Trompe L’oeil, Anamorphosis and Illusion
Tim Hazell
Trompe l’oeil (deceiving the eye) and anamorphosis involve projecting an image in ways that challenge our perception. Illusion has formed the basis for scientific and artistic investigation since the Renaissance. Artists such as Rene Magritte and M.C. Escher have long made use of trompe l’oeil as a fundamental way to make personal statements, challenging us with new interpretations of our environment. Leonardo da Vinci’s experiments with anamorphosis transcended limits of mechanical perspective and conventional assumptions of geometry. The groundwork was laid for the birth of a more contemporary rationalism as illusion in all its forms became cultural obsession in the 17th and 18th centuries.We delight in visual tricks today. In a carnival gallery of mirrors our reflections are elongated or compressed into comical shapes. Experiments of modern poets, particularly those of the surrealist movement, extend these concepts to great literature. Argentinian master of the short story form, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), used the allure of mirrors and shifting dreamscapes to evoke a cat’s mystery and enigma.
To a Cat
Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.
Confusion mixed with delight at concealment has been irresistible to many cultures. Murals uncovered in the Roman city of Pompei, buried by volcanic ash in 79 A.D., deliberately imply three-dimensional space with flat landscape painting. Magritte’s famous canvas "The Red Model III" gives boots a whole new meaning. This fusion of workers’ leather and human toes is both unsettling and tantalizing. Oblique anamorphosis or use of angles and the visual deceit of trompe l’oeil are closely related. The difference lies in the nature of the trick. Painters use the latter as a device when the observer is standing in a conventional spot. Two objects such as an apple and the portrait of a man wearing a bowler hat may be combined. The result manifests an incongruity that cannot be resolved. Returning to concealment and metamorphosis in verse "Fern Hill" by Welsh bard Dylan Thomas transforms his beloved Wales with juxtaposed imagery. Here is an excerpt:
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
Anamorphosis in modern technology has resulted in new developments and techniques of virtual media. Software and multi-sensorial shape modification has brought artificial perspective to web applications. The result is ambiguity in virtual reality. In landscape architecture illusory constructions such as mazes have provided entertainment and deep spiritual experiences since ancient times. Labyrinths and mazes are cousins, although somewhat different. Labyrinths have a well-defined entrance and exit. Various materials, including natural ones such as hedges, are used to create a well-defined path in which walking is a right-brained activity. Mazes represent an analogical puzzle to be resolved. Their intricate networks of winding walkways contain multiple possibilities for escape, some leading to blind alleys. Herodotus visited the Egyptian Labyrinth in the fifth century B.C. and had this comment: "I found it greater than words could tell, for although the temple at Ephesus and that at Samos are celebrated works, yet all the works and buildings of the Greeks put together would certainly be inferior to this labyrinth as regards labor and expense."
Whether we lose ourselves in products of contemporary ingenuity or the experiments of Renaissance artists and scientists, illusion will continue to fascinate us. I’d like to close with a crystalline sampling from Dylan Thomas’ "Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait."
She longs among horses and angels,
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys,
Floated the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys.
Where the anchor rode like a gull
Miles over the moonstruck boat
A squall of birds bellowed and fell,
A cloud blew the rain from its throat...