Visual complexity

Prerequisites:
  • Background knowledge in the history of aesthetics
Objectives:
  • To analyse the history of complex visual motifs as images of thought, from the Renaissance to the late 18th century
Description:
  • A study of motifs of visual complexity, first as images of complex objects or persons, and later as images of space and atmosphere.

Questions
ART IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
A study of allusions to art in Renaissance literature

  • Renaissance art and multiple views

References to the arts in texts symbolised complexities in life with emblems referring to the complexity of visual forms

  • Art in literary texts

Literary texts frequently contained descriptions of works of art, or 'ecphrases' .
SPATIAL DEPTH IN ENLIGHTENMENT AESTHETICS
Complex visual modes of perception also described the sense of spatial depth at large

 

 

  • Depth and shadows

Shadows of objects could create a sense of space around them; there have been numerous debates about the role of shadows in the perception of depth

  • Depth and colour

The sense of depth is also dependent on colours

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