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Perspective: Ben Johnson
In his painting of the library at the Convento di San Marco, Florence, Ben Johnson is using single-point perspective. He is able to do so because he faces the room 'square-on' and the vanishing point is in the middle of the picture. the artist has deliberately avoided complicating the composition by ignoring the fact that the vertical columns would appear to converge as they rise above our eye-line. If it had been necessary to include this, he would have needed to construct a second vanishing point some distance above the top of the picture.
Although this may appear to be a straight forward transcription of the space, Johnson has in fact composed the scene by combining photographs taken from several different viewpoints, together with computer generated graphics derived from the architectural plans. For Johnson, combining photography with computer imagery is the modern equivalent of the camera obscura, and similarly reduces the three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional image which can then be transferred directly to the canvas. Although the final scene is a fiction, the artist has tried to find the perfect - if imaginary - viewpoint; the point from which the hidden geometry of the building is revealed.
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Ben is a personal friend. He is one on London's best painters---probabably, he is the best one since Fancis Bacon. .H.
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Perspective: Ben Johnson
In his painting of the library at the Convento di San Marco, Florence, Ben Johnson is using single-point perspective. He is able to do so because he faces the room 'square-on' and the vanishing point is in the middle of the picture. the artist has deliberately avoided complicating the composition by ignoring the fact that the vertical columns would appear to converge as they rise above our eye-line. If it had been necessary to include this, he would have needed to construct a second vanishing point some distance above the top of the picture.
Although this may appear to be a straight forward transcription of the space, Johnson has in fact composed the scene by combining photographs taken from several different viewpoints, together with computer generated graphics derived from the architectural plans. For Johnson, combining photography with computer imagery is the modern equivalent of the camera obscura, and similarly reduces the three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional image which can then be transferred directly to the canvas. Although the final scene is a fiction, the artist has tried to find the perfect - if imaginary - viewpoint; the point from which the hidden geometry of the building is revealed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben is a personal friend. He is one on London's best painters---probabably, he is the best one since Fancis Bacon. .H.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html