Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CONCEPTION OF RELIEF It was pointed out in the last chapter how the artist with his problem of making a unitary picture out of his complicated ideas of the The conception three-dimensional is compelled to of volume. separate clearly the two-dimen sional appearance of the object from the general subjective idea of depth. Thus he arrives at a simple idea of volume as a plane continuing into the distance. To make this manner of presentation quite clear, think of two panes of glass standing parallel, and between them a figure whose position is such that its outer points touch them. The figure then occupies a space of uniform depth measurement and its members are all arranged within this depth. When the figure, now, is seen from the front through the glass, it becomes unified into a unitary pictorial surface, and, furthermore, the perception of its volume, of itself quite a complicated perception, is now made uncommonly easy through the conception of so simple a volume as the total space here presented. The figure lives, we may say, in one layer of uniform depth. Each form tends to make of itself a flat picture within the visible two dimensions of this layer, and to be understood as such a flat picture. Again those outermost points which touch the panes still determine common planes even when one thinks the glass removed. By this sort of arrangement the object resolves itself into a layer of a certain uniform thickness. The total volume of a picture will then Layers of uniform consist, according to the object thickness. represented, of a greater or lesser number of such imaginary layers arranged one behind the other, yet altogether uniting into one appearance having one uniform depth measurement. So the artist divides and groups his ideas...