Oblique Drawing

For more than half a century, Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as
Symbolic Form has dominated studies of visual representation. Despite the
hegemony of central projection, or perspective, other equally important methods of
representation have much to tell us. Parallel projection can be found on classical
Greek vases, in Pompeiian frescoes, in Byzantine mosaics; it returned in works of
the historical avant-garde, and remains the dominant form of representation in
China. In Oblique Drawing, Massimo Scolari investigates
"anti-perspective" visual representation over two thousand years, finding
in the course of his investigation that visual and conceptual representations are
manifestations of the ideological and philosophical orientations of different
cultures. Images prove to be not just a form of art but a form of thought, a
projection of a way of life. Scolari's generously illustrated studies show that
illusionistic perspective is not the only, or even the best, representation of
objects in history; parallel projection, for example, preserves in scale the actual
measurements of objects it represents, avoiding the distortions of one-point
perspective. Scolari analyzes the use of nonperspectival representations in
pre-Renaissance images of machines and military hardware, architectural models and
drawings, and illustrations of geometrical solids. He challenges Panofsky's theory
of Pompeiian perspective and explains the difficulties encountered by the Chinese
when they viewed Jesuit missionaries' perspectival religious images. Scolari vividly
demonstrates the diversity of representational forms devised through the centuries,
and shows how each one reveals something that is lacking in the others.