III. Representation, part I (lecture, Mar 10)

"What makes the very first glimpse of a village, a town, in the landscape so incomparable and irretrievable is the rigorous connection between foreground and distance. Habit has not yet done its work. As soon as we begin to find our bearings, the landscape vanishes at a stroke like the facade of a house as we enter it. It has not yet gained preponderance through a constant exploration that has become habit. Once we begin to find our way about, that earliest picture can never be restored." (Walter Benjamin)

1. Representation of space: the relation between a symbol and an/some idea(s) of a community, a building, ... ...

2. Representation of space and visual culture

3. Project: World Pictures




















4. Linear perspective, landscape and social formation
4.1. Linear perspective ( Leon Battista Alberti, Florence, Italy)
- The horizon line runs across the canvas at the eye level of the viewer. The horizon line is where the sky appears to meet the ground.
- The vanishing point should be located near the center of the horizon line. The vanishing point is where all parallel lines (orthogonals) that run towards the horizon line appear to come together like train tracks in the distance.
-Orthogonal lines are "visual rays" helping the viewer's eye to connect points around the edges of the canvas to the vanishing point. An artist uses them to align the edges of walls and paving stones.
4.2. Imagined relationships
-Subject versus Object: It directs the external world towards the individual
-Detached spectators: Individual is located outside that space
-Power of eyes: It gives the eyes absolute mastery over space.
-Appropriated object: The space is subject to appropriation.

Exploring linear perspective

4.3. Further application in landscape painting
-Landscape painters were sponsored by wealthy urban merchant classes.
-Landscape painting becomes a means of representing wealth and status.
-The space is represented as a natural order
-Historical background: commodification of land and labor, and the rise of capitalism in Europe.
-Example: John Constable (1776-1837) Cornfield

4.4. Alternative representation of rural area in the 19th century
-Gustave Courbet (1819-77)
-Stonebreakers
-A Burial at Ornans











4.4. Landscape is... ...
-A (dominant) way of seeing: realism
-A way structuring the world symbolically
-An imagined matrix of social and power relationships


5. Representation of space and ideology
5.1. Ideology as imagined relations in the social space.
5.2. Ideology as imagined relations between viewers/ producers and the objects.