perspective . . .

. . . not image, is everything. and you're welcome for the early morning slogan. and yes, i sort of loathe slogans too, but it is, again, early, and so i'm compressing because i really should be about getting ready to head to campus. so then . . .

"[...] perspective seals off religious art from the realm of the magical, where the work of art itself works the miracle, and from the realm of the dogmatic and symbolic, where the work bears witness to, or foretells, the miraculous. But there it opens it to something entirely new: the realm of the visionary, where the miraculous becomes a direct experience of the beholder, in that the supernatural events in a sense erupt into his own, apparently natural, visual space ans so permit him really to 'internalize' their supernaturalness" -- Erwin Panofsky (Panofsky 72).

i find Panofsky's linguistic attempt to capture the experience of religious (one might say, "all") art sort of enchanting and admirable. i have to wonder, though, if we can approximate even within our highly complex mental, cognitive, peceptual apparatus, "the direct experience of the beholder." i suppose this is where attentiveness to precision in perspectival abstraction comes into play. um, so, . . . good luck with that, artist (i don't think it was working for this woman).

*from Panofsky's 1991 Perspective as Symbolic Form.