The Strut of Vision: Histories and Theories of Perspective in the Arts
Eugene Lang College Lib Arts: The Arts
Course Reference Number: 8228
Credits: 4
This course explores various histories and theories of perspective in the arts – a study of perspective not simply as an artistic technique for rendering the illusion of space, but as the materialization of an ideology and an ensemble of social relations, a technique of the body or as Joan Copjec puts it, “the strut of vision.” In part I, students follow the development of linear perspective from the Renaissance, how it participates in the production of concepts of time and space as well as a subjectivity for which “man is the measure of all things.” Attention is focused on how linear perspective contributes to the consolidation of the modern state and hierarchies of social relations of class, gender, and race: from Filippo Brunelleschi’s Ideal City to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. In part II, students confront practical challenges to the hegemony of linear perspective. The students also address how these strategies respond to re-organizations of perception in a mediascape brought about through new modes of production, and technologies of surveillance and warfare.
College: Eugene Lang College Lib Arts (LC)
Department: The Arts (LARS)
Campus: New York City (GV)
Course Format: Seminar (R)
Max Enrollment: 18