Tracing perspective n+1: a text

Abstract

Linear Perspective is a tool for constructing a view, and a contrived modus operandi for seeing a scene; a tool for conceiving and perceiving architecture and space. Perspective quickly became the dominant model of representation of architectural space after it's 'discovery' by Alberti during the Renaissance. This model of representation ignores the vision of the body; the mobile, multi -focussed eyes of human perception and reduces them to a single point, a single disembodied eye which is reduced to a measuring device to geometrically construct scenes. Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968) was influenced by growing trends in the early 20th century in questioning the traditional modes of representation. Painters, in particular, such as Cezanne, Picasso, and Braque were interested in the idea of a multiplicity of viewpoints, and representing 3-dimensional space without the use of the constructive method of linear perspective. See The Twentieth Century for a concise portrayal of this era in art. It is within this context that Duchamp entered the art world. He became interested in a new mode of artistic expression that was not concerned with visual impressions, coining the phrase 'anti-retinal' in relation to his work and to the ideas he was trying to express. His main concern was established early in his career when he noted "Can one make works that are not works of art?"Duchamp quoted from "The Creative Act", Art News (New York), vol. 56, no. 4, Summer 1957.; a statement meant to lay bare the conventions of art: how it looked, as art, and how it to be seen as art. Marcel Duchamp worked with ideas in of linear perspective, with particular interest in how to re-embody the eye, relocate it within the body a human, imperfect, perceptive and desiring body. Many of his works reflect his obsession with the human body and it's secretions, excrement and products, Fountain, 1917 (Fig. 2) is probably the most famous example of this.