Perspective Paradoxes

Abstract

Visual art can be considered as the application of vision following certain procedural rules, of which linear perspective is the most familiar. Artists have played with perspective to produce a wide range of pictorial puzzles. Anamorphoses are but one example of perceptual paradoxes and others are shown in this chapter. Perspective can be accelerated and decelerated and this has been a feature of some architectural manipulations, like Borromini’s arcade in Rome. Similarly, artists have played tricks with the sizes of objects represented on the picture plane or with the viewpoint from which objects are imaged. Artists have also painted on surfaces that are not flat so that either two different pictures can be presented at the same time or the rules of perspective are systematically reversed. When the paint is applied over uneven surfaces but then photographed to appear recognizable, then all manner of perceptual perplexities are possible.