The third chapter of Alice Elizabeth Chase’s, Looking at Art, explains how a scene was viewed as time went on. She first compares a photograph to a painting. The photographer cannot change what he or she sees when taking the photograph. However, an artist can use the scenery he or she sees and paint or draw it based on feelings. Every artist may paint a different picture when looking at the same scene since they each have their own perspectives and thoughts that will be found in each of their paintings. This allows messages to be brought across through art.
Artists of many different countries and time periods drew and viewed scenery in different ways. The Chinese used scenery to tell a story. Since paintings were done on scrolls, there was an order in which the audience views the painting. Also, unlike many art forms, blank areas in Chinese art were used to represent sky, water, or mist. This technique would invoke tranquil thoughts into the audience. In medieval Italy, landscapes were mostly used for the background and the story would be centered on the figures in the foreground. An exception of this would be Bruegel’s Death of Saul. In this painting, the story was mostly told by small details in the foreground.
Landscapes grew more popular. Artists started to develop a pattern to make these landscapes without understanding the effects of light and air on figures. Artists started use sharp contrasts between light dark that carried the eye to the horizon of the picture. This pattern led to Europe’s brown colored landscapes in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, people wanted pictures of their mansions to admire its current state. The artists that worked on these paintings grew interested in color and atmosphere. John Constable, a well-known landscape painter of the time, was known for the use of fresh colors and giving a sense of moisture from the agriculture of his paintings.
When cities began to spread and America began to expand during the nineteenth century, paintings to these large new areas were made. Paintings that express the vastness, distance, and fertility of these new lands became popular. However, during the mid-nineteenth century, pictures of small areas like gardens, fields, and streams soon took over. These sceneries allowed artist to analyze the effects of light and air. As they studied, they became like a photographer in the sense that they were capturing the scene for what it is. Artists soon learned that art is an expression of thoughts and feelings. Paintings aiming to get an exact picture lost preference to pictures whose details were changed based on artists’ desire to express feelings. Art may help a viewer recall a memory or experience, but they offer new ways to see and provide a stronger connection between nature and the human race.
Chase begins the fourth chapter by discussing how it is difficult to capture multiple people in action in a single picture. Details could be hidden and ultimately lessen the impact of the art. Throughout history, however, different civilizations have created art involving multiple people while still delivering a story and purpose.
The Egyptians drew the human body similar to a map. The drawings were very two dimensional and liked shadows and light. Human figures were colored different shades when overlapped with one another. The limbs either face directly at the viewer or to the side. The bodies may not be true to reality, but the image told stories with their clear pictures and hieroglyphics. Mesopotamians also drew humans similar to the Egyptians. They painted on the wall and suggested depth by overlapping people together. However, the Mesopotamians showed significance through size. This helped viewers receive information on people and places shown in the art. The Greeks did not have art on walls like the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Instead, most of their art was on pottery. People were drawn in profile and, unlike the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, were drawn with three dimensional qualities. Limbs would be in proportion and anatomically possibly as the figures would be turned to different degrees. During the first to second century, artists started using shadows to show depth in Italy. They kept to body proportions and the ground appeared to have depth with the shadows. Even so, the bodies stood out by being associated with light.
Chase suggested that people may have notice perspective but never made an attempt to analyze it due to the fact that “it is not true”. Artists mostly likely have noticed how the man farther away looks smaller than the woman, who is smaller than the man, closer to them. However, since they knew that the woman is actually smaller than the man, they concluded that what they saw wasn’t true and that they should draw based on what they know.
perspective but never analyzed them, Perspective was first studied in the middle ages. Not all lines were on the horizon line. During the fifteenth century, vision was studied scientifically. An artist, Ucello, believed that objects did not look right because of the errors. However, since, vision cannot be explained, human eyes are shown to be “restless” and will always be looking at different things at different times unlike what a picture may imitate.
In the sixteenth century, Albrecht Durer wanted to find how scientific accuracy of perspective could be obtained. He put a nail behind an artist and stretched a string from the nail to a point on a lute (based on the artist’s view). Dots would be made for every point. Once enough dots were drawn, they were connected to form the picture of the lute. However, this technique would work well for mostly small objects from a distance. Close objects or objects at the side of vision would not come out as easily or nicely. Despite the distortion, the human mind would still correct the view. The interest for perspective grew during the Renaissance. By the end of the seventeeth century, artists had mastered perspective for compositions in space with lines that met at a vanishing point. The point of view of the art would tend to be from the average height of a human. This realistic art was praised at the time. However, the admiration for realistic paintings would diminish as viewers would search for art with meaning.
Chinese and Japanese art also had perspective but of a different kind. Parallel lines would never meet at a vanishing point. In addition, the point of view was located above. No shadows were used. Body proportions weren’t emphasized as the art better showed the settings of the paintings rather than the people.
