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15
were instructed by drawing masters in the rudiments of topographical art.*
46
The well-dressed young lady
in the treatise by Pensée*
47
accurately reflects one intended beneficiary of the instructions.
During the course of the 20
th
century, accurate delineation of “real” scenes using optico-mathematical
means was largely superseded by different notions of vision, both spatial and imaginative. The great
age of perspectival naturalism was past, unless we take into account its mass survival in photography
and photographically-based art forms and entertainments. The three perpendicular axes within the
frame of our computer schemes are basically the same as those used by Piero della Francesca.
However, as the outstanding group of modern artists’ books in the present collection serve to show, a
genre of “perspectival” magic still thrives.*
48
The images that Flocon provided for the texts of Eluard,
the Surrealist poet, echo the dream-like assemblages that appear in the 16
th
century treatises. We find
Barton continuing the link with map-making, Billingham exploiting pop-up and stereo effects, Lewitt
creating illustrations for texts by Borges, that great master of literary deception, and Denes summoning
up curved bodies on flat pages. Typically the artists’ book, as in the hands of Hofstra and Smith, treats
the book itself, with its illusionistic pages, as a specific object, as a sculptural body in its own space.
Will perspective live again in contemporary art? Forecasting in the creative arts is hazardous. Either
way, the five or six centuries in which the major perspective books were created, thriving in a broad
nexus of practical mathematics and systematic naturalism, continue to exercise their own particular
fascination and beguiling visual magic.
Martin Kemp
Note
:
The item numbers in the margins provide a guide to examples but are not intended as a comprehensive
listing of types of treatise or of illustrations
*
46
61-63, 81, 120, 165, 283-284
*
47
270
*
48
29, 45, 46, 99, 123-128, 143-150, 169-176, 179, 216, 235, 254, 332