The Vanishing Point Redux

Rallroad in Northumberland County (photo: Jakec)

The vanishing point in a perspectival image is supposed to be an illusion, but it actually contains a bit subliminal realism. Yes, the lines move to a point in the distance beyond which you can’t see. Yet life literally has a vanishing point at which the road ends. There is, of course, “The Last Supper.” However, no one has endeavored to produce, shall we call it, “Life’s End?” Attempt to imagine one of those far away bits of sublimity, a cheap bucolic scene, picked up at some tag sale which hangs above the couch in your dentist’s waiting room—as envisioned by a latter day, Edvard Munch, something teeming with the terror of the mundane and at the same time disconcertingly emphatic. You stare at the vision realizing that it’s not an illusion, but a vision of finality!