Rebecca West
The Arts in New York City
Chase begins chapter three by detailing an artist’s approach when depicting a landscape. In contrast to a camera, which captures what is there, the artist has the ability to create the image himself; make trees bigger than they are, emphasize select details, or leave out details. She then goes into specific examples of pieces of art from around the world that depict landscape.
An artist from ancient Egypt drew a pool such that the fish were in profile and the trees separate. The information about the pool instead of the reality was most important to the artist. In ancient Rome, Empress Livia had a room which had walls covered in an outdoor scene. Landscapes were the “fanciful imaginings of city dwellers who think of the country as a bright and happy world remote of turmoil.” Landscapes of Chinese artists developed standard brushstrokes for sky, water, or grasses. To the Chinese it was something that encompassed both human and divine qualities.
Chase then gives examples of paintings that told a story but did not have the story in the foreground. Instead, these stories were told by tiny characters at the bottom or on the perimeters of the painting. To these artists, the landscape was important, almost more so than the stories they depicted.
Dutch artists during the eighteenth century found that they were able to crank out paintings quicker by using a method of combining light and dark areas to guide the viewer’s eye to the horizon. This meant that the artist didn’t have to study light and air effects. During the nineteenth century, English gentlemen found it “fashionable” to have paintings of their country estates. The artists began to experiment with colour and began using colours that established a feeling of moisture and possibility of growth. America during the nineteenth century also began painting landscapes depicting famous landmarks and visions of the countryside. Mid nineteenth century artists studied the effects of air and light and painted views of gardens or streams.
Eventually artists realized that painting was more than just what one saw. They began to depict views of landscape with an “artist’s eye.” Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is the epitome of this new style of painting; the world was no longer painted exactly as it seemed. It was up to the artist to develop the painting to portray a feeling or an emotion through the canvas. Chase brings up Cezanne’s “Mount Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves.” Although the view does actually exist, the way in which Cezanne painted this landscape was done in a vague and almost geometrical pattern.
Chapter four starts with another connection to photography. Chase describes taking a photograph of a group of people is difficult and requires setting up and practice. She writes that artists have attempted to create the best way to capture a group of people. For example, Egyptian art often depicts people in profile and in two dimensions to create and accurate account of what happened. Similarly used in Mesopotamia, artists encompassed a moment accurately by drawing or painting people and objects in profile. To portray depth, sometimes these objects or people were smaller or bigger. Although not exactly how the eye perceives depth, these works of art did manage to get the moment across. Some of the first paintings found to use light and shadows to portray depth was found in first or second century BC Italy. However, it is likely that the first to use light and shadows to portray depth should be credited to the Greeks.
Greeks and Romans wanted their art to show moments as they appeared, not as they knew them to be. Paintings found from the Romans demonstrate good portrayals of architecture, but perspective was not quite accurate. They did not use vanishing point perspective. Uccello has many paintings that are obvious trials (and errors) when attempting to paint with depth and perspective. Sixteenth century German artist Durer had diagrams to illustrate how he thought “scientific accuracy could be attained.” His methods work for smaller objects, but not when things are close or at the peripherals of our vision. Eventually Renaissance artists experimented with well-crafted pieces centered around perspective. Chase mentions Andrea Mantegna’s “St. James in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua.” These pieces were placed on the wall just above eye level so the audience could look up and under the church, as if they were to pass underneath it.
Elizabeth Chase concludes with the way we observe perspective. Although vanishing-point is most true to what the eye sees, she says that there are other ways to demonstrate perspective in the way that would be truest to the way we actually view the world; for example, the Oriental method to represent space to demonstrate the structure of a building. These chapters focused on how art has changed and matured over the centuries. This can demonstrate the possibility for more change and maybe even better methods of creating art.
