Because the perspective of a
painting reveals the painter’s priorities, by nature revealing and occluding
certain objects to the viewer, the perspective dictates the relationship
between the viewer and the painting. Reading Arnheim’s description of this was
exciting. The discussion of oblique lines, convergence, etc. is visually
informative, but emotionally meaningless. To learn that their gestalt implies a
concept to the viewer, a relationship with intellectual and existential
qualities, was uplifting. It meant that shapes can mean something on a level
higher than visual, and it meant that all the paintings I’ve seen have
unknowingly “positioned” me. And the positions have implications of their own.
Arnheim cites The Last Supper, which
accepts us graciously into the event, with wide divergent arms, while also the
arms lead back to Christ, explaining to the viewer who it is we are lucky to
see. The understanding of perspective’s power is like gaining insight into a
visual God, who from behind-the-scenes assures that seemingly self-contained lines
and gradients actually mean something else, very potent, vital to where we
stand. It is a spatial variation on “everything happens for a reason.”
A painting in two-dimensional
perspective, Arnheim says, works by “generously exposing all its content to
[the viewer’s] exploration but at the same time excluding him” (294). This got
me to thinking about the similarities between a painting and a poem. The two
mediums are related, of course, because the artist controls the work of art up
to its finish; she makes artistic decisions regarding what to display, and what
to occlude or leave up to the viewer’s imagination. She decides how separate
the work of art is from its hypothetical viewer. Perhaps in sculptural or
architectural work, there is more opportunity for a participant’s physical
interaction or immersion in the piece. However when it comes to paintings and
poems, the work of art is usually “done,” in its final stage and unchangeable by the viewer’s touch. (They
are unchangeable because the viewer’s destructive touch, e.g. scribbling on a
poem or ripping a painting, destroys the work’s essence and thus no longer is
it a matter of the true work. There is no work, nothing for the viewer to be
“in relation to.” Sculpture and architecture do allow for physical immersion
while still preserving the work.) Thus the poet and painter must position the
work, consciously or not, in relation to a viewer, taking into consideration
that the only interaction available
to the viewer is his cognitive process.
Perhaps the writing within a poem,
or the imagery of the painting, is very explanatory, containing a
self-sufficient set of information that requires no “gap-filling” or interpretation
by the viewer, who is excluded. Or perhaps the viewer very included—powerful,
even necessary to the work, when it comes to interpreting a word or shape; when
it comes to reading at a decided rhythm, or moving the eye along the canvas in
what direction; when it comes to relating the facts of the work to one another
in order to process the story, that chronology within the spatial. These are
powers given or withheld from the viewer, and it means that even when the
viewer is powerless (as in the dimensionally rigid and self-sufficient Egyptian
drawings), the viewer has a position,
and that this is true at all, is as significant and instrumental as whatever
the position implies.
After reading Toveé’s explanation
of personal, peripersonal, and extrapersonal space, I was affirmed by how our
spatial relationship to an object is a deeply rooted force in our visual
systems. Its pull at such a neural level makes understandable why we infer so
much from our positioning. We infer things
about ourselves from viewing Last Supper,
whose central perspective includes and acknowledges us: we are in the room,
deserving of the scene but not a part of it; we are standing up, we are
welcomed, and we are aligned directly with Christ. These implications imply
things to us about us, who we are and
what we are doing in a scene. This is true, of course, if we are viewing a
painting and are wholly immersed in its scene, forgetting that it is a painting—perhaps
this occurs when we’ve completed the cognitive process, and there is nothing
left to position.
It’s helpful for me to translate
the artistic choice and the artistic experience from painting to poetry,
because my mind operates more naturally and enjoyably in the mode of language.
I think the fact that this is possible, this translation of artistic discussion
between the two modes, says something about the pervasiveness of the artistic
process. The following is a poem by Heather Christle, entitled I Am Coming
Over. Here the poem’s acknowledgement of the reader, the deep awareness of
his existence and qualities and position, is akin to “central perspective,” as
in the gracious inclusion of the viewer of The
Last Supper.
I
Am Coming Over
What you do is you have a what if
and then you go what is the
consequence
so it is basically really easy
or also you can complain
like you can go this penis
doesn’t make sense here
and then they have to move it
somewhere else
like go stand in the hallway
and move your penis around
in a slow uneven circle
that you are imagining
in your fresh mind
like you are inside it
and I am like I like that part
because I am also inside it
and you are showing me around
and in one hand I am holding
a glass of Dr. Pepper
and the other one is pointing
at what makes you different
and special and it is a physical
thing
which I am going to touch it
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