the Science of Drawing or of Art

[zi...@interport.net]

It is tempting to discuss this subject. But the context created is
incredibly antiquated.

In the nineteenth century Albertian perspective, thedistant model for
conventional Western perspective, was considered a great discovery obn
a level with the telescopic discover of the moons of theouter planets
which Galileo made. For at least 80 years, the word which would be
used in a conservative academy would be a great "invention". There is
nothing natural or absolutely true about Albertian perspective and the
kind of perspective most artists who thought they were doing it a
"science" us now. The nbew perspective is really based on a 17th
century Bolognese invention, described in the title of the book, back
then as _'How to do perspective without knowing the rules." [Come si
puo fare la prospettiva senza sapere le regole]. This is visual
perspective. Visual perspective is the kind of perspective you get
when you figure out the vanishing point [in one point perspective],
and then take all of the orthogonals [lines ate right angles to the
picture plane] to the vanishing point. You have no t oncstructed the
proportion of you nearest form as a proportion of the nearest observed
form. You are not measuring, nor are you using cratilation-as Durer
did before the invention of 2 point perspective] to find every line
which is not either parallel to the picture plane or ate right angles
to it. Cratilation is when you plot a series of points on such a line
in one point perspective. No one painting in a couple of hundred
years has worked this way. Even David in his drawing of the French
Senat in the nude on a perspective grid, in the "Oath of the Tennis
Court" did not use Albertian perspective.

Now, if Albertian and post albertian ignorant perspective are the
"truth" what do we do with the competing perspective system invented
in the samr generation in the same town [Firenze=Florence] by
Brunelleschi? His sytem, which can be seen most clearly in the sinopia
[drawing] which is all that isleft for the lunette over a doorway by
Paolo Uccello of the Virgin and child was based on a binocular
crossing of two different vanishing points. This, of course is the
thing most oftenmissed in the Albertian system. It is a system for a
one eyed person. Uccello used it consistently, but not alone. A
mistaken analysis some years back described "the Flood" in the
Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella, by Uccello as a catalog of all
the perspective mistakes itwas possible to make. In fact, it is a
virtuoso performance wthin the Brunelleschian system. Some of the
giants actually are wearing those complex geomtrical forms which
Uccello loved to draw-as examples of his virtuosity. But the value of
both of these sytems was not representation only, but also metaphor.
They were a bout a view of the world which led their society rather
than following it. For a short period of time during the Renaissance,
the painters and architects were actually ahead of the pure
mathematicians. The whole category of several line meeting and the
mathematical "laws" which govern that event were developed by
mathematicians whop studied with the painters. The posthumous geometry
of Perio Della Francesca-claimed originally by his student as his own
is a case in point.

But there are other systems of construction which Albertian
perspective does not supplant. For one thing no artist in the
Renaissance ever painted his figures in perspective[except in the case
of dome painting. The figures were always painted as seen from
directly in front whether they were towards the edge of the space or
the center. Perspectively accurate figrues looked too weird and
bothered the Renaissance sensibility. Even the figures in dome
paintings [like those of Corregio in Parma] are painted in
perspective, but near the center of the dome or the edge , all the
same in foreshortening.

So perspective was never used-even in terms of representation, in a
completely mathe matical or "scientific" way. There were always
adjustments necessary for purely representational reasons.

But that does not end the kind of changes which were made. First of
all in the true Albertian system, such artists as Peiro della
Francesca plotted out the arrangement of the forms on the ground plane
so that certain movements over the groundplane would be likely to
occur. But that was not enough, forms had to be symplified, gerstures
directed. figrueds placed, clothing colored and arranged - so that the
eye would travel notonly over the ground plane but flying across the
whole of thepicture plane through the space and back again to validate
its three dimensionality. In other words, perspective was only one of
the methods which was used to construct pictorial space.

For many years I looked for some sign in writing about these
othermethodologies-from the period. The John White Book "Birth and
Rebirth of Pictorial Space" had a good deal of insight [although
ultimately I disagreed with his evaluations] but hewas a contempoorary
of ours.

About ten years ago I discovered a book writtenin the 18th century by
the head of the academy inPerugia which Called Pictorial Composition
which begins by saying he is writing down, for the first time, the
kind of shop practice painters had been using for a long long time. He
then goes on to discuse the movementof the ey, with diagrams and an
analysis of one of his own paintings on a traditional theme "the
Calumny of Apelles". By the way the book is known, it is in the
bibliography of the period {Schlosser-Magnino] but it has not been
properly evaluated by the art historical community for what it is. It
is, also part of a series of three treatises which he hoped would
include all of what was then known. the othertwo parts were his
edition of the LEonardo DaVinci treatise and a treatise on
perspective. At the moment I am not getting his name, but I will
remember it if any of you Italian speakers care. Bruno Civitico has my
copy ofthe book and wrote a series of articles on it for that super
right wing Americn art magazine [a tiny little thing]. Put out by the
Newington Cropsey Foundation.

In 1961, I was givena class to teach by the then chair of a new
program at Pratt. The program was a painting program but not in the
Illustration depratment [which had been all theyhad]. The first year
students had been carefully selectedfromamong thebest in theschool and
they were good. Quite a few had been in my two dimensional design
classes, others had had 2D with Philip Pearlstein, som had Leland Bell
for a teacher, Drainwg had been taught by Charles Cajori and Mercedes
Matter, 3D by SidneyGeist and Walter Erlebacher. I had them for a
second year course in design which was supposed to substitute for art
ed. design. I taught the course, then as a course in perspective and
projection systems-and theirrelation to or opposition to
Cezannesque/Cubist seeing. The students ahd all had someone on the
Hofmann-Leger-Zadkine-Holty Etc, line and all could compose in
modernist terms. None could as yet do Albertian perspective. I taught
it as well as a whole series ofother perspectival systems. Chinese
reverse perspective [used in scrol paintings which you unroll
horizontally] parallel perspective as in Romanesque painting and
anothr Chinese convention, Orthographic projection, Etc. Some of the
student did become interested in such systems, but within the context
of pictorial understanding-not as the truth of nature. I still like
the work that some of them produce, althoughmy headhas beensomewhere
else for many years.

Anatomy. One of the problems with anatomy is that it is only
reasonable if there is a drawing context for it to fit into. There was
in the renaissance. There can be now, but more often than not there
isn't. A recent consummate anatomist was the Swiss artist Hans Erni.
He was a modernist of sorts, but he never put together in his work an
understanding of picture making. His work was skillful but dead.
An Anatomy book by a recentartist whom I know only from the book us
Jeno Barcsay, a Hungarian. But that book is based on lookling at every
form only as a series of interlocking oviodal and hemispherical
solids. The hand of modern artists -as described in Boime's book on
the academy [towards which, by the way he is much more favorably
inclinedthan I am]- was permanently changed by the developing 19th
century zeitgeist. I thinkI have written about this here. Thchange
occured when a new curriculum written by Madame Cav'e was accepted by
the state in the 1850s or so. Delacroiz was on theboard which approved
of it. Instead of working in the jeno barcsay method with cross
hatching, the students all over France were to be taughtto get
accurate outlines implying gesture and posture and then add parallel
lines for tones. The kind of drawing thus produced implies,
necessarily, a kind of planar space. If you have learned tomake such a
space and you want to make figure compositions in it, then anatomy
makes sense. If you haven't, anatomy is for likeness only and you can
only become an illustrator-as in the comic books.

Learning to draw is a complicated matter. I can understand that an
Australian could hate his.her context and hate the indoctrination in
the absence of knowledge which he/she has experienced, but the
knowledge that you wantstarts out with the lack of knowledge which you
perforce possess, so you are looking for thewrong knowledge.

In 1976 I was invited by the Victorian College of Art and the State of
Victoria to come there. I was artist in residence at the school [I met
Counihan who was still alive and whom I liked-he was an old red].
I also lectured all over the state of Victorian at art schools. The
occasion was an exhibition of American realist drawings which was
touring through the state. I was in the show as were Bill Bailey, P.
Pearlstein, A. Leslie, H. Bruder, Larey Day, Natalie Charkow, Etc.
My drawing inthat show [either a still-life or a figure in
allprobability] was modeled in the round and if a figure constructed
with some knowledge of anatmoy operating.

The school which was my host, Victorian College of Art, which was at
that timethemost prestigious in Australia, had a tradition of having
one faculty member paramount and responsible for everything. Usually a
very well known Australian painter. The students entered directly from
high school. There was not course of study, ther wer no classes, there
was no curriculum. Each student was given a piece of space with easel,
lockers, tables Etc.and told to go ahead. Visiting critics-the dean
and whomever he chose, would come around an offeradvice, criticism and
information only as it arose in their minds as potentially useful to
what the students were doing. I thought and think, to this day, that
it was the worst school I had ever seen. The dean though, was not so
bad. His name is William Kelly and he got his degrees from what was
then called Philadelphia College of Art and some other school.
Hismostimportantteacher had been Larry Day a truly cultured man and
aknowledgable painter-and a nice man, too. Kelly tried to do with
moral suasion what tradition and I assume a board of trustees wouldn't
let him do. He couldn't start any classes, so he started a sketch
class to which he himself came and invited the students to come too.
He didn't actually criticize student work at the class but he gave an
example and he could criticize it later. It was a revolution!

So I can understand anger and hatred for modernist schools from
someone from down under.

The problem is that you have to have more understanding to criticize
them well and chart out a useful counter direction than you will get
from having gone to school within them. So right now you don't have a
clue. If this makes you mad, I hope it also makes you think. Do you
want to learn and do good work. Well start thinking. Thus far all you
have done is react against something bad without having the least idea
where to go except where you think they haven't been.

Gabriel

By the way it is John White who wrote The Birth and Rebirth of
Pictorial Space

and Cynthia and Harrison White who wrote Canvases and Careers.

I think both of these can provide different kinds of insights.