Illusion: part 2 Point of view

At the end of the last post on illusion I left a blog link to the type of exercises that used to be undertaken on the foundation course at Leeds back in the 1980s. One of the key artists that were referred to at that time was Georges Rousse.

Georges Rousse

In the image above the red rectangle appears to float across the interior of a building that has been blackened by fire. The illusion of coherence is created by controlling the optical viewpoint and is only visible from one specific view point. Outside of this viewpoint, the shapes deconstruct and the viewer can see them for what they really are, patches of colour placed on various surfaces that are designed to line up when seen from the position from where the photograph was taken. Rousse would have used a camera viewfinder set up on a tripod to constantly check the construction of the piece, instructing his construction team to make a drawing that would line up from the point of view of the viewfinder, which when finished would be coloured in red. Some of the more complicated versions of these constructions which involve deep space also have to contain colour adjustments to overcome the way that atmospheric colour space operates. The areas much further back having to be painted in slightly brighter tones so that they optically move forward into the same space as areas painted on much closer surfaces.
An artist that operates in the same territory as George Rousse is Felice Varini.

Felice Varini

In the images above you can see that Varini's illusion only operates from one point and as you move away from that point the shapes that make up the image distort and break down into their individual forms. This type of illusion is totally site specific and can't really be appreciated unless you experience one 'in the flesh'. Varini at times works on a huge scale and the project management skills needed as well as the technology and workforce required are tremendous, but he would have had to start somewhere and I would suggest he developed these ideas by researching the history of anamorphosis.

Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. The word "anamorphosis" is derived from the Greek prefix ana‑, meaning back or again, and the word morphe, meaning shape or form.

Leonardo was supposed to have invented the first anamorphic image, called appropriately 'Leonardo's Eye'. I'm pretty sure a lot of artists around this time would have discovered anamorphic projections because they were all playing around with perspective, which was the new 'tool on the block' so to speak. If you look at Durer's images of perspective frames such as this one below, you can see how vital it was to have  a fixed point of view.

Durer

This (below) is what the artist could see.

We have a dislocation in space because of the side view of the situation and the actual view point of the artist are different. Two separate viewpoints of the same situation exist, one showing spatially the relationships between all the elements in order to show how it was done and the other from the viewpoint of the observer which is meant to show us how the completed image would look. Compare this situation to the Varini photographs.

Jean François Niceron in his book 'La Perspective Curieuse' is the first artist to formalise these issues.

From: 'La Perspective Curieuse'

As you can see in the image above the situation as set out by Durer has been reconstructed but this time in a long corridor space. The wall would have been strung (we have looked at the importance of chalk lines before) and instead of the artist filling in a flat regular grid, the artist works in a distorted grid that only lines up correctly when you look at the image from the end of the corridor. However when seen from the front the drawing is so 'pulled out' or elongated that it is almost like a landscape.

If you ever get the chance visit the Trinita dei Monti Convent in Rome you will find that the original anamorphic fresco is still in place. The fresco is of Saint Francis of Paula praying under a tree and it turns into a landscape as you walk down the corridor.

Jean François Niceron: Saint Francis of Paula praying under a tree.

What's so wonderful about this image is that you can go back and look at Niceron's 'La Perspective Curieuse' and work out exactly the process that he would have used to construct the fresco. I also think the way he added tiny boats and other landscape details is really well handled, to ensure that the gradual change from image of saint to landscape is extremely subtle.

In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries anamorphic images became extremely popular, and supplied an ideal means of camouflaging dangerous political statements, heretical ideas, and even erotic images because only those in the know would be able to select the right 'point of view'.

Erhart Schon Vexierbild 1535

The artist Erhart Schon's Vexierbild 1535 disguises the comic portraits of Charles V, Ferdinanc 1, Pope Paul III and Francis 1. When viewed from the front the picture appears to be of landscapes with coastlines, ships and villages and from the side you can see the four portraits stacked one above the other.  (We have come across Schon before in relation to artists' attempts to measure and grid the figure. Artists that have a strong understanding of the mathematics of perspective are also very aware of how perspective is not reality, simply a device to control a depiction of spatial relationships from one point of view)

Perhaps the most famous example in this country is Holbein's 'Ambassadors', a painting that was originally meant to hang on a stairway, so that viewers would first of all see the painting from above, close to and from an oblique angle.

The image of the skull above is what you would see as you descended the stairway, perhaps a reminder of the way all worldly things will pass away. This leads me to that other aspect of point of view, the fact that this is not just about a fixed point in space but that it is also about a view taken about how we think about the world. Several contemporary artists have extended the purely optical aspects of viewpoint into more political or contextual concerns.

Rub Kandy straddles a territory between graffiti, community art practice and point of view dependent illusion. He opens the issues surrounding illusion into a socially critical and political set of agendas and in doing so returns to a way of working with anamorphic illusions that was current in the past during times of political unrest. As he states;  ‘In my anamorphosis works I always try to put ‘the illusion’ (the anamor- phosis is a paradigm of illusion) next to a wrong element that unmasks ‘the illusion’, in order to reveal ‘the real’. I try to find a bug, to generate a short-circuit. I don’t want my works to be a showcase of virtuosity. The simpler, the better. My hand is not firm, my paint is not fine, my line is not thorough. With my rough style I try to use perspective destroying perspective. I just want to communicate my religious wonder about the mystery of space and perception’. Point of view in this case referring to both the way that optical illusions are point of view dependent and that fact that a political stance demands a ‘point of view’. Anamorphic projections demand a certain amount of geometric control, Rub Kandy contrasts this with the uncontrollability and reality of poor social conditions.

Rub Kandy

William Kentridge's film ‘Whatwill come’ is a combination of anamorphic projection and animated film projection. Kentridge uses the mirrored cylinder anamorphic illusion to reflect the various states of emotional disturbance brought on by political tension. 

William Kentridge: On Perception

Kentridge has used the mirrored cylinder anamorphic effect several times and was himself influenced by Scottish images of Bonnie Prince Charlie. In response to the brutal English crackdown on his followers when Scottish households who were found to contain a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie were imprisoned or worse, supporters turned to anamorphic portraiture. 

 Anamorphic portrait of Prince Charles

Again these distortions relate to the way images can be 'hidden' so that in times of political tension images of political favourites could be hidden in plain sight. 

These ideas don't always have to be about difficult emotional or political issues, they can sometimes simply be used to entertain. 

The use of anamorphic projections is seen across a wide spectrum of art and artists, including some artists that you wouldn't suspect would have an interest, such as Chuck Close. Perhaps what unites them all is research into how images are visually constructed.

Chuck Close

The Hungarian artist István Orosz specializes in these mirror anamorphoses, whereby conical or cylindrical mirrors are placed on the drawing to transform a flat distorted image into a three dimensional picture. 

István Orosz

Another closely related area of illusion is shadow play. Because shadows are the result of light being projected from a single light source, a shadow is in effect an anamorphic projection of the object that casts the shadow. Tim Noble and Sue Webster are perhaps the most well known of contemporary British artists to have explored this area.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

The practical issues surrounding this type of work are to do with first of all getting to grip with how perspective works and there is an extensive post on the technical aspects perspective here. 

However there is a very simple way of starting this sort of work and that is that you work with at least one other person and you direct them to make changes in relation to your viewpoint, usually by looking through the viewfinder of a camera set up on a tripod. 

Hopefully by exploring this area you can get your audience to 'look again', to become aware that what you see isn't always what you get. 

See also:

Illusion part 1
Richard Wright (Anamorphic projections)

 Rub Kandy pdf download of a wide range of his recent projects

This short video of 'Perceptual Shift' by Michael Murphy clearly explains how point of view works as well as illustrating how carefully a construction has to be built in order to make it work. 

Earlier blog post on Architectural perspectives 

In the college library we have Fred Leeman's: Hidden images: games of perception, anamorphic art, illusion; from the Renaissance to the present, which is an excellent introduction to the area. 

Richard Wright and Anamorphic Projections

Some artists arrive like a slow burn. Richard Wright is one of them. I first saw his work in Edinburgh in an old Georgian house. He had created a mural that changed the space as you walked through the rooms, the drawings also echoed the architectural decoration.  A few years later he won the Turner prize. Wright uses perspective techniques to create optical illusions, anamorphic projections, such as those used in the Renaissance. His abstract patterns can create vertiginous spatial illusions. You can read a review of his work here. 

Images above Richard Wright

Anamorphic projections are much easier to create than you think, all you need is access to a plumb-line, a good sense of geometry and a way of establishing your audience’s viewing point.

Jim Bond’s Anamorphic Man is a three dimensional anamorphic projection. When viewed through the circle on the left the figure becomes whole. 

Jim Bond 2006

Working this way using wire or other 3D materials to draw can create surprisingly ‘eccentric’ images. Because you are only trying to control how everything looks from one viewpoint, the rest of the image simply ‘arrives’ as part of the process and therefore comes into being without you having to think about what it might look like. As you walk around the image when it is finished it will often have many surprising new compositions. The work of Georges Rousse and Felice Varini are typical examples of using anamorphic projections over architectural spaces. See this blog post for more details. However the most influential figure in the history of anamorphic projections is Jean François Niceron (1613-1646), catholic friar, mathematician, and artist. His most famous work was 'La Perspective Curieuse' (The Curious Perspective) first published in 1638. It deals with the practical application of perspective alongside what he calls catoptrics and dioptrics.  The book is well work looking at as the perspective drawings are wonderful images in their own right, but it also works as a practical guide on how to make anamorphic illusions.

From Niceron's The Curious Perspective

Lots of street artists use these techniques and they have become a sort of ‘street art’ sensation because we now have cameras that can be placed at the viewers eye point to make everything look ‘fantastic’. My own view is that the final ‘right’ perspective is often the most boring viewpoint, the exciting images are the ones that occur simply as a result of the process. The fragmented images that litter the room below are much more demanding as an image than the ‘normal’ face image we see if we are at the right viewpoint.

Similarly with street illusions. Great fun that they are, once you get it and take the photo, that's it, an illusionist's trick. The more interesting art is perhaps in what else is going on. 

Street drawing illusion using anamorphic projection

Probably the most famous anamorphic projection in art history is the skull in Holbein’s Ambassadors.  Designed to hang in a stairway, a viewer would approach the painting initially as they walked down the stairs, the only thing that would appear to be in the right perspective would be the skull, however when they got to the landing and looked at the full painting, the skull would virtually disappear, now being a distorted, formless shape. 

The full painting.

What you see of the skull from the front.

What you would see from the stairs.

It’s an old trick, but it works well, artists such as Richard Wright returning to these conventions because of a rise in interest in drawing as an extension of architecture, the expanded field of drawing now expanding mentally backwards into time and reinvigorating old skills and practices, as well as expanding physically onto walls and over buildings. 

See also:

Illusion part 1
Illusion part 2