Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective (Writing Architecture)

Love it

Excellent !

Massimo Scolari looks at the history of oblique projection, (paraline drawing) where he states that this form of projection actually is better at certain kinds of representation and different than perpectival projection. Completely agree and others who know the difference will not make an easy argument to counter. It is very different. It's easy to understand how inventors and architects found this form of representation an effective means of gathering and preparing thoughts. The carpenter cabinet maker does it all the time. It might on the simplest level be considered a freehand form of drafting. On a practical level it is an effective means of thinking about construction. Architectual perspective in the modern sense is built from parallel projection. Indeed it maybe even as he states, that parallel projection and perspectival projection are reflections of different cultural ways of seeing and representing, however I think I can say this and it can be understood easily, perspective is a way of representing 2 dimensionally the experience of SPACE and perhaps the object/s in that space --where as parallel projection is about the 2 dimensional representation of the object and not the experience of that object in real space but in the space of thought, or metaphoric space. (Now I'm in trouble of course because also this can be argued too with perspective in the discussion of aesthetics). but certainly it IS different to think para linearly than to think perspectivally. Parallel drawing is a way to visualize the object as a whole.Both approaches in their purist form are systems. There are many examples in the book where these approaches are unclearly combined ( roman painting, early Italian perspective- Giotto for one)An interesting book. I would have given this book 5 stars for textual content, however the illustrations are too small for most of this book. The book production/Design values are off the mark. It ignores the aesthetic importance of illustrating with prints and art on this subject!!. You can mostly make out the connection being made in the text but I want to see the prints as clearly as the diagrammatic illustrations! Also besides the scale of the plates being small they are of low photographic quality in many if not all cases. I don't get it, this book would be 200% better with larger and higher quality plates.

really good condition, i could tell it had a repair but it was unnoticeable other than the thread was a different colour, it was also in a protective sleeve. Really good book too.

Was in good qualty

Very original, exciting and unusal contribution tu the problem of perspective in painting