A Brief History of Pictorial Recession

[Sparrow]

A Brief History of Pictorial Recession; part 1 (or it’s all Greek to me)

Pre-history

Back on the cave wall the only attempt we made to portray depth in art was to overlap objects, the size of an object more often than not indicated it’s practical or spiritual importance not it’s distance from the artist. This type of “cognitive reality” persisted in some western art until the renaissance, and even longer in East, despite the rules of perspective being understood for many centuries.


The Bronze age critic

No doubt to howls of protest from the art establishment, around the 5th century BC a geometrical plan started to be applied to pictures. A couple of Greek chaps worked out the rules, and yes there are rules it’s not just what you like, and it was probably first used for stage sets and wall painting to provide a sense of depth, it slowly became the “convention” for indicating distance.
However, cognitive reality remained the conventional depiction in western religious art and popular eastern pictorial art well into the second millennium, and in some genres into the modern era, stained-glass and ceramics come to mind.


Renaissance man (and a bit of a fudge)

By the middle of the 15th century an Italian chap called Alberti came up with a theory based on planar projections (yup that planar), which is just a fancy bit of maths that allows the world to be mapped onto a flat surface.
At this point the cracks start to appear, as a true projections can have a very strange effect on circular shapes off axis of the viewer.



note the shape of the plates, we are far more happy with the “perceptive reality” of a fudged perspective.



which is why people believe very wide rectilinear lenses are distorted when it’s actually their grasp on reality that’s off.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Interestingly, we can accept diminishing perspective in the horizontal plane, and even draw that way; but we (almost) always draw buildings without perspective in the vertical plane, and use rising fronts/shift lenses/Photoshop to 'correct' what is often described as 'the falling over backwards effect'.

This suggests to me that there's a lot of cultural post-processing.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

A Brief History of Pictorial Recession; part 2 (or how bokeh became a cliché)

Chromatic recession

By the modern era, perspective was engrained in the popular consciousness, but from an artists point of view that’s only really of use with regular or linier subjects if one is painting a landscape it’s pretty useless.
The answer is simple come up with another way of informing the viewer that one is representing a big hill far away not a small one close by.
Anyway, to cut a long story short by observations in certain conditions distant objects appear more blue than they actually are, and by consistently portraying that colour shift and the de-saturation that is also present a similar convention to perspective has been established for irregular subjects.

Distant blue hills, or would be if this were a painting

Gestalt, an age old effect finally got a name

Probably from the very start we, humanity, found patters everywhere. The earliest artefacts are decorated with patterns, we made stars into constellations and can’t help but organise similar objects into a coherent picture. So any repetitive elements or patters are thought to be identical and arranged by the brain to best fit our concept.
Consider what’s happening with these few random shapes below, the two white ellipse on top of the smaller shapes is forming them into cylinders, and not only that it’s doing the same thing to the other one. The difference in size and the relative position is then forming a flat surface for them to stand on. I can even guess their height at around 4ft would you say?
That’s why it only takes a few telegraph poles or some trees of the same type in a photo to create the illusion of depth, it's all in the mind

Bokeh and the Impressionists

By the start of the 19th century the pictorial artist had everything sorted out, he had a set of conventions that the vast majority of humans, particularly in the West, learned in childhood and were so engrained in our psychology that if used properly fool us all. Look at some of the 17c Dutch stuff, it leaps out of the frames and vanishes into the far distance without a trace of bokeh.
Then along came photography, and gives the world “depth of field” great big “circles of confusion” and the other various distortions a lens makes to spoil things
Pre 1800 it’s surprisingly difficult to find a painting that isn’t sharp out to the horizon except for a little haze perhaps.
Post 1850 representations of lens artefacts pepper the pictorial arts, Turner invents lomography well before the lomo is invented.
The impressionists horrified the establishment, naturally, back then it simply didn’t have the learned cultural response to deal with the new representation, it wasn’t conventional

It seems odd looking back but DOF (Bokeh) is only a recent addition (less than 150 years), just the latest tool in a long line of visual conventions, none of which are reality just our way of ordering and understanding the world

 

[MartinL]

Nice work. Nice discussion.
Martin

 

[JoeV]

A Brief History of Pictorial Recession; part 3

A Brief History of Pictorial Recession; part 3

Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by 16:9 aspect ratio "wide screen" TV sets, especially when the majority of program material is still 4:3?

My pet theory is one reason for the recent trend in the US of an overweight population is that our national self-image is now defined by the fat-headed, big-butted, stretched images of 4:3 program material displayed on 16:9 screens.

And why can't I find a flat-panel TV bigger than 15" in size that's 4:3? I don't mind paying the extra money for the larger surface area; and I don't mind the letterboxed look when playing 16:9 programming in the middle of the screen, with dark panels above and below. But when I'm watching 4:3 programs I'd like for it to fill the whole screen without being stretched, or just showing a mini-screen in the middle.

End of old geezer rant.

~Joe

 

[Al Kaplan]

I don't have a TV set. Problem solved.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I love 16:9! Those stretched 4:3 images drive me nuts though.

 

[crawdiddy]

Interestingly, we can accept diminishing perspective in the horizontal plane, and even draw that way; but we (almost) always draw buildings without perspective in the vertical plane, and use rising fronts/shift lenses/Photoshop to 'correct' what is often described as 'the falling over backwards effect'.

This suggests to me that there's a lot of cultural post-processing.

Tashi delek,

R.

Interesting point, Roger. There seems to be a preference for architectural photos resembling the elevation, or plan drawing.

Provocative topic, Stewart.

 

[pmun]

Interestingly, we can accept diminishing perspective in the horizontal plane, and even draw that way; but we (almost) always draw buildings without perspective in the vertical plane, and use rising fronts/shift lenses/Photoshop to 'correct' what is often described as 'the falling over backwards effect'.

This suggests to me that there's a lot of cultural post-processing.

Tashi delek,

R.

Interesting thread Stewart, and good point Roger. When we look at a realistic depiction of 3 dimensional space on a flat surface, we assume that's just the way it is. But essentially we have been conditioned to 'read' a photograph and mentally compensate for the loss of that third dimension. This isn't necessarily the 'right' way of reading, it's just the 'fashionable' way.

 

[Sparrow]

Interesting thread Stewart, and good point Roger. When we look at a realistic depiction of 3 dimensional space on a flat surface, we assume that's just the way it is. But essentially we have been conditioned to 'read' a photograph and mentally compensate for the loss of that third dimension. This isn't necessarily the 'right' way of reading, it's just the 'fashionable' way.

Yes that’s about it, I was just charting the development of the fashions, to inform the sometimes simplistic 3D debates that crop up. The brain does such a tremendous job adjusting perspective, patterns and colour that we don't notice.

I have a hypothesis that it was a suppression of these conventions that made LSD so popular among artists in the 60’s, it allowed a RAW version of reality to be seen with some of the preconception removed, I’ve nothing to back the idea up with however

 

[Roger Hicks]

Another major clue to distance is texture and detail. Obviously this is eyesight dependent to a considerable extent, but equally, we compare the amount of texture we can resolve in near and far subjects. I am indebted to Senggye Ar Born for bringing this to my attention.

There's also perspective of receding planes. If A obscures B, then A is in front of B. This is not the same as vanishing point perspective, which in turn is not the same as perspective of size.

What Stewart calls 'chromatic recession' is obviously similar to 'aerial perspective' (haze and lack of contrast) in monochrome, but until he used this term it had not occurred to me to suspect that the two might not be identical.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

Roger

I had 'chromatic recession' explained to me as “a conspiracy by a bunch of renaissance painters to depict distant hills blue until we believed it true” he wasn’t big on realism admittedly

I learned the term “atmospheric recession” for “aerial perspective” but suspect both it and receding planes to be cognitive rather than conditioned responses; a three year old is incapable of a perspective drawing but will recoil from a large drop, so something has to be “hard wired” from the start

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger

I had 'chromatic recession' explained to me as “a conspiracy by a bunch of renaissance painters to depict distant hills blue until we believed it true” he wasn’t big on realism admittedly

I learned the term “atmospheric recession” for “aerial perspective” but suspect both it and receding planes to be cognitive rather than conditioned responses; a three year old is incapable of a perspective drawing but will recoil from a large drop

Dear Stewart,

For the former... yes... well....

I'm as sure as anyone reasonably can be that you're right about the latter points.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

Actually thinking about it I could well be wrong about receding planes, they may also be something we learn, my children would confine the sky to the very top of paintings and carefully arrange all the other elements so they didn’t overlap.

I’m unsure why, but that seems relevant in some way.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Actually thinking about it I could well be wrong about receding planes, they may also be something we learn, my children would confine the sky to the very top of paintings and carefully arrange all the other elements so they didn’t overlap.

I’m unsure why, but that seems relevant in some way.

Hmmm....

If a child can't see it (because it's behind something) then it isn't there. Hence the pleasure babies take in 'peep-bo' (parent hiding behind hands, corner, whatever). I think we are on the cusp here of 'learned' and 'perceived'.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[Pappy]

Actually thinking about it I could well be wrong about receding planes, they may also be something we learn, my children would confine the sky to the very top of paintings and carefully arrange all the other elements so they didn’t overlap.

I’m unsure why, but that seems relevant in some way.

Yes.
I remember at school, as a very young child, being taught that the sky comes all the way down to the horizon. Not just a blue section across the top of the painting.

 

[Sparrow]

Hmmm....

If a child can't see it (because it's behind something) then it isn't there. Hence the pleasure babies take in 'peep-bo' (parent hiding behind hands, corner, whatever). I think we are on the cusp here of 'learned' and 'perceived'.

Tashi delek,

R.

Yes I suppose that's it, something had to stop our ancestors coming down from the trees unintentionally, in the same way that modern apes don’t fall out.

 

[Sparrow]

Yes.
I remember at school, as a very young child, being taught that the sky comes all the way down to the horizon. Not just a blue section across the top of the painting.

My son was fascinated by cars and would draw them repeatedly, but always drew the driver at the side of the car up to the age of 4 or so

 

[pmun]

We should also make the distinction between production and perception of the illusion. The conventions and skills required for the former are considerably higher than that of the latter. Hence children will be able to take part in the illusion much earlier than they can produce it.

As for the child recoiling from the drop, of course this is different because it is real space. There must be awareness that it is not a picture - lack of borders, smells and sounds for example. When it comes to 'recognizing' real space (3d) things become more complex in terms of instinct and learning. But with pictures, as we said before it is a set of current conventions that are learned.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Try shooting with just about nothing but a 15mm lens for a few years, printing and/or posting full frame. You get to the point where you really start seeing that wide, and you've learn how to deal with the perspective. Or maybe our brains are pre-programmed to see that way, but we grow up in a world that requires readin' writin', and 'rithmatic and we start seeing just the details, nothing but the details. The birds flying overhead, but the sky is no longer part of the concept that it once was, when we wondered how the sky managed to hold the birds up there. Now it's just birds.