David Peat

102 From Certainty to Uncertaintyfigures and objects, he has them appear to leave the picture plane andleap out into the viewer’s space. With Caravaggio, bowls of fruit areabout to fall, chairs crash down, arms are flung into our faces. Nevertheless,all this was done to heighten drama by representing the visualactuality of things in naturalistic ways.Perspective is a marvelous tool for producing a particular type ofillusion of reality. Yet one should never forget that, even in the mostnaturalistic of paintings, it remains an optical trick. It does not reallyrepresent the way we see the world but, because of the prevalence ofperspectival paintings over the centuries, we have come to assume thatthey are indeed the only realistic way to depict the external world. Infact, it depicts the world as seen by a one-eyed person with her headclamped into position and at a single instant of time. It is the samesystem of representation used in the camera, where a lens focuses animage on a photographic plate and the shutter is opened for a fractionof a second. Yet, as we saw at the start of this chapter, the human eye isnever fixed. It is constantly scanning the visual scene. Likewise the headmoves to take in different glances while the brain integrates all thisinformation into a coherent whole. When we shift from thinking aboutrealism as an objective way of representing the external world, to askinghow we can convey our subjective experience of seeing the world,then many other ways of painting open up for us.The painter David Hockney argues that the device of perspectiveoriginated out of artists’ desire to paint the crucifixion. Of all forms, acrucifixion portrays a precise instant of time, in many cases the momentwhen Christ gives up the ghost. Likewise, it is natural for Christto be at the center of the painting, flanked by the two thieves and withMary and the disciples looking up at him. Each gaze is focused on thiscentral figure; time is frozen and perspective captures this scene mostperfectly.Whatever its origins, perspective continued to dominate Westernpainting through the centuries. It was applied not only to religious butalso to secular subjects. Perspective also provided a realistic way ofgathering a number of people together in a group or crowd.Rembrandt’s Night Watch, for instance, provided a way to satisfy theegos of rich burghers in a group portrait.