OL WEEK 7 NANCY GOLDRING ON PERSPECTIVE

THE LONG VIEW by Nancy Goldring

INSCRIPTION FROM A STATUE OF KING DJOSER, THIRD DYNASTY OF EGYPT BY MASSIMO SCOLARI.

Oblique Drawing:

A History of Anti-Perspective

While the study of articial and natural perspective has

yielded a huge literature, its inverse has received only sporadic attention. Massimo Scolari"s Oblique Perspective: A History of Anti-Perspective intends to shift the balance by redirecting our attention to non-(or anti)-perspective. As architect, scholar, and artist, Scolari is eminently qualied for the job.

Its wealth of historical material notwithstanding, Scolari"s

volume doesn"t qualify as a true history, nor does it offer an

alternative to traditional methodologies in the eld, despite its avoidance of the standard chronological structure. In fact the fragile framework imposed by chapter divisions proves unable to contain the ow of text that meanders through time and place, turning back upon itself as it wanders through Assyria, Egypt, China, etc. Scolari dawdles in tangential discussions, leaping in what seems random order from one example to the next. While each episode is engaging, one nds no overarching principle or cohesive structure with which to connect the tales. As a result, his story overwhelms when it should instruct, perplexes when it should illuminate. The book is an extravaganza of digression.

In fact, this is not an entirely new topic. Yves-Alain Bois opened

the conversation with his excellent article, "Metamorphosis of Axonometry," some 30 years ago. Unlike Scolari he restricted his discussion to the rebirth of axonometry in the 20th century in the work and writings of such avant-garde artists as Van Doesberg, Malevich, and Lissitzky. He found the origins of axonometry in perspectival treatises and scientic, cartographic, machine, and military

illustrations. He then proceeded to suggest the relevance of these early applications to 20th-century architectural practice. He spotted the difculty Scolari himself faces in attempting a comprehensive survey, arguing that: There are several different $ideologies" of axonometry. It has been used in many different, often contradictory ways: Jesuit strategists of the 18th century used it quite differently than Lissitzky, Albers, and painters of the Japanese Renaissance, or Russian constructivist architects. Scolari may have seen the problem but doesn"t resolve it. ! Other troubling issues plague Scolari"s book. Oblique Drawing

promises to be a scholarly work with its encyclopedic text and copious notes. But the reader has to wade through two dense chapters before chancing on Scolari"s denition of his subject tucked away in Footnote 88 in Chapter 3. This essential information surely belongs in the main body of text, and his lengthy excursions into different cultures would be better slipped into footnotes or even a separate appendix. His many remarkable insights disappear in the proliferation of information and the book fails to be user-friendly for those accustomed to the ease of internet research. ! Understanding images in their own time frame remains a

complicated task. Scolari struggles to tease the original meaning out of the drawings by providing a wealth of apposite documents to guide our interpretation of the fascinating little black and white illustrations that pepper the text and notes. As an artist and scholar he is

remarkably well suited to a purely visual analysis informed by his wide knowledge. While we do learn much from his careful looking when it is offered, he frequently falls back on the treatise as the sole reliable source for deciphering meaning. As the late art critic and philosopher Leo Steinberg explains in his essay The Mute Image and the Meddling Text, such dependence solely on textual interpretation may prove misleading and often produce disturbing inaccuracies. Artists and architects tend to break rules or reinvent them as they work. ! Further along in the book Scolari examines some non-Western

proto-axonometic images. Though he dedicates some notable pages to a discussion of Egyptian visual culture, he doesn"t indicate how his exploration diverges from or expands upon the denitive earlier work by the distinguished scholar Heinrich Schafer whom he does cite. More signicantly, he neglects Emma Brunner-Traut"s epilogue that explains Schafer"s notion of aspective (her term), or what Schafer believed to be the guiding principle in Egyptian representation. Similarly, Scolari revisits much of the same material that rst appeared in Samuel Edgerton"s chapter on Jesuits in the East in The Heritage of Giotto!s Geometry without contributing new insights into the way misreading may alter our interpretation of illusionism. ! Scolari initiates a gripping exploration of some syncretic

manifestations of oblique perspective. Most studies on the subject

occur in monographs on specic monuments such as the relief spandrels that once decorated the facade on the temple of Amavarati in India or the Theodosian Obelisk base in Istanbul. These works reveal the complex way remnants of Greco-Roman perspective systems combine with local forms to generate a new visual language in which traces of older systems meld with newer ones for the expressive needs of an evolving visual culture. Scolari"s brief discussion of syncretism serves to identify the need for a more profound investigation of this complex subjectone that might include such literary sources as Orhan Pamuk"s historical murder mystery My Name is Red. (The novel hinges on the exposure of the betrayal of Turkish painters who secretly learned the perspective technique of the indel Frankish masters. The tale reveals the allure of Western perspective for the miniaturists despite its static, monocular system.) Scolari might have touched on the deeper issues behind the way Western perspective challenges Eastern beliefs that impel their mode of representing space. ! Yet, despite its weaknesses this enormous compendium, a

result of his wide-ranging teaching and the conclusion of a long personal involvement, does provide an excellent resource for artists, architects, and historians. And, nally, what Oblique Perspective does achieve is to underscore the need for a more comprehensive study, or perhaps even many studies.!

But the book"s greatest contribution is the way it enhances our

understanding and appreciation of Scolari"s exquisite drawings, recently shown at Yale University School of Architecture. Here, Scolari provides a full-page reproduction of Joseph Futenbach the Elder"s Mannhafter Kunstspiegel done in 1642. One quickly detects how this obscure work shares a powerful afnity with the way Scolari"s magical buildings inhabit space. As we follow his choice of illustrations we begin to grasp the relevance or even urgency of this subject for his own work. We are indeed grateful for the chance to enrich our comprehension of the way his unique vision has evolved and the importance of its place in the history of representation.

BELLINI AND GANDAHARA by Nancy Goldring

One often experiences a peculiar sense of disorientation when museums shift their collection around. After a summer in Italy, I was disconcerted that Bronzino"s Young failed to greet me as I entered the Frick Museum, and was relieved to stumble upon him later in the large viewing room. But such reordering doesn"t always inspire discomture. My encounter with Giovanni Bellini"s St. Francis in the Desert, which had been transferred to a sky-lit space, proved a delight and revelation. I was stunned by its size, for the panel painting appeared to have grown to large scale. And in its new location, the Bellini had become the protagonist in the luminous oval room free from Titian"s distraction. ! There was good reason for the move, for the St.Francis was

being featured as part of a project is coordinated by the Frick"s Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Susannah Rutherglen in conjunction with curators and conservators at the Frick and the Metropolitan Museum. The panel had been sent to the Sherman Fairchild Paintings Conservation Center of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of 2010 for technical examination by Paintings Conservator Charlotte Hale. Her ndingscombined with the input of art historians, conservators, scientists, and educators consulted during this studyresulted in a better understanding of this work and of Bellini"s oeuvre in general. The results - a more advanced, digital, and higher resolution form of infrared reectography, as well as X-

radiography, microscopy, surface examination, and paint analysis have been made available in a new interactive media room as well as on line at the Frick site. This innovation in exhibition design seems a positive one for the public as it allows the viewer to move between painting and screen, thereby utilizing the digital information immediately. The organizers hoped their efforts would address the key the question of whether the Frick St. Francis depicts a stigmatization. In conventional images of this event, the saint appears in the act of accepting the wounds of the Crucixion: he bends on one knee as ve rays sent by a winged seraph on a cross penetrate his hands, feet, and side. Bellini"s saint, by contrast, shows only two barely palpable stigmata on his hands. He stands rather than kneels, and does not communicate with a divine messenger. The technical evidence gathered during the study conrms that St. Francis was never a traditional depiction of a stigmatization: for there is no seraph present, nor did the saint bear all ve of Christ"s mortal wounds. The clear, precise digital presentation provides insight into the artist"s process: how the painting developed from initial conception to nal version in pigment. When comparing the under-drawing with the nished work, the viewer can begin to speculate on the artist"s reasons for later additions. For example, one wonders why the heron appears in the left mid-ground of the painting while there is no trace of the fowl in the drawing. But once the viewer has caught a glimpse of the heron in the nished work, upon returning to drawing, the rock

on which the painted bird stands feels oddly empty an abandoned pedestal - that deprives the painting of an essential clue to its meaning. The digital presentation also discloses the artist"s encyclopedic proclivities, meticulously identifying ora -from spleenwort to toadax- and the fauna from rabbits to kingshers. Because of the high resolution we can observe (without alarming the guard by our proximity) how the shepherd in the far landscape seems to peer directly at the viewer instead of attending to the mysterious event in the foreground. Bellini opts to show the saint"s sandy retreat merely as an entrance to a cave skirted by a small herbal garden typical of monasteries rather than depicting a full-edged desert. And the saint"s withdrawal from the world is demonstrated by the illusion of distance from the adjacent elds and the tiny far-off townscape. But what about that townscape? Is it an imaginary place, an emblem a contrivance based on many such towns perched high in the Italian hills and the way they bend to the landscape? Or is Bellini referring to a specic place shown in an accurate architectural rendering. I decided to ask - and was pleased to received a response from the curators. It seems likely that the townscape in the background of the Frick picture is a composite of various observed views of walled towns in the vicinity of Venice. The closest Bellini comes to a specic allusion to a monument in St. Francis is the little castle at the top of the hill. This recalls the hilltop castle at Asolo in the Veneto, but it is not an exact reference. In light of the (invaluable) identication of ora, fauna, the careful scrutiny of the dramatic lapis

lazuli sky cut by electric bolt clouds, and the brilliant light generated by the white lead under-painting, I have to assume that the curators didn"t feel impelled to address the subject of the townscape specically or to include a discussion of it in their digital presentation for good reason. They were facing a challenging task to convey their ndings about this complex painting to a busy public in a compact, succinct format and needed to make drastic cuts to the dense material culled from the recent studies. Beyond these practical concerns, one wonders if the exclusion of references to the town might reect a contemporary lack of interest in the questions of place and city. Background townscapes have long been used to set the scene for religious events, and were often featured in a starring role by 15th century artists in the renditions of the Ideal City and the intarsie of the studioli and sacristies. Perhaps our contemporary interest in biography and narrative relegate the setting to a position of lesser importance and function like the make-believe settings in video games. Or perhaps the curators hoped that their presentation would elicit a closer exploration of the painting resulting in new, unimagined questions. ! ! ! ! ! ***

The Asia Society has nally opened The Buddhist Heretage of Pakistan:Art of the Gandara, the rst exhibition to bring works of Gandhara art from Parkistan since their groundbreaking show in 1960 of that region"s sculpture. For several months it seemed the political turmoil would foil the museum"s plans for the show. Indeed, it is an

extraordinary achievement that they were able to bring such important pieces from the National Museum in Karachi and the Lahore Museum to the United States at a moment that the American presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan grows ever more problematic. The scope of the show was augmented by useful comparative pieces on loan from the Metropolitan collection- eastern and western sculptures that illuminate the Greco-Roman and Scytho-Parthian inuences. This richly diverse exhibition eloquently demonstrates of the complex nature of Gandharan art and the conjectural nature of historical studies of the period.

The curators have contrived a helpful organization for the show dividing the material into 3 sections: Classical Connections that examines the inuence of Greco-Roan culture from the conquests of Alexander the Great and the ensuing Hellenistic inuence; Narratives and Architectural Contexts examines the combination of local characteristics with elements derived from Indian and western precedents; and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that explores the wideranging visual imagery and how this relates to the multifaceted nature of Buddhism in the region.

Finding the appropriate approach for a show of this nature is a difcult task; and the subtle, restraint with which the curators handled the work in this exhibition is impressive. The beauty of the installation might have inspired explanatory wall texts of rapturous prose,

drowning the work in descriptive adjectives - for indeed much of the work is hauntingly resonant. Yet I found no traces of the connoisseurship, romanticism, or colonialist attitudes in the treatment of the material. Nor did the curators overwhelm their public with obscure academic scholarship. Given the impossibly intricate histories and bafing subject matter in the pieces on view, the tendency to resort to highly specialized, monographic studies would seem the natural course. In many cases the sculptures have been lifted out of context and explications of their meaning at the time remain mere assumptions. Instead this show proved accessible and informative for a general public. Gandharan sculpture is characterized by a strange unwieldy heterogeneity, and the recombinant images appear to be odd concoctions, its parts remaining uncomfortable in their new reincarnations - as if the ingredients remained indigestible when mixed. The show manages to present the syncretic work of this period in all of its contradictions suggesting many interconnections and exposing ways in which the period failed to produce a consistent new language. In many of the sculptures one can trace the various inuences from the visual evidence: a peculiar bump on one side the skirt of a frontal, draped Buddha can be read as a remnant of the misunderstood contraposto in Greco-Roman sculpture, here rendered inexplicable. Without knowing the western precedent we have no way of comprehending that the knobby protrusion was produced by of the knee touching the cloth as the hips twist transferring the weight of the

body to one leg allowing the other to bend forward. The sculpture demonstrates what happens when the impulse to communicate in rigid symmetry struggles against the desire to render form naturalistically in the Greco-roman manner. The catalog, consisting of some 8 short essays, reiterates the multi-dimensional character of the exhibition; for it provides a general introduction, a study of the cultural geography, a brief survey of the archeological research, and focuses on several major themes occurring in the work. Most useful was the study by Anna Maria Quagliotti who has examined the ways western deities were integrated into the Buddhist culture. From her essay one can begin to understand how a Dionysian frieze was borrowed to represent the world outside of the sacred realm and could begin to imagine a moment in which several iconographic systems coexisted. One can see how new beliefs relied on the known language, while asserting the need to retain local modes and, simultaneously, to invent fresh forms of expression. The most provocative essay Juhhyung Rhi"s Complex Steles: Great Miracle, Paradise, or Theophany? deals with the issues plaguing art historical writing in general how to deploy text to better understand image, and how to approach material for which there are few authoritative or veriable sources. He focuses on the elaborate Mohammed Nari stele from the Lahore Museum and reviews the several of studies that have attempted to decipher the derivation of the iconography in the segments of the stele. Some writers have

identied potential textual sources, and their studies offer proofs of varying credibility. Others have formulated notions that would relegate the stele to a kind of illustration of one specic text. While others have proposed that the work represents or embodies certain general concepts prevalent at the time, and then have proceeded to trace the religious beliefs and practices related to that particular interpretation as substantiating evidence. In the end, the essay doesn"t offer a simple methodological solution or detect a single system for unraveling meaning of the sculptures, but serves as a exemplar for understanding the ways in which one might approach works produced during such a tangled period and one for which there is so little solid evidence to merit an all-encompassing treatment. While offering a rigorous survey of the ways in which sculpture was used to embellish architecture at the time, the essay Art and Architecture didn"t satisfy my interest in the subject. Christian Luczanits identies the architectural forms in Gandara and outlines the applications of sculpture in the various building types. She states that Architecture is only shown in rare cases in Gandharan art, and even the, mostly in a schematic form. But what she doesn"t do is to dene or characterize the nature of the schema. Nor does she offer clues to understanding how to ascertain the concept of perspective guiding the representations. I would like to know more about the systems for depicting the space of the Gandharan world to better understand how to read the way that world was envisaged at the time. For example, in the work, Saluting gure exiting the gate of the

walled city, 2nd-3rd cent. CE we see the city designated by a set of vertical towers - which bear an odd resemblance to the forelegs of an enormous lion- situated against a roughly articulated wall. On the right, a gure stands awkwardly within a double- tiered gate. His position in intended to imply egress and we read the image as a man (for many men?) exiting the city. Today this Gandaran relief only whispers its story to the public. The exhibition instructs how to listen carefully to the expressions of cultures remote from our own. And surely the Asia Society exhibition underscores urgency of securing and preserving this work in a parlous moment.