Window are from The Painting of Leone Battista Alberti facsimile that you can find at the Science, Engineering and Technology Linda Hall Library