I think the first time humans actually recognized a flat surface was when they saw the surface of an ocean or lake, or even a vast plain of wilderness stretching out before them. Other things like rocks and trees would have been organic and shapeless, so the surface of a lake or ocean would have seemed relatively outstanding and special as a smooth geometric form. Naturally, there would have been a sense of space receding from the viewer, with an expanse of space ahead, which would have been recognized as part of a perspective landscape.
The idea of humans turning such flat objects, which were supposed to be constructs of perspective, upside down vertically and facing them in front of them must have been linked to the fact that, unlike other living creatures, we have acquired the ability to walk upright, facing the world with our faces perpendicular to the ground. This gave rise to the desire to grasp the world by facing it directly in front of our faces, which resulted in the artificial form of a flat wall. Until then, it was difficult to view horizontal surfaces in nature from directly above (unless you were a bird), but by transferring the horizontal surface to a vertical wall, it became possible to grasp the whole in the same way as a bird's-eye view. The functional part of such a wall must have been the premise for the existence of a painting, and if we assume that people's thoughts float in their heads, I believe that tableau paintings originated as an attempt to symbolically present a state of floating on a wall as a conscious counterpart that is easy to grasp from a bird's-eye view and spreads out in front of a person standing upright.
Regardless of whether it is a painting or a picture, the flat surface that spreads out before the human eye has the same function as a bird's-eye view, all parts that can be seen can be treated as equidistant objects at the same time, and all relationships can be seen at a glance, making it possible to grasp the whole picture. This is the unique functional advantage of two-dimensional space. In three-dimensional space, there are always hidden, unperceived areas that cannot be filled by visual perception, and unless the viewpoint is moved, the perception always remains incomplete. If we consider that the visual perception of the whole picture through a flat surface is what complements this incomplete visual perception, then it can be said that two-dimensional flat surfaces are very advantageous for visual perception. Paintings must have naturally arisen with this advantage at their core. If the existence of a wall can be symmetrical with the existence of the human body, then a tableau painting on a wall that appears to be floating above the floor can be felt as having the same relationship as the thoughts of a person floating in the air inside the body.
And yet, this awareness of the superiority of two-dimensional painting, which could be called a privilege, in the context of three-dimensional space once again awakened a sense of inferiority, and I ended up adopting perspective depiction, which could be called pseudo-three-dimensional, as a technique of expression in two-dimensional space. This must be an endless regression for painting, and that is why representational painting with perspective depiction seems fundamentally to me to be a regressive form. So, when I think about the origins of painting, the idea that its existence is based on the imitation of a landscape like a window in the three-dimensional wall of real space does not resonate with me as a strong feeling. This is because it seems to me to be merely a result induced by association due to the similarity in the form of a real window frame and a painting frame.
If you think about it, even in artificially created urban spaces and product designs, there are many flat elements in their basic parts. This may not only be due to efficiency resulting from factors such as compositional mechanics and economy, but also to the fact that people are fascinated by the magical quality of flat surfaces. If painting is something that is strongly conscious of this, it may be natural for painting to continue to stick to flat surfaces in the future, and if there comes a time in the future when painting leaves the flat space, painting itself may no longer exist.
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