Painting is reborn…….Enter
the new awareness of Stereo Space and a New Aesthetics …….The centuries
long conquest of plastic forms within a monoscopic pictorial space is
ended……..A new era lies ahead for the visual arts…….The living third dimensional
space-field awaits its birth. It
asks nothing more than the trance-like stare of the middle eye to invoke
Cyclops to waken from his 35,000 year sleep.
This primeval giants reward will be the sudden revelation and witness
to the dematerialization of the picture surface into an aesthetics of
pure space where visible forms will materialize and release themselves—forms
that are suspended, floating, hovering, poised, driving backward and forward,
near enough to touch and far enough away to escape into the void………...So
now enter a new aesthetic empathy, meditation, subjective intensity and
an unparalleled form-space generation and communication.
All of this exciting
injunction could have been declared 134 years ago had it not been for
the invention of photography. But
at that time, 1838, the full investigation of form within the limits of
the monoscopic surface had not yet been fully realized:
the genius of Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, Balla, Mondrian,
Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, Pollach and Escher lay ahead.
Awaiting the future, too, would be the subjection of the picture
plane to the forces of sculpture with such explosive consequences that
our galleries and museums are graveyard and garden of plastic visual forms
rented from the ribs of paintings. Looking back to 1838, one gazes with astonishment
at the paper presented to the philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London on June 21, 1838 by Charles Wheatstone. Entitled “ON SOME REMARKABLE AND HITHERTO UNOBSERVED,
PHENOMENA OF BINOCULAR OF BINOCULAR VISION”, this paper must now be recognized as describing
one of the most remarkable techno-visual discoveries in the 35,000 years
of the History of Art. This paper
revealed a discovery as stunning as were the great polychrome visions
painted by Magdalenian artists. Its
contents were as innovative as was the first portrayal of overlapping
planes and depth by the great neolithic cultures.
It’s thesis was a powerful as the conquest of the third dimension
rendered by Greek and Pompeian painters as focused in the Villa of Mysteries—yes,
as revolutionary as was Brunelleshi’s invention of the laws of perspective
and Campin’s and Van Eyck’s development of the oil medium in the early
hours of the 15th century—even as momentous for our twentieth
century as were the shattered and re-combined forms of the Cubists and
the pioneers who explored “simultaneity”, psychic symbolism and free association.
(1)
Returning to 1838, to Wheatstones stereoscopic drawings in the light of what was to boil out of Paris and London by Turner, Constable, Delacroix, Corot, Daguerre, Plateau, and to the oncoming tide of Courbet Manet, Monet, Seurat and Cezanne, one can be stirred by the lonely singular event portrayed in the stereoscopic drawing of two cubes by Wheatstone (Fig.1). If it meant little at the time to artists, too shocked by Daguerres “sun-pictures” and Talbot’s “The Pencil of Nature”, it now means the eclipse of our monoscopic view of the picture surface as a staging arena for plastic form and the beginning of a new space aesthetics of air, light, form, color—all discharged into the openness of windowless space. Now awakened
from its long sleep, the discovery by Wheatstone of the psycho-optical
consequences of our binocular vision of reality, one sees that this is
but the product of our two spaced-out eyes rendering two different retinal
views of forms in the visual field. Two
views, however, brought into a cyclopean fusion by the mind to render
a profound single spatial awareness of reality—as reality is.
Aware of this phenomenal rendering, Wheatstone wrote:
“It
will now be obvious why it is impossible for the artist to give a faithful
representation of any near solid object, that is, to produce a painting
which shall not be distinguished in the mind from the object itself. When the painting and the object are seen with
both eyes, in the case of the painting two similar pictures are
projected on the retinae, in the case of the solid object the pictures
are dissimilar; there is therefore an essential difference
between the impressions on the organs of sensation in the two cases, and
consequently between the perceptions formed in the mind; the painting
therefore cannot be confounded with the solid object.” (2)
Despite this
remarkable achievement and prescience of Wheatstone, all of the progress
and innovative developments of painters to his time (and yes, ours) to
arrive at “a painting which shall not be distinguished in the mind
from the object itself”—all were doomed to failure in spite of the
incredible monoscopic illusionist successes of Van Eyck, Raphael, Heda,
Zurbaran and Harnett.
It remained for Wheatstone to make the singular
discovery that when we view a cube which is set before us and when we
close one eye and then the other, it is apparent that we see two distinctly
different appearances of the cube. While
corroborations of this fact can be traced back through illustrious writings
of Francis Agullonius, Baptista Porta, Leonardo Di Vinci, and even more
into the remote past—to Galen and Euclid, it remained for Wheatstone to
produce the first stereo- synthetic form and the means to achieve a conscious
stereopsis of it in the mind. It
must have been an extraordinary moment of insight when he realized that
when two outline drawings representing the binocular view of a cube might
become fused together, then this image would be accepted by the mind as
a concrete solid existing in the same real spatial sense—as though one
could reach out to touch it. Indeed
this was the case. Wheatstone devised a simple mirrored apparatus
to aid the cause of fusing his three-dimensional drawings. He called this device a Stereoscope
(Fig.2). Wheatstone does not appear
to discuss, at any length, the direct vision viewing of stereo pairs,
nor does he suggest that he has delivered to the visual arts a new revolutionary
method. He speaks to this, however,
in these words:“For
the purposes of illustration I have employed only outline figures for
had higher shading or coloring been introduced it might be supposed that
the effect was wholly or in part due to these circumstances, whereas by
leaving them out of consideration no room is left to doubt that the entire
effect of relief is owing to the simultaneous perception of the two monocular
projections, one on each retina.. But
if it be required to obtain the most faithful resemblances of real objects,
shadowing and coloring may properly be employed to heighten the effects. Careful attention would enable an artist to draw and paint the two
component pictures, so as to present to the mind of the observer, in the
resultant perception, perfect identity with the object represented. Flowers, crystals, busts, vases, instruments
of various kinds, etc., might thus be represented so as not to be distinguished
by sight from the real objects themselves” (2) (Fig. 3).
![]() Were it not for
the invention of the photograph these words might have fired the new spatial
art. One might imagine where this
revolutionary concept would have taken Manet, Monet, Seurat or Cezanne. Within six months of delivering his paper to
the Royal Society, Wheatstone had already conceived of asking Fox Talbot
and Henry Collen to provide him with photographic Talbotypes of statues,
buildings and people. Since then
photography has continued to utilize this astonishing discovery.
We must return
back to the moment before the photographic stereo view of reality overwhelmed
Wheatstone and his contemporaries. A
mere seven score years is but a moment in the strata of history—but the
soil is now ready. Today we are
dealing with the possibilities that entire orchestrations of color forms
can be made to exist synthetically in a binocular space-field that
is itself consonant with reality. The
phenomenon of the Cyclopean Eye which miraculously renders our visions
of the pristine, sylvan landscape now prepares us for the new stereoscopic
art. Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking in the year
1859, (Atlantic Monthly) might as well have directed these words to us
when he wrote:
“Nothing but
the vision of a Laputan, who passed his days in extracting sunbeams out
of cucumbers, could have reached such a height of delirium as to rave
about the time when a man should paint his miniature by looking at a blank
tablet, and a multitudinous wilderness of forest foliage or an endless
Babel of roofs and spires stamp itself, in a moment, so faithfully and
so minutely, that one may creep over the surface of the picture with his
microscope and find every leaf perfect, or read the letters of distant
signs….just as he would sweep the real view with a spyglass to explore
all that it contains.” (3)
Though Holmes
was referring here to the art of stereo-photography, this augury is but
a stone's throw to an art of pigment, dye and ink.
When the art of stereo-drawing and binocular disparity is mastered,
one is within reach of a totally new aesthetics;
an art of undetermined power—radically different, and basically
new, whose only requirement will involve a capacity at everyone’s disposal
who has normal binocular vision—the converging of lines of sight.
This will require some examination of our
binocular powers of vision. Two
distinctly different projections of outside environments, falling upon
the active retinal screens of both eyes cause the unexplainable, as yet
hidden, power of consciousness to form a coherent, corespondent synthesis
of the outside environment. When
we fix our eyes, in a relaxed manner, upon the most distant reaches of
a landscape, both eyes, are said to be staring with parallel lines of
sight. (Fig. 4) Each
eye, under these circumstances, is rendering its own different view of
what might be a line of mountains. We
may say that in the “mind’s eye” the images of the mountains have coalesced—fused
into one image; as though we had
an eye in the middle of our foreheads. In a sense, metaphorically, we have; we will refer to this as the
cyclopean eye. (Hering, “oeil de cyclope imaginaire,” 1867)Vision is mainly,
however, concerned with convergence.
Now as we look with both our eyes at specific objects located within
the binocular field, from six inches to as far as we can see, we are rotating
our eyes to converge two lines of sight upon an object.
Our eyes can accommodate to focus and converge upon any form, anywhere
in the visual field, with fixed attention, or with saccadic strokes. A single eye can do just as well, in the sense
that the visual field is formed by the eye into a great cone of space—like
a giant cyclone light flux 150 degrees wide. The eye of the cyclone, at its apex corresponds
to the fovea of the retina which is the seat of our sharpest vision.
One has a view of it by imagining a fine pencil of laser light
emerging from the vanishing point of some self-directed linear perspective.
All of the visual cues available to painters today to suggest distance
and depth are entirely the domain of the single eye. But when both of these great visual cones converge upon an object
in space—a profound property of vision emerges: stereopsis. Two retinal
screens, not one, signal the cascading light show from outside the lens
window of the eye to the cyclopean eye which opens to consciousness a
psychic field consonant with the binocular field. (Fig. 4)
The more conscious
we are of the spatial distinctions within the vastness of this fused,
binocular-psychic space, the richer it can be said is our “stereopsis”. The key to our sensation of stereopsis is through two well known
factors acting together: Convergence
and Disparity. (4)
When both retinal
cones converge upon a specific object in space, the eyes have found the
range, so to speak, and the mind computes an accurate sense of distance. Binocular convergence involves the fact that
our eyes are separated by a width of about 2 ½ inches. With this width serving as a base, our two
lines of sight converge upon specific objects in space, spraying a profusion
of triangular fixations upon them. With
each fixation, a train of focal adjustments for each eye lens issues simultaneously
as the eyes fix upon a distant aircraft, a nearby tree, or an ant passing
over a leaf. The brain gives a
critical evaluation of both factors and computes its sense of definition,
distance and scale. Acting in
concert with triangulation and focal accommodation is the brains computation
of the shifted differences observed in objects that are seen separately
by the left and right eye. This
is called binocular or retinal disparity.
(Parallax-displacement-shift)
It is absolutely critical and important to our sensation of depth
perception. By examining Fig. 5, No. 1 to 5, one can easily
ascertain the fact that we see everything double except for the area around
the foveal point of convergence of the primary lines of sight. Unconsciously, we simply pay little attention
to this double vision unless we make a point to observe it as indicated
by the diagrams. The mind however,
compares and regards this rain of light bombarding the retina, with all
its subtended angles and shifts of position, with computed finesse. Disparity as we shall see, will be at
the center of the new space aesthetics.
Connected with convergence and
disparity, and important to this thesis, will be the realization that
just as one has the ability to converge upon these words, any one can
just as easily acquire the skill of crossing the visual axes in an
imaginary space. (5) This
essential factor, combined with disparity, opens the way to learning
the methods and skills in both the construction of primary binocular
forms and the viewing of them. The
illustration in Fig. 5, No. 6 suggests that a left and right line of
sight can be brought to cross in space at an imaginary point (cv) to fuse two objects (A & B), at a distance, into one. This imaginary point is obtained by fixing the lines of sight at about reading distance, usually by staring ahead (obtaining a fix) through the index finger. Obtaining such a “fix” upon the tip of the index finger will cause any pair of objects in the distance, two balls for example lying along the same path of sight, to coalesce into one new ball at the center position. The two original balls remain in sight, as two residual-phantom images. This can all be very easily demonstrated another way by using only the fingers. Simply raise the forefinger and middle finger of one hand into the familiar V sign, at arms length. Bring the tip of the finger of the opposite hand between the eyes at about reading distance and stare ahead. By closing one eye and then the other, one can corroborate precisely what is illustrated in Fig. 5, No. 6. As
a further consequence of this discussion of disparity and convergence
it will help to look at Fig. 6 which illustrates the two distinctly different
methods of viewing binocular constructions. The method of parallel lines of sight
(staring fixedly ahead beyond the pairs) and the method of crossing
lines of sight are contrasted. Viewing
stereo constructions by means of parallel sight limits picture size (2
½” separation between image objects) which is a physical limitation based
upon the interocular separation of the eyes.
This special kind of vision, then, limits itself to small scale
pictures and figures. An interesting
example of the early use of this idea, published in 1860, is the advertisement
shown in Fig. 8. This example
serves to demonstrate the arrangement of words as merely decorative as
distinguished from the expressive-spatial interrelationship found in 3-D
Concrete Poetry. (6)
It is the crossing ahead as it
divides into three images. It
is at this instant that you stare at the third central image—you gaze—concentrate—meditate
fixedly upon the center image until it comes on you—and it will—with
the clarity and power of sudden revelation. The painted forms will be seen to exist in
real space, actually and concretely, as if in the nether world of dreams
you have just opened a middle eye—a cyclopean power. Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing in Atlantic Monthly, July, 1861,
in an article titled: “Sun-Painting
and Sun Sculpture” speaks of this faculty:
“Perhaps there
is also some half-magnetic effect in the fixing of the eyes on the twin
pictures, --something like Mr. Braid’s hypnotism……At least the shutting
out of surrounding objects, and the concentration of the whole attention,
which is a consequence of this, produce a dream-like exaltation of the
faculties, a kind of clairvoyance in which we seem to leave the
body behind us and sail away into one strange scene after another like
disembodies spirits.”(7)
When you will
have once raised the lid of the middle eye—the cyclopean power will remain
open and becomes easier—finally effortless.
You will have before you a visual field of immense spatial depth,
an arena where the total of the visual vocabulary will be given the distinction
of reality and life in space. A
powerful intensification of communication—of communion with form. Elements which formerly were locked within
the monocular field are now free to exist above, within, and beyond the
surface upon which the forms themselves are painted.
There are no longer any barriers to position or place in stereo
space—no boundaries. Any diptych
pair can be paired with any other to render a sense of boundless repetition
in all directions. (Fig. 9 and
Fig.10) With the simple act of cyclopean fusion even
the very walls of architecture will dissolve away into immense stereo
spatial fields of crystalographic color patterns.
The physical carrier of form, be it canvas, paper, concrete, fresco
will no longer have any meaning. Dot,
Line, Plane, Volume, Space, Color and Texture will orchestrate in open
space where formerly the dynamics of such spatial entities were displayed
in concert with the surface. In
the new aesthetics of stereo-space the surface dematerializes and
evaporates itself into space. It
is quite remarkable that this dematerialization of the picture surface
was described in some detail by Sir David Brewster in his book “On the
Stereoscope” published in 1856. In a Chapter titled: “On the Union of Similar Pictures in Binocular
Vision”, he describes experiments on large surfaces that he covered with
similar plane figures. Brewster
stated:
![]() “If we, therefore,
look at a papered wall without pictures, or doors, or windows, or even
at a considerable portion of a wall, at the distance of three feet and
unite two of the figures, two flowers, for example—at the distance of
twelve inches from each other horizontally, the whole wall or visible
portion of it will appear covered with flowers as before but as each flower
is now composed of two flowers united at the point of convergence of the
optic axes, the whole papered
wall with
all its flowers will be seen suspended in the air at the distance of six
inches from the observer! At
first the observer does not decide upon the distance of the suspended
wall from himself. It generally
advances slowly to its new position, and when it has taken its place it
has a very singular character. The
surface of it seems slightly curved.
It has a silvery transparent aspect.
It is more beautiful than the real paper, which is no longer
seen, and it moves with the slightest motion of the head.
If the observer, who is now three feet from the wall, retires from
it, the suspended wall of flowers will follow him, moving farther and
farther from the real wall, and also, but very slightly farther and farther
from the observer. When he stands
still, he may stretch out his hand and place it on the other side of the
suspended wall, and even hold a candle on the other side of it to satisfy
himself that the ghost of the wall stands between the candle and himself.”
It seems impossible that these words should
lie buried for 116 years. And
it is even more astounding that this marvelous description by Brewster
could possibly have been and still can be an art involving repeated patterns,
continuous friezes, whole architectural assemblages of crystalographic
color-forms suspended in air, existing beyond and beneath a dematerialized
planar surface. Buried in the
19 Century, and clearly within the scope of this statement—of the new
aesthetics, also lie experiments by Brewster, H. W. Dove, and O. N. Rood
on what they called the theory of “Lustre”. This involves the binocular fusion of color
fields giving rise to phenomenological kinds of atmospheric, optical color
mixture. The monocular color fields
of Seurat and color field abstractionists today will pale before the new
possibilities of binocular color fusion.
Returning to Brewster, one cannot underestimate the enormous possibilities
suggested by him. Not only is
he saying that the surface has dematerialized, but that stereoscopically
paired graphic forms can be multiplied n-times-in all directions.
In Fig. 10, one of Wheatstone’s paired drawings has been organized
as a potentially n-crystalographic field—either by the method of parallel
sight or by cross-viewing, you will immediately witness something very
astonishing: One will find that his “Cyclopean” sense, the unconscious, (Gestalt)
or whatever it will eventually be understood to be, will hold the entire field fixated while at the same
time, he (the viewer) is free to direct his eyes to any portion of the
field—to focally converge upon any particular isolated point, figure or
cluster of figures. How does
the mind hold so large a psychic field of visible forms constant
while permitting a foveal examination of details in any direction? It is as though one has induced hypnosis to one level of mind while
permitting another level of mind virtual license.Seeing, per se,
is a process which is still little understood!
One will find, too, that the more he exercises this psycho-optic
ability, the easier and easier it becomes to fixate both the field and
its detail. After a time, it will seem quite natural to
cross-view synthetic forms as it is natural to converge the eyes normally
upon objects. This suggest the
vista of an aesthetics that will
undoubtedly bring
forth a very powerful (psychosynthesis) transcendental, meditative art. This binocular art may also have within it
the power to bridge the gulf between the traditional Western and Eastern
conceptions of space. Here, then,
will be an aesthetics that will involve the philosophical, historical,
spatial invention of both East and West into an unparalleled new synthesis. The picture surface has only been understood,
up to now, monoscopically, as though we were all inhabitants of some “Flatland”
(9). This is not to say that the
great tradition of monoscopic painting is to be occluded any more than
it is to view the techno-spatial inventions of the last 35,000 years are
suddenly brushed aside. Monoscopic,
flat field, or space-illusionist art whether it be Paleolithic, Medieval,
or of the nature of “The Garden of Delights”, Michelangelo’s “Sistine
Ceiling”, “La Grand Jatte”, “Guernica”; all of these are among the treasured heritage
of the past. The long history
of hard-won innovations of rendering visual illusions upon planar surfaces
is an immense fund of techno-visual language.
From the Aurignacian to the present, the list of spatial invention
is long: vertical position, overlapping
planes, diminution of size, aerial and linear perspective, inverted and
multiple perspective, foreshortening, shadows, texture gradients, optical
illusions, interpenetrating form and space, advancing and receding color
fields, two dimensional space division, illusions of motion and after
images. A stereo art cannot properly
exist without the involvement of these important monoscopic space illusions. What is called for now is the re-integration
of this knowledge with our psycho-binocular powers of stereopsis—a sensing
of the three-dimensional space field that lies both within and without
us. This is both possible now and necessary. Speaking both to the art of pigment, dye and
ink and to the art of light sensitive emulsions—inevitably they must now
be driven together. Stereoscopic
aesthetics will be an arena that will see the plastic forms of the past
100 years fusing into staggering arrays of re-combinations of familiar
and unfamiliar forms, new synthesis, shimmering-lustrous color fields; all existing in air—a space without a canvas
base, paper base or physical carrier whatever.
There will be complete and remarkable deceptions of the physical
and mental eye. The space outside
our heads will match the space inside our minds.
It will mean the discovery of a mental force that will warp two
constructions into one—into single a cyclopean phantom, as though our
primitive, infantile diplopia were being brought into fusion and synthesis.
We are at the beginning of a new era in the visual arts no less
momentous than was our thrust into the depths of space, which was to link
the surface of the earth with the Lunar Sea of Tranquility.
We looked back upon ourselves from that luminous Astral sea with
psychic shock and a compelling awareness of where we really are.
No less are we enthralled by the vastness of inner-space. We can truly be aware that this intensification
between ourselves, this planet “space-ship earth” coupled with our relentless
bombardment of atomic nuclei will all inevitably drive the arts (as we
know them) into totally new perspectives. The time is now. The tools
are here: they exist in the photographic
arena of Holography, Xography, Vectographs, Anaglyphs, polarized stereo
pairs, wide screen stereo-panoramas, stereo-cinematography and stereo-video.
They are before those of us who must now awaken the sleeping cyclops
to reform – and to refashion in paints, dyes and inks, synthetic assemblage
orchestrations of color-forms in a psychic-binocular space.
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