Aesthetics of Conflict: Perspective and Anamorphosis in Siqueiros's Art of the 1930s.

Inspired by dialogue with Sergei Eisenstein, David Alfaro Siqueiros applied the principles of material dialectics to art's production, aesthetics, and reception. Central to his experiments was the use of linear perspective and its ancillary, anamorphosis. Siqueiros, like Erwin Panofsky, understood perspective to have both psychological and symbolic potentials and developed an aesthetics of conflict, designed both to psychologically engage the viewer with a montage of conflicting perspectives and to embody the conflicts of the 1930s (epitomized in the Portrait of the Bourgeoisie mural). At issue is the question, under what conditions can artworks affect their spectators? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]