Objects and Viewpoints

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Objects and Viewpoints
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Objects and Viewpoints

• From Byzantine to Cubism
• Year 8

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The Window or the Wall Theory!Artists
originally thought that a flat painting was like
a wall and you couldnt see into it or through
it. Whenever they wanted to show depth in a
painting they piled things up, one on top of the
other.This often made a strong pattern or design.
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During the Renaissance artists started to
carefully study the world around them and used
these observations to make their religious
paintings appear more real. They tried to make
their pictures have more space, as though you
were looking through a window.
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They believed there were mathematical systems and
rules that would help them create this more
realistic representation of the world.They
eventually devised a system of perspective
where objects got smaller the further away they
were. They also began to understand how objects
when overlapped suggest depth as well.
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Artists invented various devices to help them in
their search to create greater space in their
work.Here a medieval artist uses a squared
screen to help him create a drawing of a figure
in perspective. The sharp point near his eye is
to help him keep his head still so the drawing is
more accurate.The most famous of these devices
was the Camera Obscura which eventually became
the basis for the invention of the camera.
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Artists became fascinated by this new discovery
where the painting was no longer a wall but now
seemed more like a window with space and depth.
Paintings could even have convincing trompe
leoil effects where they tricked the eye into
believing the flat surface actually had real
depth.
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Oil paint gave artists even more opportunities to
create subtle and realistic light effects that
suggested even more depth and space in the
painting. This was particularly seen in still
life painting where often each surface and
texture was carefully captured.
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The French artist, Paul Cezanne painted still
life paintings that were made of lots of little
patches of carefully observed colours. These
colours would all knit together to make a
finished painting.This was a very slow process
with some paintings taking him years to complete.
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Cezanne tried to create a kind of new illusion of
space in his paintings through the use of small
patches of carefully observed colour. This would
sometimes lead to strange and new perspective
effects where the painting no longer had a
feeling of depth as though you were looking
through a window. The painting became flatter and
the viewer became more aware of it as a flat
surface.
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Cubism The artists Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque used Cezannes ideas to develop their own
paintings. They saw a new way to change space and
depth in a painting by using multiple
viewpoints.They were also influenced by the
geometric quality of the African sculpture they
both collected and developments in the new
inventions of Film and Photography.
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Eventually their paintings became so flat and
abstract it was hard sometimes to tell what they
represented. A critic described them as pictures
of little cubes, hence Cubism.Picasso and
Braque imagined they could see their subject from
lots of different viewpoints at once and their
paintings combined bits of each of these views to
make one picture. They created a kind of new
fractured space in their paintings that
suggested time passing and movement.
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Synthetic CubismIn only a few years their
paintings became very flat with only subtle
illusions to depth. They were more like walls
than windows but they did suggest the real world
through their use of paper collages. Often the
paper used was either newspaper or sheet music.
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