Perspective

comprehensive tutorial


 "Painters have used this device for several hundred years in Western Art, and psychological corroboration for the long of this structure has been found in the research of the perceptionist James Gibson. His psychophysical theory of perception is a partial explanation as to why the control of the ground plane has server as such a useful structural device in painting. He suggests that man understands physical space as object residing on surface that man understand physical space as objecst residing on surfaces that slant away from the viewer, particularly the surface of the ground plane as it receded (Gibson 1950, 6).

This ground surface furnished support for movement and aids the equilibrium of the body, posture, and locomotion. Previous psychological theories of spatial perception operated on the assumption that space was perceived as an object or an array of objects arranged in nothing but air. Gibson, in contrast, insists that space is actually perceived as 'a continuous background surface (Gibson 1950, 6). 'A pilot who cannot see the ground or sea is apt to lose touch with reality in his flying, a visual feild of blue sky, or fog, or total darkness yields an indeterminate space which is the nearest thing to no space at all.' (Gibson 1950, 60).

 'When we are walking in the outdoor world, the lower portion of our visual field is filled with a projection of the terrain: This is the kind of world in which our primitive ancestors lived. It was also the environment in which took place the evolution of visual perception in their ancestors' (Gibson 1950, 60-61)"

Changing Images of Pictorial Space: A History of Spatial Illusion in Painting By William V. Dunning