The role of perspective in the contemporary artistic practice

Abstract

The influence of scientific research in art is not exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. The Alberti model of pictorial representation based on perspective, as well as the social consideration of art, included Painting among the liberal arts because of the mathematical principles of geometry which it was founded on. For more than 400 years, perspective would be called the “science of art” and it established, almost in a unitary way, a representative model that has characterised the artistic production and the training of artists until the fracture represented by the art of the twentieth century. The discussion about the preeminence of the rational model in the artistic practice based on the aesthetic or historicist parameters has been the topic of important debates on teaching and practising the Fine Arts particularly during the age of Enlightenment. Our contribution aims to reflect on the role that perspective has regained in the contemporary artistic practice, not only as a graphic resource for representation but also as a reflective element in itself. Although a hundred years ago for most of the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century it could symbolise a reality to be fought against, its use in contemporary art has transcended from pure methodology to its inclusion among the new conceptual landscapes, intervening as a fundamental part of artistic discourse. Therefore, we will study the work of contemporary artists whose pieces highlight a review of the spatial perspective; so that the three-dimensional space becomes a protagonist element of the same representation.