![]() ![]() Luckily, we have one such painting in the program, John Haberle’s “Torn in transit”, so this difference can be easily illustrated: in this painting, the picture plane coincides not with the front plane of the picture box, but with its back plane (the picture plane pretends to be the wooden surface of the box depicted in the painting). That’s why “ trompe-l’œil” paintings - that is, paintings that deliberately try to fool the eye, to create a “real” illusion - tend to “build” a “positive pictorial space”, where at least some objects (or parts of them) seem to be located in front of the picture plane. In a sense, we can both experience the illusion and see it for what it is. This is sometimes called “negative pictorial space”, and, for a modern viewer at least, it keeps the illusion of space “at bay”, under conscious control - we can see both the picture plane and illusion of pictorial space at the same time. That’s what we’ve learned to expect from a pictorial space - to be located just behind the picture plane, so that it works as a kind of “glass wall” between the viewer and the pictorial space. By “cultural default”, the picture box’s “front plane” is the picture plane - all that happens in the painting’s pictorial space, happens behind the picture plane. To talk about this illusion and its role in the painting, it will be convenient to use the concept of “picture box” - the imaginary container of the painting’s content. ![]() That’s why the 3D illusion in painting is possible: because our brains are accustomed to reconstructing a 3D reality from 2D visual data. The 3D “effect” arises from “interpretation” happening “deeper” in the brain, and determined, to a large extent, by our prior knowledge of how the reality ought to look like. When we consider this tension between 2D and 3D, the plane and the space, in painting, it’s helpful to remember that the raw visual data our eyes receive “in real life”, without mediation of painting, is also “2D”: our “reconstruction” of the visual reality in front of us is based on the patterns of neural excitations on the two “planes” of our retinas. You will be confronted with it in the process of your final study, so it may be useful to explore how it works in the masterpiece you are studying in advance. A tension between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality lies at the very heart of the art of painting. Last week, we studied the “geometric” organization of the picture plane - trying to look at the painting just as at the two-dimensional object it really is, and disregarding (or at least trying to disregard) the illusion of space it creates. From “Learning how to Learn from Masters: Module 3. ![]()
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