The Oblique Look
The Oblique Look
The word oblique is used in different contexts, from the mathematical and geometric to the grammarian and figural, up to military. In our case, we are interested in the context in which obliquity is linked both to the representation of the vision and vision as an attitude. The representation or oblique axonometric is not perspective and was preferred by ancient for a range of clearness and measurability. Its history is more one thousand years old being used by Mediterranean and Chinese people, who continue to prefer the parallel projection to the perspective. The use that Leonardo himself did of the parallel projection is really a significant signal in the context of the Renaissance perspective.
The absolute dominance of the representation of perspective made it impossible to focus on other modes of representation that long-lasted and had an equal importance like perspective, starting from vascular representations of ancient Greece to the Pompeian frescoes, from Byzantine mosaics of the Italian Renaissance, up to the return of the axonometry within historical Avantgarde (Scolari).
Without going into historical implications, this diversity “dissimilar” of the representation of vision is of our interest because it confirms that the look of vision is not trapped in the laces of external codings, however important they may be, but on the contrary, it cohabits with other ways, equally valid and fundamental of vision. So the oblique look is this different and “dissimilar” capability that the artist moves towards things and the world in which he lives and symbolize.