15. Art and the Plain Ken

The second of three art chapters considers the western Renaissance of the visual arts in terms of the development of plain-ken attitudes towards depiction. These artists took a series of conventions rooted in an instant of time and deemed them as normative. They appreciated that the immediately sensible world was experienced first one moment, then the next, and was full of ugly imperfections. Beyond linear perspective, their techniques included conspicuous imperfections, illusionistic shadows, dramatic compositions, historicist renderings of setting, and the quotation of images. We consider the self-identity of artists, as well as their models and techniques, and informal post-production work, such as image owners blacking or cutting out undesired details.