But whereas many of Bruegel’s landscapes were imaginary compositions that freely interpreted sketche
But whereas many of Bruegel’s landscapes were imaginary compositions that freely interpreted sketches made from nature, Savery’s drawing seems to be a faithful enough representation of a real scene. And, perhaps more importantly, Savery appears to have pushed the paradox of perspective formulated by Panofsky to its logical conclusion. Where Bruegel, by omitting human beings from a landscape, simply draws attention to the exteriority of the subject who imbues objective nature with meaning and coherence, Savery reintroduces this subject into the pictorial representation, depicting the very action by which he objectifies a space different from the one in which he finds himself, which itself is different from the space offered to the gaze of the spectator. For the perspective view presented to the latter is not the same as the one that the artist, shifted to the left of the drawing but positioned on the very axis of the ravine, is busy drawing on the paper. This landscape thus presents a double objectivization of reality and, as it were, a reflexive representation of the operation through which nature and the world are produced as autonomous objects, thanks to the gaze that a human being turns on them.Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture -- source link
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