The alternative to multifocality becomes disembodied, a mirror always
reflecting from and upon a position ever capable of re-situation. Rather
than affirming humanism, it occupies the human ephemerally. As Jalal al-
Din Rumi explains:“I have become as plain as a mirror with no image upon
it. When I had desire for roasted lamb’s head, and when it became a
‘craving,’I knew that it was from that fellow. A mirror has no image: if
an image appears in a mirror it must come from something else.”^11 To be
out of perspective enables reflectivity by temporarily absorbing the desire
of others. This embodied space of desire, rather than disinterest, replaces
the standard of objectivity as the locus of judgment.
Rational perspectivalism offers a means of taking in the external world
and representing it, but as Uccello and Dürer suggested, at the cost of
denying the self. By the modern period, this cost became a boon, enabling
the discursive elevation of art to‘science.’If adopting perspective forces us
to abandon our bodies, abandoning perspective takes us to bed, to the
rejected realms of woman, body, sleep, dreams, music, sex, and desire. An
art history based on polyhedral isomorphic pattern imbues the desire of the
other as part of the self, then willingly lets go and moves on. It is light-
footed and light-hearted.
An art history out of perspective reframes competition as collaboration.
It provides knowledge not in the episteme of the preacher, but of the
symposium. It embeds perception in experience shared, like wine, among
a community extending beyond the knowledge of objects. It grounds
perception not in art, describing the culture of another, or in history,
placing things in their proper sequence, but in the simultaneity of presence
- both of those with whom we share experience and of the experiences we
bring to the practice of perception. It ceases to take an appropriate distance
from its object of study. It hears and touches, smelling the roast lamb of
somebody else’s desire. It valorizes the senses emphasized in poetic
descriptions of experiencing Islamic perceptual culture: the scent of
ambergris lingering in ink, the iridescence of pages as they turn, the
combination of wine, music, and companions accompanying the sophis-
ticated pleasures of amajlis, careening dangerously between the forbidden
and the divine.^12
Rooted in the reflective heart, such an art history would take symbolic
language as seriously as demonstrative, faith as seriously as fact. A story
like that of Adam’s mirror resituates subjectivity. It supplements history
with another mode of knowledge, allowing us to place works not only in
(^11) Rumi, 1994 : 42. (^12) Shortle, 2018 :23–24.
Out of Perspective 333