Masks from the Elephant Man to Now

Slide 1

Contextualise my current research by showing you briefly some of the work I made while doing my BA and MA. As a BA student, I spent much of my time looking at who are considered great masters, and trying to learn from them by trying to copy their work.

This is an example of this practice – this painting shows a combination of elements from some of my favourite paintings at the time.

Slide 2 / 3

I became very interested in the story of the Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick), and started to make work based on this story.

Slide 4 / 5

Gradually, over the course of 2 years during my masters, my interest in the Elephant Man turned into an interest in masks from all around the world, from different cultures and times.

During BA and MA, an interest also developed in how different artists have depicted their experience of vision by using different forms of perspective. This has carried through to PhD level.

My current studio-research is concerned with trying to depict the visual experience of close-up double vision. This talk will discuss how I came to make artwork that tries to do this, possible outcomes, and possibilities for further research. 

Slide 6 - PERSPECTIVE

The next few slides will show examples of different systems of perspective that have been used by artists:-

Multiple view perspective

Reverse perspective

Isometric perspective (SCROLLS)

Curvilinear Perspective

And….

Slide 11 - Masaccio

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

Linear perspective became the dominant mode for depicting space in Western art since its invention in 1425, as Dunning explains’

Space “…in European painting, has been depicted by the means of several modes of perspective, the most persistent of these methods was Renaissance [linear] perspective”. (Dunning 1991 pp. ix-x)

Slide 12

Linear perspective was invented by the painter and architect Fillipo Bruneleschi in 1425.

What was revolutionary about linear perspecive was The Vanishing Point, the key to this illusion of space. The vanishing point is the point of a linear perspective composition where all of the orthagonals converge, and is usually located at the centre of the horizon line in the picture. This can be seen in the diagram of the Masaccio

Martin Kemp wrote “Linear perspective is a beguilingly simple means for the construction of an effective space in painting” Kemp, 1990, pp. 7

(ACCORDING TO EDGERTON) To demonstrate this, he painted the Baptistery in Florence on a small board and drilled a hole through it. A viewer would then stand exactly where Brunelleshi stood to paint the picture, hold the board to his/her face, and look through the hole with one eye through to a mirror, in which they would see a reflection of Bruneleschi’s painted Baptistery, with the added effect of moving clouds due to polished glass surface.

This presented a spatial illusion which looked real while looked at with one eye.

Slide 13

Linear perspective depends upon monocular depth cues in order to work, these are decribed by Frisby, and some of these can be seen in The Flagellation:

-‘Masking’ – ‘Near’ objects obscure ‘far’ objects.

-Texture Gradients – Nearer elements in a texture cast large images [Frisby here uses the example of a tiled floor, the nearer tiles appearing larger than the distant tiles, even though they are the same size].

-Shading – objects appearing volumetric in depth.

-Position in field of view – The higher the object is one the ground, the further away it must be.

-Aerial Perspective – Distant objects tend to appear hazy and tinged with blue.

(Frisby, 1979, pp. 142)

Even though linear perspective became the dominant form mode of depiction in Europe, certain artists at the time of the Renaissance were sceptical of its ability to depict the subjective experience of space, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, and Michelangelo. For instance, Kemp says “The more Leonardo studied the visual world, the more such problems of perception (such as double vision) asserted themselves …The painter [who uses linear perspective] cannot cope with binocular vision’.

Edgerton, Dunning, and Panofsky agree that people at the time of the Renaissance had to learn how to see in this way.

DUNNING: “though the [linear] system of perspective created an illusion of volume and space and appeared to furnish an objective description of the real world, it was, nevertheless, not the way we actually see” pp. 68

SO WHY DID L.P. BECOME THE DOMINANT FORM DEPICTION IN THE WEST FOR THE NEXT FOUR HUNDRED YEARS?

Slide 14

A contemporary artist who has spent a lifetime experimenting with depicting vision by using different perspectives in different mediums (including photography) is David Hockney. Hockney has an interesting theory on why linear perspective became the dominant form of depiction. In his book, Secret Knowledge (2001), Hockney uses examples of artworks to explain his theory that many artists from the Renaissance to the invention of chemical photography in 1839 (Louis Daguerre), used camera obscura’s to project scenes from life onto their supports, and to ‘trace’ these scenes in order to get the proportions of space and likenesses of faces ‘correct’ quickly.

The camera obscura, and later traditional photography, like linear perspective, Hockney argues, depict the world as if from one immobile eye, and results in pictures that function as ‘windows’ into worlds that the viewer is outside of looking in. And that because lenses and linear perspective developed together, the linear perspective form of depiction became engrained into Western thought, and became the way people think they see (Hockney in Gayford, 2011: 52),  “…from the view of a paralyzed Cyclops – for a split second.” (Weschler, 2008: 6).

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We have seen that much Western art from around 1425 has attempted to depict the experience of vision as if from, one-eyed or ‘cyclopean’ perspective.

Brunelleschi’s demonstration of linear perspective had to be viewed with one eye, and Hockney claims that this form of perspective dominated Western depiction of vision because it had a close link with the development of lenses, which would become photography – which, he argues, is how many think they see the world around them today.

Slide 15

Its now worth having a quick look at the human visual system.

Most humans have two eyes, which are connected to a brain. Our eyes are forward facing, and see from two different positions simultaneously. The fact that we see from two different positions simultaneously makes us see in depth. This is not to say that people with one eye cannot see in depth, and we have seen that artists who use linear perspective count on monocular depth cues to create illusions of space. Animals with eyes facing in different directions use movement parallax to sense depth, which involves moving the head to see how things shift in relation to eachother.  

Light travels through the lenses of each eye, and is projected as a 2-D image on each retina. Apparently, these 2-D images are sent to the visual cortex at the back of the brain, where they are ‘matched’ together. Because these retinal images are projections from 2 slightly different vantages, they are slightly different – the difference in the projections is known as ‘Binocular disparity’. It is the slight difference, or ‘overlap’ in the match, that causes vision in 3-D.

Slide 16

I have found research done by others on two intimately linked aspects of vision – these are binocular single vision, and binocular double vision.

Slide 17

Charles Wheatstone showed that we see in depth because of binocular disparity with the invention of the ‘Stereoscope’ in 1838, which fuses 2-D images into 1 3-D image with the use of mirrors in his first version, and by using magnifying lenses, which are prisms in the second, smaller version.

Slide 18

Here is an example of a typical photographic stereogram, which was all the rage in the Victorian era. The slight difference in the pictures can be seen. A photograph is taken of a scene, and then another is taken of the same scene but from a distance from the original which matches the distance between the eyes of a human.

In the 1970’s, Bela Julesz used computer generated random-dot stereograms to show that we do not need to recognise what we see in order to see in depth. This was probably handy during evolution, it meant that camouflaged animals could be seen as raised against their background…and then eaten.

Slide 19

These pictures show research into binocular single vision by Trevor and Ryan Oakes, who have included the indication of the nose. Your nose is always visible during vision; in normal circumstances, it’s the closest thing to eyes. But this has been depicted before, as we will soon see.

While both eyes are open, the nose is seen twice simultaneously, and creates a sort of frame around the visual field. They have also noticed that the visual field might not be rectangular, as is the case in much linear perspective art

Slide 20

Binocular single vision is what happens when we focus our eyes on an object, causing everything around that object to appear doubled. This was not shown in any of the pictures just presented.

Some artists, but not many, have noticed other visual effects due to seeing with two eyes. Among them is the Welsh artist Evan Walters. Walters noticed that we see things in double if we are not focusing on them. He also noticed that we see parts of our own bodies in our visual field. Walters used a horizontal brush-stroke technique to try to depict the experience of what he called Double Vision. They are smaller, and more compact where he would have been focusing his vision, and become larger and more dispersed the further toward the edges of the canvas they get.

Evan Walters, as far as I know, was the only artist to pursue sustained research into the depiction of double vision.

Slide 22

Other artists who have depicted double vision are Lawrence Gowing, and, surprisingly, Edvard Munch.

Slide 23

CYCLOPS

Slide 24

This is the kind of thing I was looking into collaboration with Rob. All of the time I was making artwork as my own research into the subjective experience of vision. Here are some of the early artworks, which should hopefully show how I have come to my present position, and where I think my PhD might lie.

Slide 24-30 – ARTWORK

FREEDBERG QUOTE?

Slide 31 – 32 – CLOSE UP DOUBLE VISION

Close up double vision happens if you look at something or someone from extremely close quarters. Perhaps you remember doing this with a friend as a child – looking at him or her so closely, that they appear to have only one eye – as in this Evan Walters study.

It is extremely hard, probably impossible for most people, see things in binocular single vision this close up, because it means that the eyes have to remain crossed. Objects are too close for the disparity between the eyes, and would cause them strain to remain focussed. So the eyes almost see ‘through’ objects that are this close up, resulting in the kind of ‘distortions’ that I am currently trying to depict.

Slide 33

From the studio research I had done up to this point, I managed to make a kind of ‘map’, to help me to see what was happening where in my visual field.

DUNNING – PhD Quote

An individuals perception of the world is limited, but reality presents an infinite variety of perceptions, and an artist may depict fresh elements or new aspects of reality not previously represented: in this case the artist will have made an “artistic discovery” (Pirenne 1970, 173)

The emphasis on individual strategies led to specialization, and the twentieth [and twenty-first] century artist was encouraged to adopt a field of interest that was narrowed or reduced to one tightly focused, microcosmic investigation. P. 122