Wonky Perspective
I can’t help but love this ridiculous oil painting. It was a recent thrift shop find, setting me back $2.50. It is a small piece, and not framed, though someone strung a hanging wire at its top. While signed, the signature is a mystery. Undated, though the style and colors peg it as 1970s. I picked it up because it made me laugh.
The use of perspective in art has always been a struggle for artists. While the ancient Greeks and Romans understood perspective, the concept was lost for centuries, being “discovered” again in the 15th century. In 1436, Leon Battista Alberti “codified… much of the practical work on [perspective] that had been carried out by earlier artists; he formulated, for example, the idea that “vision makes a triangle” as well as the importance of a vanishing point. (1)
Translating the visual world onto a flat canvas requires an understanding that our eyes perceive items on a flat plane as having different sizes based on their distance from us, with our eyes drawn to a specific location on the canvas. This is known as the “perspective” of the work – where our eyes are drawn to – with an awareness that some things are “in the distance”, and small, while others are nearby, or larger.
Artists have used mechanical aids to help create this perspective, relying on a horizon line and the vanishing point. At some points artists actually drew lines in pencil or chalk directly onto the canvas to help with this, and even poked pins into the artwork to attach strings to a “vanishing point” (Vermeer’s work is famous for having these pinholes). “So as to appear farther from the viewer, objects in the compositions are rendered increasingly smaller as they near the vanishing point.” (2) Think of a road leading off to the horizon –
the visual of the horizon line, the vanishing point of the road as it reaches that horizon, and the triangular shape of the road as it moves into the distance are all clear visuals of these ideas. In this sketch, the poles along the road and the trees along the way all get smaller as they are “further away” from us. (3) Children tend to disregard the use of perspective, and untrained artists -and even some trained ones – can botch the execution of perspective, much like my ridiculous artwork.
This painting is more than slightly wonky – slides into downright hysterical. Where to start?! Clearly the artist intended the horizon to be the actual horizon where water meets sky, painted in a light gray off in the distance to the right. However, instead of allowing that to draw the eye to a vanishing point, the fishing pole is the “vanishing point” – but illogically as the top of the pole appears even with the far distant horizon. Just how big is that fishing pole?! The birds are not helping. The one closest to the bottom of the fishing line is the smallest – as though it is the farthest away, and yet it is next to the fishing line which logic tells our mind is actually nearer to us.
The fishing child’s legs are hysterically out of proportion as well, specifically in relation to the charming wood fence that meanders into the distance – right into his chubby feet. To make matters worse, the little girl sitting behind him is actually significantly bigger than he – which logically makes sense as she is depicted as older, but illogical in the perspective of the piece. As the fence meandered into the distance, the children got LARGER! And somehow their chubby little bums sit charmingly on a slight hill in the foreground, filled with sunny flowers. But the perspective of the children’s rear-ends make it seem they are precariously seated with a pit of flowers directly behind them!
The flowers are also confused – those in the precarious pit and distant field are done in a fairly good rendition of perspective. But note the two little ones to the far right – which should be significantly bigger than those on the hill due to their proximity to the front of the picture plane. But no, they are tiny, so tiny in fact, the boy’s shoes – much farther down the fence – dwarf them!
There are so many different perspectives at work here that the painting does cause a sense of vertigo. Not clear if our mystery 1970s artist was possibly aiming for this effect, or simply completely oblivious to the effect. The two children also remain oblivious to their precarious position, and await the result of the fishing expedition, complete with a wicker basket by the girl’s side. Though, given the confusion of distance, size and proportion, I am slightly worried about the pending size of that fish.