Descartes and Linear Perspective

As advised by my tutor, I began to look at linear perspective from the renaissance period and the philosophies of Rene Descartes. I studied art history in school so I find this stuff very interesting. The artists of the Renaissance period rediscovered the technique of perspective and applied it to their paintings. Previously it was all about representing the objects in the space and not the space itself.

 I remember from my classes that the people and the objects were drawn first and the space was added afterwards. At the beginning of the Renaissance this process was flipped to drawing out the space first and then adding the objects into the space. Space in paintings began to develop height, width and depth. Artist such as Brunelleschi began to represent objects at proper scale and in proportion and relation to one another. This 'geometrical space' was complimentary to the mathematical space created by Descarte's philosophy. 

In order for our perceptions of the world around us to move from confused forms to clear and distinct ideas which have the clarity of mathematical objects, corporeal bodies (nature of the physical body, not spiritual) must be interpreted by the mind with its innate geometry.

The photographs that I have explored have altered the space viewed but have maintained this common geometry created by perspective. What I get from reading about perspective and Descartes, and comparing them to my photographs, is that we always will perceive space the same but it is the objects (the corporeal bodies) that disrupt this change in perspective. If they do not fit within the space that is when the illusion of space is changed, and the viewer thinks "hold on, that does not work there." But the principles of perspective are the same.

1-point linear perspective in "View of Ideal City," painting by Piero della Francesca