There are dozens of ways cultures have shown space, but four come up again and again. Once you can name them, half the world's art suddenly makes sense. The trick is to stop asking "does it look real?" and start asking "what is this system trying to tell me?"
One: Western Linear Perspective
This is the one you already own. One fixed viewpoint, one vanishing point, things shrinking as they recede. Its intention is "stand exactly where I stood and you'll see what I saw." It freezes a single eye, in a single instant, in a single spot — brilliant for drama and "you are here" realism. The cost is that it can only ever show one moment from one place.
Two: Aboriginal Australian Aerial / Map Space
Many Aboriginal Australian paintings — the widely-published Western Desert and Papunya Tula movements are well-known examples — show Country from above, like looking straight down on the land. This isn't a failed attempt at perspective; it's a deeply considered system for showing place and journey. Waterholes, camps, tracks and the routes between them are laid out as they sit in relation to one another, the way a map holds a whole region at once. Its intention is "this is the shape of this Country, and how you move through it" — and it can hold an entire landscape, and the stories travelling across it, in a single image.
Three: Ancient Egyptian Composite & Hierarchical
On an ancient Egyptian wall a figure's head is in profile while the eye and shoulders face front — the body is built from its clearest views stitched together, so every part reads perfectly. And size isn't about distance at all: it's about importance. The pharaoh is huge, servants are tiny, not because the pharaoh is closer but because the pharaoh matters more. This is hierarchical space — its intention is "show each thing at its clearest, and rank everyone by importance."
Four: East Asian Handscroll / Parallel Space
In Chinese and Japanese handscroll painting, the receding edges of buildings stay parallel instead of converging to a vanishing point — that's parallel, or isometric, perspective. And there's no single spot you stand in: the scroll unrolls and your eye travels along it, through mountains, rivers and seasons, as if walking the landscape over time. Its intention is "come on a journey through this place, at your own pace."
In the toy, switch between all four on the same little scene and read the captions. Notice that nothing about the world changes — only the decision the artist made about how to hold it on a flat surface.