Depicting space: A Problem and an Opportunity

Depicting Space - An Ongoing Problem and Opportunity

One of the key problems that faces image makers is how space might be represented. Linear perspective, codified by Filippo Brunelleschi in about 1415, seems to be a solution that mimics how the world is seen but away from Europe other systems persisted.

Since Impressionism, the illusionistic tropes of linear perspective have been challenged through contact with other cultures (not least through an influx of Japanese prints that caught the imagination of Gauguin and Van Gogh), and through the emergence of photography which liberated the plastic arts from so-called realism.

In this lecture, Bryan Eccleshall will present different ways that space has been depicted throughout art history, with reference to cultures beyond Europe as well as more familiar examples. As well as discussing different solutions, he will open up the possibility that different ways of representing space locates artists – and therefore,…