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Geometry and the Emergence of Perspective
Final Project - The Use of Perspective in Chinese Paintings
May 1st, 2019. Nini Chang
“How was it, then, that the Chinese painter, who insisted on truth to natural appearance, should have been so ignorant of even the elementary laws of perspective as the West understands it? The answer is that he deliberately avoided it, for the same reason that he avoided the use of shadows. . . .
Why, he asks, should we restrict ourselves?
Why, if we have the means to depict what we know to be there, paint only what we can see from one viewpoint?"
(Sullivan, 1984, p. 176)
When it comes to the use of perspective in ancient Chinese paintings, at first sight it might seem like there is a lack of perspective in them. For example, in (currently stored in the National Palace Museum in Taipei), there is no sense of vanishing point and depth. In fact, the development of perspective drawing in ancient China followed a different pattern from that in Western art history. In this blog post, I will explore the technique of perspective drawing in a localized Chinese context. I argue that perspectives in Chinese paintings is a rational solution to the problem of illustrating perspectives in the extended scroll canvas in Chinese culture.
Examples of perspective in Chinese paintings
Ancient Chinese painters, following the convention with the rest of the world, also represent distant objects as smaller than near objects. However, in their drawing of background such as buildings and furniture, they draw the lines that are parallel. There isn't really a vanishing point: the parallel lines extend towards beyond the scope of the scrolls, never converging.
‘Han Xi-zai Gives a Banquet (韓熙載夜宴圖)’ (retouched sector of extended scroll), by Gu Hong-zhong (顧閎中)
‘Playing Chess by the Double Screen (重屏會棋圖)’ by Zhou Wen-ju (周文矩)
‘Ladies Concert (宮樂圖)’, late T’ang Dynasty (9th century)
In comparison, Western paintings tend to have a clear perspective construction ever since Renaissance. Take a typical master piece for instance, 'The School of Athens' utilizes linear perspective - a technique that converges all lines in a frame at a point called 'vanishing point.'
Linear perspective adapts the way human vision perceives the world, therefore paintings that use linear perspective create the illusion of depth and look three-dimensional.
Is there really no perspective in Chinese paintings?
Typically, Western paintings are either painted directly into a plaster in the form of a fresco or framed and hung on a wall. In contrast, Chinese paintings often took the form of a scroll that is designed to be "viewed one section at a time in the manner of reading a book" [1]. This scroll format allowed Chinese paintings to be viewed without folds or seams, therefore more easily portable.
However, Chinese painters then faced the challenging problem of depicting perspectives on the extended scroll format. As compared to Western paintings which often have a fixed rectangular frame, Chinese paintings reveal the entire frame gradually. Therefore, if there were one central vanishing point in Chinese paintings, the scroll would have placed the central vanishing point at an absurd distance from most viewer's locations. [2] As the scroll reveals the scene continuously, the central vanishing point will only be clear when the scroll shows the central part of the painting. Therefore, the concept of a fixed vanishing point prevalent in Western art is not ideal nor practical in the Chinese context.
As a result, Chinese painters adopted their own “Chinese perspective”, which is a unique way to avoid vanishing points by showing the receding lines as parallel obliques. What this means is that painters deliberately avoid converging lines by showing the perspective without distortion. All the lines that are supposed to converge to the vanishing point are made parallel. This perspective approach follows the principle in Euclidean geometry: that parallel lines are lines that do not meet. For example, see the below illustration of the interior of a room. [3]
Linear perspective Chinese / orthographic perspective
The orthographic perspective
In fact, the "Chinese perspective" is a way of depicting objects referred to as "orthographic perspective". (also known as ‘isometric’ or ‘axonometric’ perspective).
In this perspective technique, there is no depth, only objects that appear at the same scale. The effect of orthographic projection is that objects appear to be purely 2D. They are flat and without shadows.
This form of Chinese perspective is sometimes misunderstood. Many assume that Chinese perspective is simply a disorganized way to depict the surroundings in the Renaissance standard. Besides, on the surface level it indeed seems like Chinese paintings have no consistent global organization throughout the scroll. However, the angles of the objects in these paintings are typically coherent throughout the scroll. As the scroll reveals the painting section after section, viewers are able to see the entire frame as if the painting were floating and extending towards an unknown place. Having no specific local vanishing point, this construction creates a strong impression of the whole scene on the viewers.
A great example of how Chinese paintings make use of the orthographic perspective is the famous "Along the River during the QingMing Festival" (清明上河圖) painted by Zhang Zeduan (張澤端, 1085-1145). The entire scroll is 5.25 meters long, in which the painter depicted the life of Chinese people in 11th to 12th century in great detail. Below is just a small section of the painting, but it already gives viewers a great impression on the vibrant city life in Bianjing (capital of China back then).
A bigger picture - the Eastern perspective
Related to the orthographic perspective, the Eastern perspective refers to a specific style of art that started to develop in the 5th century [4]. The Chinese word for this type of paintings is shanshui (山水), which means mountain and water. Typically, shanshui paintings depict natural scenes such as rivers, lakes, hills, and mountains. Painters often include personal emotions or aspirations along with the scene they paint by writing their mottos or poems on the paintings. This theme is rarely seen in Western art, which was predominantly depictions of religious stories and figures. Starting from Renaissance, Western painters paid most of their attention to creating realistic scenes - humanism. However, looking "real" was never a primary focus in Chinese paintings. Without a specific vanishing point, Chinese paintings often incorporate different viewpoints and even different projections of the same image in a frame.
In contrast to the linear perspective technique, Eastern perspective focuses on providing a smooth flow between receding objects. Chinese painters used parallelity to shift viewers' attention to their feelings invoked by the entire frame. To the viewers, they experience visual illusion induced by the expectation of perspective convergence. Viewers extend their line of vision further and further as they follow along the parallel lines in the orthographic perspective. However, there is never an end to the lines. The painting is like an enormous wonderland floating on the scroll.
In Eastern perspective drawing, painters often used orthographic perspective as the primary way to arrange objects in the frame. Other than orthographic perspective, the colors in Chinese paintings are often soft with a yellow tint, mimicking the nature. In addition, human figures are typically small and delicate, and the horizon line (the perspective line) is often not decisive. As David Hockney points out, leaving empty areas in an image that can be filled by the imagination of the viewer enhances viewers' impression of infinite space, whereas space that is fully filled up with objects appears limited. [5]
Examples of Shanshui paintings 山水畫
‘Early Spring’ by Guo Xi (1072)
郭熙
‘Conversation by the River’
by Tang Yin
(1470-1524)
唐寅
Comparison with linear perspective
Let's compare the two perspective techniques :
Linear perspective
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Simulates a real world view
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Scenes have depth
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Fixed perspective line
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Common in Western paintings, especially after Renaissance
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Parallel lines converge
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View with Parallax
Orthographic perspective
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Objects do not have depth
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Scenes are flat
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No decisive horizontal line
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Common in Eastern paintings
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parallel lines do not converge
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View without parallax
In Western art history, there was a progression of the linear perspective technique.
For example, the works of Duccio, Cimabue, and Giotto show the artists' attempts in showing religious figures in a more realistic way. It is undeniable that linear perspective expresses scenes in a more realistic manner. Then, what is the use of the orthographic perspective other than creating the floating visual illusion as seen in Chinese paintings?
Applications of orthographic perspective
There are many crucial applications of orthographic projection in our daily lives.
From architectural visualization, engineering modeling, to video games, orthographic projection is almost everywhere. In architectural visualization, we need to know whether two sides of the same building are of the same height. It we were in perspective, some parts of the building are blocked, therefore might create confusion. Luckily, we can make use of orthographic projection and see the building without parallax. The same goes for video games. The players need to have access to the size and direction of all the objects in the surroundings, or else the characters in the game cannot go anywhere. This is why orthographic projection is very common in adventure video games.
Which is better?
“The Chinese concept of perspective, unlike the scientific view of the West, is an idealistic or suprarealistic approach, so that one can depict more than can be seen with the naked eye. The composition is in a ladder of planes, or two-dimensional or flat perspective.”
(Da-Wei 1990, p.70)
Other than linear perspective, there are other perspective techniques to depict the world we are living in. In this blog post I took the Chinese perspective for instance. The parallelity in Chinese paintings are deliberatively constructed in a way such that the viewers have a better experience as the scroll reveals the frame gradually. The vanishing points in Western paintings, on the other hand, are created such that the paintings express the humanistic spirit in Renaissance.
The choice of perspective depends on the purpose and cultural background. What Eastern and Western painters chose to focus on reveals past societal trends and values in different cultures. Neither is better, and neither is worse. As Panofsky (1927) says in Perspective as Symbolic Form, perspective is not just a direct transcription of the visual reality but is also a symbolic form of representation that derives from larger cultural differences.
References
[1] and [2] Christopher W. Tyler and Chien-Chung Chen, Chinese Perspective as a Rational System: Relationship to Panofsky’s Symbolic Form, pg. 4, 2010.
[4] Lothar Schlesier, Eastern Perspective - Multi-projection Images, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 2004.
[5] David Hockney and Philip Haas. A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China. Or Surface is Illusion but so is Depth. Milestone Film & Video, 1991.
Alberti, L.B. (1435/1966) On Painting. Trans, J. Spencer, Yale University Press: New Haven.
Da-Wei, K 1990, Chinese brushwork in calligraphy and painting, Dover Publications, New York.
Panofsky E. (1927/1993) Perspective as Symbolic Form. Trans. Wood C.S., MIT Press: Cambridge, MA
Sullivan M. (1984) The Arts of China. University of California Press.