The Fragmentation of Reality: From the Illusion of Wholeness to the Awakening of Fragment

This project is an academic assignment from a student at the School of Design or a research project by a faculty member at the School of Design. This project is not commercial and serves educational purposes.

1. Concept: Gombrich’s Theory of «Schema and Correction» • 1.1 Research Question and Theoretical Foundation • 1.2 Gombrich’s Key Theory: «Schema and Correction» • 1.3 The Truth of Classical Wholeness • 1.4 Theory Development: Hockney’s Optical Schemas
2. Constructing the Illusion: How «Wholeness» Was Created • 2.1 Conceptual Schema: Ancient Egypt • 2.2 The Discipline of Perspective: The Renaissance • 2.3 Intervention of Optical Schemas: The Camera Obscura • 2.4 Priority of Schema Over Anatomy
3. Crisis and Fragmentation: The Mechanical Eye of Photography • 3.1 The Devastating Blow: The Invention of Photography • 3.2 Luminous Shards of Impressionism • 3.3 The Radical Dissection of Cubism • 3.4 Incorporation of Real Shards: Collage
4. David Hockney’s Visual Archaeology: Rehabilitating the Fragment • 4.1 The Revelation of Eastern Scattered Perspective • 4.2 Experimentation with Polaroid Collage • 4.3 The Panorama of the «Pyrblos Road»
5. Wounds and Memory: The Fragment as Existential Truth • 5.1 Ruins of the Flesh: Francis Bacon • 5.2 Blurred Memory: Gerhard Richter
6. Conclusion: Truth in the Shards • 6.1 Synthesis of the Research: From Discipline to Liberation • 6.2 Main Thesis: Truth Resides in the Fragments • 6.3 Contemporary Significance and Prospects

The classical notion of «wholeness» is illusory, yet it forms the foundation of visual culture. The constraints of rigid schemas force artists to seek new avenues for self-expression. This has led to the birth of new visual forms, languages, and directions, such as fragmentation.

This visual study examines the influence of classical and optical «schemas» on painting. The academic tradition required artists to adhere to strict rules of perspective and anatomy, thereby excluding subjective vision and the dynamics of human perception from art. However, it was precisely these limitations, driven to their limits, that spawned the crisis of representation and propelled art toward new pathways.

The rejection of classical wholeness stimulated artists to create unique visual solutions filled with geometric fragments and multiple viewpoints, which will be examined through works such as Pablo Picasso’s «Les Demoiselles d’Avignon» [1], David Hockney’s photo-collage «Pool at Los Lencois» [2], Francis Bacon’s «The Screaming Pope» [3], and others.

The topic of visual schemas in art remains actively debated in historical and cultural studies. For instance, in Ernst Gombrich’s Art and Illusion [4], the mechanisms of «making and matching, ” as well as the role of psychological schemas in the evolution of art, are explored. Furthermore, David Hockney and Martin Geyerford’s The History of Painting [5] analyzes the impact of optical instruments (camera obscuras) on the development of Western European painting. These foundational works emphasize the significance of studying the interaction between visual technologies and artistic creativity.

However, the paradox is less explored: how did the striving for classical wholeness generate a crisis that led to fragmentation? Most art history research concentrates on the evolution of styles or the biographies of artists. The novelty of this study lies in its focus on the visual mechanism: how photography and the crisis of optical schemas stimulated the development of fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and new artistic strategies. Considering fragmentation as an example of the „liberation of sight“ expands our understanding of the evolution of visuality.

The research hypothesis is that classical and optical „schemas, ” by limiting human binocular vision, prompted artists to create innovative fragmenta

In the art historical record, the shift from classical wholeness to radical fragmentation was not a random aesthetic choice. To understand this process, we refer to the foundational work of Ernst Gombrich, «Art and Illusion.» What is the cause of the crisis in classical representation? This study, drawing upon Gombrich’s theory, asks: is the «fragment» a collapse of harmony, or does it unveil a more honest, truly human mechanism of sight that was previously suppressed by rigid schemata?

According to Ernst Gombrich’s theory, as laid out in «Art and Illusion,» there is no such thing as «the innocent eye.» An artist never copies reality directly. Instead, they always begin with a specific visual schema inherited from previous eras. The process of creating art is a continuous cycle of «making and matching»: the artist overlays a schematic grid onto reality, and then refines it.

Thus, from Gombrich’s theoretical perspective, the classical «wholeness» is not a reflection of nature, but a result of a rigorous geometric and optical organization of space. It is a highly intellectual, yet artificial construction that conceals the mechanisms of its production. It is this impeccable precision of the scheme that ultimately led painting into crisis.

Continuing Gombrich’s ideas about schemata, David Hockney, in his «A History of Art, ” posits the hypothesis that masters like Vermeer employed optical devices (the camera obscura). The use of the lens represents the introduction of a new, technological schema that replaced actual human binocular vision with a static, „monocular“ gaze.

Ancient Egyptian art was based on an absolute conceptual schema: it depicted not what the eye sees, but what the mind knows. Figures were assembled from separate fragments (a profile face, a frontal eye, frontal shoulders) that could not be seen simultaneously.

Renaissance linear perspective introduced a mathematically rigorous method for organizing space. Perspective rigidly fixed the viewer’s eye at a single point. Human vision was replaced by a static, monocular gaze. Painting transformed into a demonstration of mathematical optics.

Hokni posits that Vermeer used the camera obscura. In his paintings, we see the result of a lens’s operation—with its specific distortions, hypertrophied sharpness, and the «blurring» (bokeh) in the background. Thus, the classical «integrity» here is not the completeness of human perception, but the projection of a mechanical eye.