It’s all a matter of perspective. In Alice Chase’s book “Looking at Art”, she analyzes how artists of different time periods viewed their art. Specifically, in this essay discussion will center on two chapters, “The Artist Look at the View” and “The Artist Looks at People and Space. Chase uses many examples to illustrate her point, with the book being full of pictures of artwork. In this way the reader can more accurately see what the artist sees, and thus, the art.
In the third chapter of “Looking at Art”, entitled “The Artist Looks at the View”, Chase analyzes how different artists in different time periods tried to accurately illustrate and use landscapes. She starts by briefly outlining the challenges of drawing scenery, before delving into ancient Egyptian and Assyrian paintings. These peoples drew things in profile, with Chase stating that the scenes were “a kind of map”. Skipping past the Greeks, the Romans used fanciful, imagined landscapes to further whatever point they were trying to get across. Jumping to the East, the Chinese believed landscapes held great importance because they “suggested both the moods of man and the infinity of God”. The Chinese would use different types of brushstrokes to illustrate elements of the landscape in order to differentiate between them. The medieval period is not discussed in any detail, and as the Italian painters of the early Renaissance used landscape mainly as a setting for the main figures and story of the painting, the Dutch are the next culture illuminated. The Dutch and Flemish artists often put their stories off to the sides of their paintings, as in Pieter Bruegel’s “Death of Saul at the Battle of Gilboa”, where Saul and his son’s suicides are placed in the bottom-left of the page as the battle rages through the middle. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drawing landscapes became more popular, and the Dutch once again were the main proponents. A certain style evolved, using “modification of tones” to draw what were often “brownish landscapes”. In the nineteenth century, it became vogue in Britain for “gentlemen to order paintings of their country estates”, and here more interesting and brighter colors began to be used. This translated across the ocean to America, where landscapes were often painting not only factually, but in a manner that would convey “bigness, distance, fertility”. As time wore on and painting grew more and more realistic, some artists such as van Gogh came to view art as a representation of the artists’ “thoughts and feelings”.
In the following chapter, entitled “The Artist Looks at People and Space”, Chase analyzes how artists throughout history have attempted to draw people and things in a more realistic perspective. Once again starting with the ancient Egyptians, Chase states that they “made the human figure into a sort of map”. This allowed the Egyptians to show what was happening, but not with any sort of realism. The Assyrians also drew people in profile, as did the Greeks, although “by the fifth century B.C. bodies had started being drawn to indicate the third dimension”. Italian paintings form the last centuries B.C. show a use of shadows for the first time, although there is evidence this was derived from earlier Greek works. Once again moving ahead to the Renaissance, the issues of perspective and foreshortening became important, as artists desired to draw in a more realistic manner. Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, artists rapidly improved their abilities, with “the ceiling of the Church of St. Ignazio” being an example of “superb technical skill”. Meanwhile, in the Far East, the Chinese and Japanese used an isometric perspective. This method has no vanishing point, and is used by “the Western world to show the structure of a building”. Chase concludes by stating that there is no right or wrong way to use perspectives, as different types are useful for different things.
