Here's a quote from the beginning of the final chapter:
"So what happened to perspective that it should have disappeared from 20th C. Art ? In the foregoing chapters I have tried to elucidate its meaning - to find out what made it compelling as a pictorial device - for artists of the Renaissance. It is not hard to see why those same factors are not operative within the modern artists' frame of reference. The most important factor of all, I believe, has to do with the radical change in the status of membership institutions, which are no longer accorded the kind of Platonic reality they once possessed, a kind and degree of reality that was closely related to that of the buildings that were erected for those same institutions.... Both the public edifices and the pictures that adorned them continuously challenged the member to "take his stand" with reference to a body of narrational and iconic subject matter that served to authenticate the real and enduring being of the institutions and their power to give order and meaning to the life of the community..... Nothing has done more to undercut the claims of any institution to ultimate reality than the burgeoning of radical nominalism that owes much to the triumph of science and the scientific outlook" So it's not surprising that the most radical nominalist on our listserv would conclude "he's no one I want to spend time reading - given how many other worthy books are around." (although, indeed, over the last ten years in this listserv, Cheerskep has yet to identify a single one of those "worthy books") As I noted at the very beginning, Smith is going to make provocative generalizations. Does every 20th C. professor not express "earnest convictions" ? No... of course not ... all of us can provide examples. But when we're looking for "intensely moralistic" earnest convictions regarding their area of expertise, perhaps the scholars whom we have read here recently are more typical (Kivy, Dutton, Berger). (and didn't William recently advise me that art critics should avoid that kind of expression? The "Refine Search" function for the listserv is not working any more, so I can't find the exact quote) Wouldn't a scholar like Ruskin, with his "seven lamps of architecture" be an anomaly in today's academic world? But, regrettfully, Smith only offers that critique of his profession in passing -- his real subject is the meaning of perspective, as elucidated in a selection of paintings from the 15th C. -- beginning, amazingly enough, with the two lost paintings that Brunelleschi is said to have done to demonstrate the science of single-point perspective. And since Michael owns this book, and seems to admire it, I would like to invite him to begin that discussion. ____________________________________________________________ Small Business Tools Find solutions for your business. Click here and get it done now! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=rrFVV1qv5twaMmTya3Q5NgAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARMQAAAAA=
