Paintings as architectural space: “Guided Tours” by Cezanne and Hokusai

In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of 2 painters' (Czanne and Hokusai) efforts to enhance active participatory perception (Gibson, 1966, 1979/1986) in their landscape work. As exemplars, we use Czanne's paintings of Mount Sainte-Victoire and Hokusai's prints of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, noting how the similarities and differences in scientific and Chinese perspectives affect our perception of the landscapes. Although both artists used linear perspective and axonometry, geometric standards that originated in architecture and later were adopted by painters, they frequently violated these standards through innovative technical devices. As a result, Czanne and Hokusai created unique architectural spaces into which we are not only invited but also guided by our own active perception and anticipated 20th-century artistic and scientific movements, including cubism, phenomenology, and Gibson's (1966) theory of active perception.