‘Here is the Thing’: On Object, Ground and Background in the History of Art and Images

Abstract

Space-rendering devices as perspective (Albertian, before and beyond) were a special by-product of a human universal wish to render objects. It is argued that this impulse lies at the root of human image production. On the basis of this assumption a taxonomy is presented, or rather a basic syntax, of images, of which perspective is an exceptional variant; an outsider case a sense, which for all kinds of reasons has come to dominate our thinking and analysis of pictures.