POINT OF VIEW IN THE ARTS
831
Until then, the painter's eye had ptolemaically revolved about
each object, following a servile orbit. Velasquez despotically resolves
to fix the one point of view. The entire picture will be born in a
single act of vision, and things will have to contrive as best they may
to move into the line of vision. It is a Copernican revolution, com–
parable to that promoted by Descartes, Hume and Kant in philo–
sophic thought. 1 he eye of the artist is established as the center of
the plastic Cosmos, around which revolve the forms of objects. Rig–
idly, the ocular ,apparatus casts its ray directly forward, without
deviating to one side or the other, without preference for any object.
When it lights on something,
it
does not
fiX
upon it, and, consequently,
that something is converted, not into a round body, but into a mere
surface that intercepts vision.*
The point of view has been retracted, has placed itself farther
from the object, and we have passed from proximate to distant vision,
which, strictly speaking, is the more proximate of the two kinds of
vision. Between the eye and the bodies is interposed the most imme–
diate object: hollow space, air. Floating in the air, transformed into
chromatic gases, formless pennons, pure reflections, things have lost
their solidity and contour. The painter has thrown his head baCk,
half-closed his eyelids, and between them has pulverized the proper
form of each object, reducing it to molecules of light, to pure sparks
of color. On the other hand, his picture may be viewed from a single
point of view, as a whole and at a glance.
Proximate vision
di~ociates,
analyzes, distinguishes- it is feudal.
Distant vision synthesizes, combines, throws together- it is democratic.
The point of view becomes synopsis. The painting of bulk has been
definitively transformed into the painting of hollow space.
XII
Impressionism.
It is not necessary to remark that, in
Velasquez, the moderating principles of the Renaissan e persisted. The
innovation did not appear in all its radicalism until the Impression–
ists and Post-Impressionists.
The premises formulated in our first paragraphs may seem to
*
If
we look at an empty sphere from without, we see a solid volume.
If
we
enter tbe sphere we see about us a surface that limits the interior concavity.
