"Art and Illusion"

[slokind]

This idea comes up in one form or another repeatedly in the Forvm, so:
"Art and Illusion" is a book by Ernst Gombrich, about a half century old by now.  When art uses illusion, something very specific is meant, and it is a minority report in the world's art.  Basically, it is native to two traditions (each does it in its own way, but it is fundamentally the same): Greece and China.  Of course, it was disseminated.  In the course of time, in one way or another, cultures have let go of it, have lost it.
"Illusionist" is to visual art as "Empirical" is to science and philosopy.  It is based on perception by the five bodily senses.  In visual art it is based on optical experience.  Most of the world's art draws what they know: a red apple is always red, an eye is always the shape of an eye, a meter stick is always a meter long, and so forth.  That is conceptual.
Making art based on what changes depending on when and from what angle and distance we see it, that is, on optics, is illusionist.  It is not 'true' that optical is 'false', though Plato (who gives himself away on this point, as, well, as a Platonist) thought so.  Real vision, hearing, smelling, and touch are, after all, what dealing with reality demands.  That's 'reality' < 'res'.  Neither is 'better' than the other, but they are categorically different.
By c. 200 CE the radically scientific, empirical, optical way of making art began to weaken, to get addled.  For a long time, of course, some of the by-products of illusionism, such as highlights and cast shadows, continue to be practiced.  But foreshortening and perspective (the foreshortening of the space in which foreshortened objects are shown) lose their foundations.  Though you still see some of the simpler formulas for foreshortened eyes or other parts, the 'real thing' becomes less and less frequently seen.
I just posted a whole coin issued by Auspex for Septimius at Nicopolis ad Istrum under Provincial.
Here you see the cropped detail: how the eye is not outlined, how eyelashes aren't drawn as on dolls, how just the right engraved marks, perfectly understood and well executed, give us the foreshortened socket, the foreshortened eyelids, upper and lower, the foreshortened iris, and finally a single stroke for the upper eyelashes--all to produce an effect of an intelligent, focused glance.  And also it gives the effect of a head in normal space and light: not like a prison or driver's license image!
Pat L.

[Noah]

I suppose illusion is the tactic of many celators across the centuries.  Here is a coin of Nero that does not even have any visible marks for an eye.  It relies on a heavy brow with a sunken "eye" socket which gives the impression of concern or intensity.  The brow flows into the cheekbone.  Although it is not as abstract and "creative" as Pat's example, it is indicative of this illusion Pat mentions IMO.

Best, Noah

[Scotvs Capitis]

Pat, excellent post. I actually have a copy of that book I bought back in 1989, I haven't read it all but I can see it from here sitting on the shelf. I should crack it open...

[slokind]

Yes, Nero's best engravers possessed the tradition intact.  Illusion is a way of seeing and a cultural mind-set; it is not a tactic or a gimmick, but maybe, Noah, you didn't mean that it was.  In the course of the 3rd century of the Empire, they kept on using the 'tactics' or 'devices' or (less politely) 'gimmicks' but they evidently lost their raison d'être, the empiricism that had given birth to them.  Pat

[Mark Farrell]

Pat,

What was it that contributed to this breaking of the link to that empiricism. I'm sure that it is a very long answer, and if so pointers to sources are welcome, but can you summarize? What happened or was happening in the world that caused it to shift so?

Mark

[slokind]

You are so right: when you see a 'pat answer' to this question, be sure it isn't from this Pat.
But the basic answer is plain: time and, well, scale (the sheer scale of the Empire).  We stand in the same relation to 'le miracle chrétien' (the phrase is Deonna's) of High Gothic and to the Renaissance today.  For 'the Empire', read 'the West'.  From Perikles to Gordian III (or Philip, if you prefer) was nearly 800 years, and Rome from about Sulla through Augustus had borrowed Classical art (and invented the very word, Classical, we might remind ourselves) in the first place.  From c. 1400 to c. 2000 was about 600 years. 
I don't mean that the world was going to hell in a hand basket (must look up who said that*); no, Alois Riegl was right that in late antiquity it was reshaping itself (I didn't want to use the double-meaning word, reforming).  True, it wasn't the happiest time to live in.
The resort to religious certainties may be of the same times but not really for the same reasons.  It is, however, antithetical to empirical science and to confidence in well educated reason and tolerance and willingness to live without hard-and-fast answers.
Pat L.
* http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-goi1.htm

[Noah]

Illusion is a way of seeing and a cultural mind-set; it is not a tactic or a gimmick, but maybe, Noah, you didn't mean that it was. 

A gimmick or tactic gives the impression of deception or, at the very least, a shortcut to a means.  Thanks for your better explanation.

Best, Noah

[slokind]

Yes, it is unfortunate that, partly because of Platonic thinking, the word 'illusion' is firmly entrenched.  The heart-and-core of Classical art is that it is artistic forms based on a searching empirical study of what one sees.  By ca. 450 BCE, the leading artists had realized that just imitating (what we would call 'photographic') doesn't do justice to what one really sees by exploring the optics of seeing.  They thought that there must also be reason in it.  Therefore they created bodies that tell us something about bodies, drapery that tells us the potential of cloth in relation to a body in motion and in light.  It looks more 'natural' (more necessary) than nature but never abandons primary experience to merely play with form, so it is more than 'formal'.  The generation of Raphael did it again in the Renaissance, but so had (for example) Piero della Francesca and Donatello and even the greatest masters of Amiens, Reims, Bamberg (le miracle chrétien), and so did the great Song painters.
This is highly demanding art, both for the artist and for the layman.  It isn't thrilling.  It isn't obviously emotional.  Or, rather, its thrill is in its intellectual rather than its anecdotal content.  It is art of optics and the relation of perception to object.  It is really much more than illusion.  It must be re-realized in each generation.  Pat L.
Rome utilized it, but she did not create it.  She conveyed it to us, but it was not hers.  She adopted it but she wore it out.  Now, that last is blather!  There is only a small grain of truth in it.   En garde!  Watch out for phrase-making!  P.L.

[Noah]

Your students are lucky to have you.  You really know your stuff! 

Best, Noah

[Cleisthenes]

. . . Rome utilized it, but she did not create it.  She conveyed it to us, but it was not hers.  She adopted it but she wore it out.  Now, that last is blather!  There is only a small grain of truth in it.   En garde!  Watch out for phrase-making!  P.L.

Pat L.,

I don't often disagree with you, but in this case I must.  This isn't blather; your phrases are good, clean prose.  Strunk and White would agree.

Cheers, Jim

[Robert_Brenchley]

What she says is true, but it's also true that we need to watch out for such rhetorical flourishes. They very often aren't.

[Cleisthenes]

What she says is true, but it's also true that we need to watch out for such rhetorical flourishes. They very often aren't.

Right you are, Mr. Brenchley!

Jim