The Social and Cultural Roots of Linear Perspective (Studies in Marxism)

Studies in Marxism, Vol 22. Linear perspective is part of a new way of thinking in the Italian Renaissance. It is a way of thinking that is the necessary consequence of emerging new production relations. ... It made the new relations work better by changing the mentalities of those who saw such pictures and absorbed their meaning. To the extent that this art did affect the thinking of those who observed it, to that extent it accelerated the social process which was creating it.-From the author's Conclusions. About the author: Leonard Goldstein is a U.S. scholar who has taught for twenty-five years in the German Democratic Republic. His publications include a book on George Chapman and many articles on literary theory and English literature from medieval to contemporary. Review: Goldstein extrapolates from Marxist theories of social change and of the relationship between that change and scientific change to a theory of the relationship between social change and artistic change. Herein lies the originality of the study... I find this strategy extremely productive across a wide range of political and intellectual issues. -Walter Cohen, Comparative Literature, Cornell University, author of Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain