I am terrible at art and have always been so, partly due to serious lack of talent and partly due to having had no training at all. The art classes we had in elementary school back in Sri Lanka were viewed largely as fun time where we drew whatever we liked and got almost no feedback on how to make it better. This ignorance of art has not prevented me from having an immense respect for the abilities of artists and their fertile imaginations.
Recently, I received an informal lesson on two-point and three-point perspective that shows how to represent what I see, so that distant and near objects are realistically portrayed. Hence I was intrigued by this 3D piece of artwork by Patrick Hughes on display at the Birmingham Art Gallery that inverts normal perspective by making the part closest to you appear to be the farthest away and vice versa, something known as ‘Reverspective’. Very clever.
Very cool!! I like how it just suddenly flips on one’s brain.
This is similar to those inverted sculptures, like the one of George Washington in the museum at Mt. Vernon. The face is convex rather than concave, with the result that it really does appear to follow you around the room. I have a small paper dragon in my office that works the same way, labeled as being in honor of Martin Gardner. I don’t remember where I found it.
Ah, here it is: http://celebrationofmind.org/assets/3D-dragon.pdf
Excellent. Having watched the video and have it revert to the initial frame (viewing the piece from the front), I’m able to convince my brain to see it as three protruding pyramids -- at least for a few seconds, until it insists on reverting to what it ‘knows’ it should be making me see.
Whoa.
(and your art classes in Sri Lanka sound like they were fun)
ljbriar @#4,
The classes were fun, actually. I think the teacher quickly sized up who the students were who had neither talent nor any serious interest and pretty much left us alone and focused his attention on those who were worth his time and effort.