Depending upon your perspective, these sculptural installations can look like a portrait or a pile of junk.
Known as Anamorphic Sculpture, name comes from the word Anamorphosis, which is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image.
Many artists have mastered the art form, a few of which are London based artist Jonty Hurwitz, California artist Karen Mortillaro and French artist Bernard Pras – a video of one of his installations is below:
Another form of anamorphic art is often called “Slant Art”. Examples are the sidewalk chalk paintings where the chalk painting, the pavement and the architectural surroundings all become part of an illusion.
When a wall is not a wall: A wall in Quebec, 2004. Image: Vincent Noel/Flickr
A 7-Eleven in 2008. Image: Editrix/Flickr
According to an interview by NPR, Trompe l’oeil “is virtuosic,” explains Lois Parkinson Zamora, author of The Inordinate Eye. Explaining pictures at an art exhibition in Houston, Zamora wrote that the artistic devices of spatial illusion were honed by European artists during the 17th century, in the era known as the Baroque period. The desire to deceive the eye, she observed, “was in response to cultural anxieties occasioned by revolutionary scientific discoveries, revolutionary religious upheaval, also by the new taste for virtuosic visual display.
As evidence, Lois points me to a well-known 1874 work of trompe l’oeil by Pere Borrell del Caso. The original is in the Colección Banco de España, Madrid. “Maybe the title of the painting,” she suggests, in a questioning way, “has something to do with the allure of trompe l’oeil?” It’s called “Escaping Criticism.”
Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrel (1874). Collection Bank of Spain.
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