Geraldine Chimirri-Russell of the
Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary has a theory that we view coins too often front-on only. She has found this "
oblique" view useful for many kinds, but principally for
Celtic. If you have those typical "abstract" kinds with the eyes in the wrong places, just try turning them sideways and viewing them edge-on or nearly so.
In fact,
writing an article about Champagne in the Middle Ages, I found an image of a
medieval French coin that would line up like that.
See her works here:
SEEING THE PAST OBLIQUELY by Geraldine Chimirri-Russell
Since the Renaissance, in an effort to provide the most realistic representation of the world around them, artists have used the technique of perspective to give the illusion of depth to an image produced on a flat surface. Viewers have been trained, whether knowingly or not, to accept this representation and to mentally translate a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional form. ... As
part of this training the viewer has become increasingly passive before artistic creations.
http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/31/324... and Geraldine Chimirri-Russell (Curator of
Numismatics at the
Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary) finding three-dimensional images on some
Celtic coins. That evening many people must have been squinting at their own coins from
oblique angles in the
hope of seeing a 3-D
face! Newsletter, July 2004, Dept. of Coins and Medals,
Fitzwilliam Museum
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/britnumsoc/publications/Newsletter_July_04.pdfUsing the example of
Celtic coins minted in the centuries immediately preceding the Common Era it is possible to show that traditional methods of interpretation and presentation are incapable of giving the necessary flexibility to allow for broader comprehension of artistic intentions. The highly
stylized images on
Celtic coins feature human profiles with dissociated features. The coins have been viewed as two-dimensional works, however, if the coins are perceived as three-dimensional objects that can be freely rotated in space, their properties can be interpreted equally freely. When viewed from an
oblique angle, the dissociated facial features can be seen to realign producing a three-dimensional, realistic
face seen from a three-quarter, rather than profile view. This optical illusion is found on the majority of examples of extant coins, thus indicating intent on the
part of the
Celtic artists.
Taking an
Oblique Point of View: The Challenges of Interpretation and Display in Museums
By Geraldine E. Chimirri-Russell. Published by The International Journal of the Humanities
http://geraldineechimirri-russell.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.26/prod.1281
