How we look at art can change. It can be the position you look at the work, it could be how you are feeling the day you look at the work, it can be the history behind the work; how we see art depends on a multitude of factors. Is there truth to art? In François Lemoyne’s final painting Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, the character of Time is personified as a heroic man saving a nude damsel: Truth. In time, the naked truth is revealed after falsehood and envy are killed; how the viewer is relative to the work is how it is seen in that moment. The Catholic Church once said that the denial of absolute truth leads to less faith, a tactic that can be seen as the church attempting to have the public blindly follow them as the one and only truth. Philosophers have theorized ideas of truth for centuries, leading to many differing ideas of what truth really means.
When we look at art is there an absolute truth? Relativity changes the perceived truth of art, and these images situated on three-dimensional cones reflect that idea of the viewer relative to the work. Looking at each cone head-on reveals the original image as an anamorphic illusion (created by putting the image into a computer program and coding it to stretch to the correct form) that requires the viewer to take a specific approach to viewing the artwork- but the work does not need to be viewed this way. The images on the cones are different from every angle they are viewed, and though occupying a certain vantage point creates a non-distorted picture, that is still not necessarily the ‘true’ photograph.
Before the images were situated to be on the cones they were each a modern approach to the philosophy of truth and relativity. In addition to reinterpretations of Lemoyne’s painting and the influential Catholic priest and philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas (who once said, “Truth is the adequation of things and intellect”), the images also contain explorations of mapping out the path from photographer to camera, and viewer to art.