The discovery of perspective and its incorporation into drawn art completely changes the way an artist looks at the world. Until then, drawings were flat and lifeless (think of Egyptian art) and bore little resemblance to the world as humans perceive it. The advent of perspective allowed an artist, or anyone else for that matter, to make a record of the world that more closely resembled what was observed. Inherent to perspective is the concept of the vanishing point.
If you take an imaginary straight line from your eyes and run it out to infinity (or for practical purposes, as far as you can see) parallel to the surface on which you are standing, you will note that every thing above this line seems to drop down to the line as your point of reference moves away from you and everything below seems to rise up. Eventually everything you observe comes together in one point and effectively disappears. This is the vanishing point.
Stare as hard as you might at the vanishing point and you still will see nothing there. You will see everything surrounding it and leading up to it, but you will not see the point itself. Hmmm.
Often we think we know what we are looking at, both physically and metaphorically, but do we really? Is there really nothing in that vanishing point or is everything right there?
There are a couple of old sayings that seem to run right along with this: (1) it's as plain as the nose on your face, and (2) you can't see the forest for the trees. In the first case, you can't see what you are looking at because you have looked at it so many times it no longer registers on your consciousness. In the second case, you are so overwhelmed by complexity, that you cannot see all the little bits that create it. In either case, no matter how hard or how long you "stare" at something, it seems you have less and less of a good idea what it is you are looking at. Kind of like repeating a word over and over until it sounds so odd, you almost lose the meaning of it. The first time I did this as a child, it was with the word "barrette." It would seem that we have always known about our inability to really see the world as it truly is. We look at it from all our own personal perspectives and color it according to how we feel about it.
Bernd and I took a walk in the snow (yes snow) recenlty. It was the kind I call Styrofoam snow. You know, the soft and light little balls of frozen water that don't so much drift down out of the sky as come at you straight out of the wind. Because they were driven by the wind, if you looked into the wind, the snow had the appearance of originating from a single point far in the distance the vanishing point. Almost as if it were coming out of nothing.
As human beings, thinking and self aware animals, it seems to me that we tend to hold the opinion that we are creatures mainly of the mind. We live in the physical world and perceive it with our physical senses, but we apprehend it with our intellects; our minds.
In the case of the vanishing point, even though in our minds we might "know" that there is nothing there, we can not accept it. We take the messages from our eyes as the truth letting our physical sense of vision subjugate our reason. In reality, the vanishing point is probably nothing more than hypothetical; a tool to make sense out of putting a three dimensional world down on paper in two dimensions. Otherwise you have to contemplate a nearly infinite number of vanishing points dotting the landscape; all of them containing nothing. All of them would all have to be right smack next to each other in order to incorporate all possible points of view. And if they do indeed contain nothing (I realize this is a nonsense phrase can "nothing" be contained?), then wouldn't that render the entirety of our physical existence non-existent (Buddhists might jump for joy at this notion)?
That last silly question aside, what is it that I am trying to say? We think we know the world. We think we see it as it is. We think we understand how it works. For me, I will never write a computer program or understand the basic workings of my computer, but I have learned to use it very well. I think our lives and the world we live in is like that. We've learned how to use it, but we don't really understand it or see it as it really and truly is. I mean if a simple artistic tool called the "vanishing point" can call up so much uncertainty, how can I ever hope to really understand the world? How can any of us?
So the next time you find yourself staring off into the distance, maybe with a slightly unfocused and all encompassing gaze, look for the vanishing point. Look really hard and if you see it, let me know what you saw there. It might just be the all of everything or it might just be nothing at all.
Dianne Lehmann is a jewelry designer who has been in business since January of 2000. Her interest in designing and manufacturing jewelry goes back beyond that to 1994. It took her many years of trying various creative outlets to finally figure out that making jewelry is where she could really shine. Dianne began with simply stringing beads onto cable and has progressed from there. She is now an accomplished lapidary (cuts and polishes stones) and silversmith. Dianne and her husband, Bernd, live in northern Arizona and both love to hike. Dianne can not help but pick up rocks (they are her first love) and some of these find their way into her jewelry. Dianne makes one-of-a-kind pieces that she hopes give people as much joy to view as she gets from the making of them.If you like, you may view her work at http://www.syzygyjewelry.com
Nicely done. Kind of like looking at a distant star in the sky: it's very bright and beautiful, yet if you were to travel to it you would see first hand the utter violence of it. This is very thought-provoking piece. Thank you.
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