Getting Emotional

Stereoscopy and Pre-Raphaelitism

“…Ruskin supported the Pre-Raphaelites by advocating 'truth to nature', insisting in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) that young painters should go to nature, 'rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing'' and continuing to preach 'truth to nature' in his pamphlet, Pre-Raphaelitism (1851). Was Ruskin thereby suggesting that the artist should be a recorder of nature, attempting to observe and imitate nature with microscopic or photographic precision2 If this is the case, it is obviously easy to draw an analogy between the minute elaboration of Pre-Raphaelite technique and photographic exactitude I would argue, however, that this ignores a crucial point -that the main criticism of Pre Raphaelite paintmg at that time was that it neglected the laws of perspective Needless to say Ruskin's visual theory is too vast to be considered in detail here However, as Wylie Sypher reminds us, Ruskin was aware that there is a visual culture based not on linear and geometrical perspective through which monocular vision is constructed, but on optical factors like light and colour 8 With a more natural way of seeing m mind = such as binocular vision -Ruskin tried to problematise 'a visual field instead of a visual world' 9 In other words, m his discourse on the end of linear and geometrical perspective he attempts to address the manipulation of the object in a visual field and to recognise the positioning of the subject m acts of seeing, m Ruskin's visual theory is motivated by o desire to argue for the 'seeing subject' or 'optical agency' As he explains 'First, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey o distinct image of objects at different distances 'Your drawing never can be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with both eyes' '' Thus Ruskin did not try to discuss the degree of mimetic capabilities, rather, an examination of Ruskin's discourse on the visual reveals that he defined the seeing subject as essentially binocular…”