Art Telecommunication ed. by H. Grundmann (review)

Reviewedby CharlesHess, 6336Contra Costa Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of guarantee of significant artistic achievement. Rd, Oakland, CA 94618, U S A . Art, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, This brings us to the major weakness of the Milwaukee, WI 53201,U.S.A. book: it does not describe or represent the artistic content of the electronic projects in such a way as to enable the reader to judge whether anv art of aesthetic or social Perspective in Perspective. Lawrence Wright. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1983. 386 pp., illus. The author of this remarkable book isa British ‘perspector’ (his term for an artist who specializesin perspective), as well as a scholar, writer and wit. This fine volume prompted me to search for his earlier books, including his vigorous histories of the bathroom (entitled Clean and Decent), the bed (Warm and Snug) and heating and cooking(HomeFiresBurning). In the case of Lawrence Wright (who is approaching his eightieth year), one can tell a book by itscoversincehis writingis astaut and always as prudently playful as the names he gives his books. What better name to givethis book than Perspective in Perspective, since we think clearly (so we say) when things are ‘in perspective’,and this book attempts to present clear thinking about perspective. I am acquainted with most books on linear perspective, but this appears to be the best because of, or despite, the fact that, in the words of the author, it “is not a ‘how-to’ book on perspective drawing. It is about the way we see things -or think we do, which is by no means the same - and about the ways in which we have tried to reproduce that visual concept in diagrams, pictures, photographs, films and television.” In other words, it is not just another book on the history and theory of perspective. It is a book on perception. It is about a way to see (which the author calls ‘natural perspective’) and the methods by which we make pictures of that (‘Linear perspective’). The two, of course, are not the same, and the author is thorough in tracing the ways in which they are alike as well as not. “Neither an artist nor a geometrician -not even a photographer - has ever produced a perspective wholly ‘true’ in that it corresponded with the visual image received at the actual scene”, the author explains at the outset. Like politics, perspectiveis an art of the possiblefor at leastthe reason that “when God created the world there were no treatises of linear perspective to guide him, and he has arranged its optical effects and our reception of them according to a different system.” A painting of a pipe is not a pipe. The map is not the territory, the menu is not the same as the stew, nor is the drawing the same as the object depicted. Nor is it the same asperception itself. This book deserves to be carefully read by students as well as scholars. The tone of the text is engaging throughout, with literally hundreds of black and white plates. It is a suspenseful and vivid account of the step-bystep development of linear perspectivewith all its subspecies,mutations, and kin -including such curious variants as parallel and diagonal perspective, curvilinear and spherical perspective , aerial and atmospheric perspective, accelerated and counter-perspective, anamorphosis and so on. There are 18 chapters, five appendices, and an oddly impoverished bibliography. It is convenient for casual reading but counterproductive for further research that this book has no footnotes; it may be a laborious task to try to track down a quotation or pursue a thought in depth. Art Telecommunication. H. Grundmann, ed. Western Front, Vancouver, Blix, Vienna, 1984.€6.75.ISBN:0-920974-08-2. [Distributed in UK by Art Access/Networking, 64 Upper Cheltenham Place, Montpellier, Bristol BS6 5HR.l This stimulating, irritating book is a hybrid it is the result of international cooperation and is sponsored by both public arts funding and money from private companies. It is stimulating because it concerns a topic of immense significanceand future relevance;it is irritating because it fails,ultimately, to explorethe issues it raises in sufficient detail or with appropriate critical rigour. There issomethingironic...