given to this sign,”transformed perspective into a symbol for Western
civilization that enables the modern worldview:“The arbitrariness of
direction and distance within modern pictorial space bespeaks and con-
firms the indifference to direction and distance of modern intellectual
space; and it perfectly corresponds, both chronologically and technically,
to that stage in the development of theoretical perspective when, in the
hands of Desargues, it became a general projective geometry.”^31 Asserting
“parallel chronologies” between technique and scientific knowledge,
Panofsky used a quasi-mystical Weltanschauung to represent art as
a surrogate for scientific knowledge, itself transparently standing in for
civilization as a whole.^32 His interpretation that“perspectival achievement
is nothing other than a concrete expression [Ausdruck] of a contemporary
advance in epistemology or natural philosophy”constructs a tenuous
causality between the‘conquests’embodied in the dialectical progress of
perspectival representation and European intellectual history.^33
Criticizing Panofsky’s analytical use of a psychoanalytic concept,
Damisch nonetheless interprets Brunelleschi’s mirror demonstration as
a Lacanian imago. Perspective allowed the world to move from“the
drama of insufficiency”–that of the immature baby–“to anticipation”–
of the subject seeking its maturation. Through this modernized social–
psychoanalytic construct, he argues that representation became confused
with reality as a developmental stage in the collective psyche of the West.^34
This anthropomorphization follows a tradition of likening thefinite uni-
verse postulated by Aristotle and persisting in the medieval period with the
womb and a subsequent birth (Renaissance) into modernity.^35 It also posits
an aesthetic shift to perspective as a marker of cultural maturity. And what
if a culture ignored perspectivalism? Would it ever mature?
This discursive tradition repeatedly treats perspective not simply as an
attribute of Western art, but as exemplifying the qualities of Western
civilization for which art functions metonymically.“Thus the history of
perspective may be understood with equal justice as a triumph in the
distancing and objectifying sense of the real, and as a triumph of the
distance-denying human struggle for control; it is as much a consolidation
and systematization of the external world, as an extension of the domain of
self.”^36 Panofsky subscribes to Hegel’s understanding of the end of art as
embedded in the shift from art as embodying meaning to art as enabling
(^31) Panofsky, 1991 : 16, 70. (^32) Damisch, 1995 : 28.
(^33) Panofsky, 1991 : 17; Damisch, 1995 :20–27. (^34) Damisch, 1995 : 116–117.
(^35) Bardo, 1986 : 444. (^36) Panofsky, 1991 : 67.
Perspectives on Perspective 317