Impact of Artistic Perspective: Shaping Western Civilization’s Path

When the architect/painter Fillipo Brunelleshi completed his work of art with a new idea, it is hard to imagine the hurricane that tiny little butterfly wings generated several centuries later. In fact, the ‘hurricane’ from those butterfly wings may still not yet be fully realised. Because we are at the vanguard of the cultural change that the invention of perspective has brought about. And it would be a mistake to presume that we are at the end of that change, or in fact, anywhere near the end!
Because we are delving into uncharted waters.

Western civilisation is unique in its own cultural development. Which, I believe, began with the invention of perspective during the early Humanist period.

Perspective in Art placed humans, not God, at the centre of the universe. It sought to exalt the way an artist may have seen the world. To portray ideas. Or messages. Prior to the innovation of artistic perspective, the symbology of images was far more important than ‘realism’ or literalism. Colours, size and position denoted the most important parts of an artwork. Perspective changed all that. Taking the viewer from an abstract observer to an active participant in the art.

A perhaps more pertinent development associated with this revolution was that different artists could, and did, portray different variations in their perspectives on similar issues. They could reinvent, reimagine, and importantly, reinterpret how the world is, or was. But when we combine this new development with the newly acquired active participation of the viewer, something miraculous happens – it inspires interpretation. The viewers own subjective understandings and ‘truths’ need to be blended with the subjective understandings and ‘truths’ of the artist. They need to be reconciled in a far more intimate and profound way. Certainly far more intimate and profound than the top-down, and perhaps somewhat authoritarian, symbolic imagery of pre-perspective art – where the artist told you how it was.

This idea that a relative nobody, could legitimately have authority to interpret information, scenarios or histories in his or her own way cannot be understated in terms of its significance. Luther, and Calvin in particular, built off this idea. Taking it to it’s logical conclusions in the spiritual domain, and assisting (or maybe even determining) the trajectory of Protestantism. Where one’s own relationship with God is up for the individual to establish, assess and maintain. Relegating centralised authorities of an established ecclesiastical structure to the wayside.

The era of top down ended with the establishment of perspective in art. This marks the true beginning of ‘western’ culture and/or civilisation. And it is a journey upon which marks a significant departure from cultural norms of the world. Because it defines when the West embarked upon it’s evolution towards what we know now as the Occidental “individualist” path. And stamped its unique authority on the rest of the world, which we know and define as being of a rather ‘collectivist’ bent.

It’s is not hard to see how this evolution in understanding of interpretation and grappling with interpretations of ‘truths’, lays a very solid foundation for what we call post-modernism today, where ‘many are true’. And it has taken us around six hundred years for the evolution to take full form. To go from a painting on someone’s wall, to influencing the very lifestyles, spiritual, political and economic choices of the many, if not most, of Western culture.

Western culture is at the vanguard of this change. Launching headlong into the change six centuries ago, it is unclear where the destination is.

But it is a thrilling ride, nonetheless.

Mark