Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1984. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / The camera obscura has allowed artists, scientists, and philosophers to view the world as a flat image. Two - dimensional renditions of visual reality seem to be more manageable and easier to grasp than reality itself. A Lexicon for Camera Obscura is a survey of facts and lore about the author's use-of camera obscura as a metaphorical vehicle to comment about reality. / by Robert David Rosinsky. / M.S.V.S.

My study explores the politics of viewing and the gaze. I argue that the gaze both arrests and objectifies the body, which in turn transforms subjects into objects therefore regulating social behaviour. The basic notion of the gaze will be explored throughout this thesis and thereby contextualizes my sculptures, which are casts of my naked body. My particular concern lies in how the ideas of surveillance have had an influence on architecture and buildings in Grahamstown. Throughout this mini thesis, I will explore a number of architectural spaces of Grahamstown such as the Provost prison, Fort Selwyn and the Camera Obscura which I argue were all designed based on the ideas of surveillance. The entanglement of Grahamstown architecture and the female form as a subject of voyeurism forms an important part of this thesis, as the context of Grahamstown architecture is centered on visibility, which in turn subjects people to a form of discipline. The Provost Prison, the Camera Obscura and the forts of Grahamstown are all good examples of this. Outside of this, the female body is also subjected to the gaze, which in turn suggests that the female body is also under surveillance and as a result also becomes disciplined. My installation is a response to Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, in which he placed 33 steel and fibreglass casts of his own naked body at an elevated level on buildings around Manhattan and Brazil. In this discussion I have contextualized my work with reference to the ideas of different theorists. The three main theorists I have cited are Michel Foucault, Jonathan Crary and Laura Mulvey. Foucault is specifically cited due to his discussion on Panoptic power, surveillance and docile bodies. Crary makes a number of important points with regards to the ideological operations of the Camera Obscura as well as its history while Laura Mulvey’s writings form the basis of the voyeuristic gaze from the perspective of a feminist.

Before the publication of David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters in 2001, it was commonly believed that the first artist to use an optical aid in painting was the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Hockney, however, believes that the use of projected images started much earlier, as early as the fifteenth-century, claiming that evidence can be found in the work of the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. Without rejecting Hockney’s pioneering work in this field, I nevertheless make the perhaps bolder claim that Italian artists were using the aid of image projections even before the time of Jan van Eyck, that is, as early as 1270. Although much of the information required to make an earlier claim for the use of optics can be found in Hockney’s publication, the key to linking all the information together has been missing. It is my unique contention that this key is a letter that has always been believed to have been European in origin. More commonly referred to as Roger Bacon’s Letter I show in detail how this letter was, in fact, not written by Roger Bacon, but addressed to him, and that this letter originated in China. Chinese knowledge about projected images, that is the concept that light-pictures could be received onto appropriate supports, came directly to Europe around 1250. This knowledge was expanded upon by Roger Bacon in his Opus Majus, a document which arrived in Italy in 1268 for the special consideration of Pope Clement IV. The medieval Italian painter Cimabue was able to benefit directly from this information about optical systems, when he himself was in Rome in 1272. He immediately began to copy optical projections, which stimulated the creation of a new, more individualistic, mode of representation in Italian painting from this time forward. The notion that projected images greatly contributed towards the development of naturalism in medieval Italian painting replaces the previously weak supposition that the stimulation was classical or humanist theory, and shows that it was, in fact, far likely something more technical as well. / Art History / D.Litt. et Phil. (Art History)

Before the publication of David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters in 2001, it was commonly believed that the first artist to use an optical aid in painting was the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Hockney, however, believes that the use of projected images started much earlier, as early as the fifteenth-century, claiming that evidence can be found in the work of the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. Without rejecting Hockney’s pioneering work in this field, I nevertheless make the perhaps bolder claim that Italian artists were using the aid of image projections even before the time of Jan van Eyck, that is, as early as 1270. Although much of the information required to make an earlier claim for the use of optics can be found in Hockney’s publication, the key to linking all the information together has been missing. It is my unique contention that this key is a letter that has always been believed to have been European in origin. More commonly referred to as Roger Bacon’s Letter I show in detail how this letter was, in fact, not written by Roger Bacon, but addressed to him, and that this letter originated in China. Chinese knowledge about projected images, that is the concept that light-pictures could be received onto appropriate supports, came directly to Europe around 1250. This knowledge was expanded upon by Roger Bacon in his Opus Majus, a document which arrived in Italy in 1268 for the special consideration of Pope Clement IV. The medieval Italian painter Cimabue was able to benefit directly from this information about optical systems, when he himself was in Rome in 1272. He immediately began to copy optical projections, which stimulated the creation of a new, more individualistic, mode of representation in Italian painting from this time forward. The notion that projected images greatly contributed towards the development of naturalism in medieval Italian painting replaces the previously weak supposition that the stimulation was classical or humanist theory, and shows that it was, in fact, far likely something more technical as well. / Art History / D.Litt. et Phil. (Art History)

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio's Looking Glass is an ironic allusion to both the concave mirror and the biconvex lens. It was these simple objects, in colloquial terms a shaving mirror and a magnifying glass, which Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio, learned from Caravaggio how to use to enhance the natural phenomenon of the camera obscura effect. Painting from a projection meant that Artemisia could achieve an extreme form of realism and detail in her work. This knowledge, which was of necessity kept hidden, spooked the Inquisition and also gave artists, who knew how to manipulate the technology, an extreme competitive edge over their rivals. This dissertation challenges the naive assumptions that have been made about Artemisia's working practices, effectively ignoring the strong causal links between art and science in Seicento Italian painting. Introducing the use of optical aids by Artemisia opens up her story to a whole new generation of scholarship. / Art History / M.A. (Art history)

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio's Looking Glass is an ironic allusion to both the concave mirror and the biconvex lens. It was these simple objects, in colloquial terms a shaving mirror and a magnifying glass, which Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio, learned from Caravaggio how to use to enhance the natural phenomenon of the camera obscura effect. Painting from a projection meant that Artemisia could achieve an extreme form of realism and detail in her work. This knowledge, which was of necessity kept hidden, spooked the Inquisition and also gave artists, who knew how to manipulate the technology, an extreme competitive edge over their rivals. This dissertation challenges the naive assumptions that have been made about Artemisia's working practices, effectively ignoring the strong causal links between art and science in Seicento Italian painting. Introducing the use of optical aids by Artemisia opens up her story to a whole new generation of scholarship. / Art History / M.A. (Art history)