12. Space of Perspective. The sixteenth century
created the space of standard (rectilinear) perspective
for use in representational arts. This perspective was
intended to secure a two-dimensional mimetic illusion
of three dimensional actuality, and the central struc-
tural device for achieving this was the introduction of
a “vanishing point” at infinity. Also, this theory of
perspective advanced the presumption that it created
the one and only space of “true” optical vision.
It belongs to the history of art to determine the
extent to which this presumption was or was not
heeded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
but it is a matter of public record that in the nineteenth
century a school of French painting openly revolted
against it. The leading revolutionary in the nineteenth
century was Paul Cézanne, and he replaced the space
of classical perspective by a space of illusion of his
own, which although not objectively fixed, was never-
theless subjectively controlled. The twentieth century
went much further. Beginning with cubism, the visual
arts began to take much greater liberties with space
than Cézanne had ever done or envisaged, but this
again is a topic for the history of art only.
