Here I Stand - Hardcover

Smith, Norris Kelly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231084269 ISBN 13: 9780231084260

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1994

Synopsis

This study of perspective in Western painting explores the manner in which pictorial space embodies both social and ethical meaning. The author argues that Renaissance painters developed perspective not only as a technical matter, but also to declare a stand in relation to church and state.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Interpretations in Art is a series dedicated to the history, theory and criticism of art. Its aim is to make available interpretive essays that offer new insight into the complexities of art and the critical methods for understanding them. Intended as a forum for the presentation of a wide range of issues and approaches, Interpretations in Art will promote studies on fundamental problems of expression and communications in the visual arts; it seeks to encourage consideration of the structures of meaning as well as the contexts and conditions of creation and reception.

Reviews

In a scholarly study of interest primarily to art historians, Smith argues that the development of perspective in the Renaissance and its subsequent use must be understood in a social context. Filippo Brunelleschi's picture of a Florentine piazza uses perspective to evoke a "level playing field" for public-spirited citizens; and for the next five centuries, as Smith demonstrates, perspective was bound up with the idea of "public man": the Christian citizen as a responsible participant in the life of the community. However, as people's sense of the legitimizing function of civil, domestic and religious institutions declined, so did perspective, contends Smith, professor emeritus at Washington University. With Picasso, any effort at defining an emotional bond that might link the painted figures and the observer in a perspectival context was abandoned, as modern art largely jettisoned themes of character and community. Smith develops his sweeping thesis through a close, analytical scrutiny of 90 reproductions of works from Masaccio to Le Corbusier.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231084269
• ISBN 13: 9780231084260
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191