picture plane

American  

noun

1. the plane of a painting, drawing, or the like, that is in the extreme foreground of a picture, is coextensive with but not the same as the material surface of the work, is the point of visual contact between the viewer and the picture, and is conceived as a major structural element in the production of abstract or illusionistic forms.

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Etymology

Origin of picture plane

First recorded in 1790–1800

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

picture plane

They seem to be lowering Christ’s corpse, which is thrust forward from the picture plane, onto the altar below the painting.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 27, 2026

“But it is an arbitrary ban. The flatness of the picture plane is no more a truth than was the flatness of the world before Columbus.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 2022

Taylor pumps life into the static picture plane, which creates a visual friction that can make the figures he chooses riveting to see.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2022

Color photographs from 1996 — flat, frontal, emphasizing the two dimensions of the picture plane — show the gated and graffiti-tagged facades of rundown buildings in downtown L.A.’s garment district.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2022

It is, in fact, just like the grid used by artists to establish the picture plane, and its representation requires the same techniques as the representation of a tiled floor.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

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