Anamorphosis

The Stone Age cave paintings at Lascaux may make use of anamorphic technique, because the oblique angles of the cave would otherwise result in distorted figures from a viewer's perspective.

The ancient historians Pliny and Tzetzes both record a sculpture competition between Alcamenes and Phidias to create an image of Minerva. Alcamenes' sculpture was beautiful, while Phidias' had grotesque proportions. Yet once both had been mounted on pillars, the decelerated perspective made Phidias' Minerva beautiful and Alcamenes' ugly.[3]^: 7-8

Two anamorphic drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, 1515

Holbein's The Ambassadors with a memento mori anamorph skull in the foreground, 1533

Viewed from the correct oblique angle, the diagonal in The Ambassadors transforms into an undistorted memento mori.

Artists' experimentation with optics and perspective during the Renaissance advanced anamorphic technique, at a time when science and religious thought were equally important to its growth in Europe.[3]^: 70 Leonardo's Eye by Leonardo da Vinci, included in the Codex Atlanticus (1483-1518), is the earliest known example. He later completed several large-scale anamorphic commissions for the King of France.

Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola credited Tommaso Laureti as the originator of a perspectival anamorphic technique in one of the earliest written descriptions in The Two Rules of Practical Perspective, compiled between 1530 and 1540 but not published until 1583. Many other descriptions and examples were created before 1583 without access to Vignola's work.[3]^{: 29-30,32-33}

The Ambassadors (c. 1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger is known for the prominent gray diagonal slash across the bottom of the frame which, when viewed from an acute angle, resolves into the image of a human skull. It has been hypothesized that the painting, regarded as a vanitas – a meditation on the transience of life including the skull as a memento mori – was intended to be hung alongside stairs to startle viewers with the sudden appearance of a skull.[4] Four centuries later, psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan noted in 'Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a' (1973) that the use of anamorphism, particularly in this painting, is one of the few methods for making viewers aware of their gaze.[5]

By the 17th century, a revival of fantastical anamorphic imagery occurred. Magical and religious connotations were largely abandoned, and the images were understood as a scientific curiosity.[3]^: 115 Two major works on perspective were published: Perspective (1612) by Salomon de Caus, and Curious Perspective (1638) by Jean-Francois Niceron. Each contained extensive scientific and practical information on anamorphic imagery. In Niceron's work, three types of large-scale anamorphism are explained: 'optical' (looking horizontally); 'anoptric' (looking upwards); and 'catoptric' (looking down i.e. from a mezzanine). A conical perspective is also described.[3]^: 26-28 Towards the end of the century, Charles Ozanam's Mathematical Recreations widely popularized the techniques for the creation of anamorphic images.[3]^: 117

Between 1669 and 1685, both perspective and mirror anamorphosis were introduced in China by the Jesuits to the Kangxi Emperor and monks at the Peking Mission.[3]^: 157 However, Chinese production of anamorphic images were already occurring on a large scale during the late Ming Dynasty. The images were mostly created freehand, unlike the grid system used in the west. As Chinese anamorphoses primarily focused on erotic themes, Jesuit influence is unlikely.[3]^: 160-161 It is considered likely that Chinese catoptric techniques, which are technically unrelated to geometric anamorphosis, influenced European mirror anamorphosis, and not the other way around.[3]^: 164-165

Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling in the Church of St. Ignazio, 1690

Baroque trompe-l'œil murals often used anamorphism to combine actual architectural elements with illusory painted elements to create a seamless effect when viewed from a specific location. The dome and vault of the Church of St. Ignazio in Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo, represented the pinnacle of illusion. Due to neighboring monks complaining about blocked light, Pozzo was commissioned to paint the ceiling to look like the inside of a dome, instead of building a real dome. As the ceiling is flat, there is only one spot where the illusion is perfect and a dome looks undistorted.

Anamorphosis could be used to conceal images for privacy or personal safety, and many secret portraits were created of deposed royalty. A well-known anamorphic portrait of the English King Edward VI was completed in 1546, only visible when viewed through a hole in the frame. It was later hung at Whitehall Palace, and may have influenced Shakespeare during the writing of Richard II.[3]^: 16-18 Many anamorphic portraits of King Charles I were created and shared following his 1649 execution.[3]^: 28 A secret mirror anamorphosis portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, held at the West Highland Museum, can only be recognized when a polished cylinder is placed in the correct position. To possess such an image would have been seen as treason in the aftermath of the 1746 Battle of Culloden.[6]

The memento mori theme continued into this period, such as in an Anamorphic Painting of Adam and Eve, on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. This painting by an unknown Italian artist of the 17th or early 18th century portrays the Biblical couple, along with a large unidentified male face at the top, and a large human skull at the bottom. The images are distorted when viewed straight on, and can only be seen by peeking through one of two holes at each end of the surrounding frame. The painting includes a Latin religious inscription adapted from John 14:6, ending with the words memento mori.[7]

The eighteenth century saw anamorphism completely enter the realm of entertainment and diversion, as well as the widest dissemination of the technique.[3]^: 119[1]

By the 19th century, a revival of interest in anamorphism for architectural illusion occurred, as well as a fashion for classical themes. Reprints of Renaissance-era engravings became popular, as did political, obscene and popular subjects. Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Ligeia" describes a room filled with "simple monstrosities" that resolve in to "an endless succession of ... ghastly forms" as the narrator walks through the room. This mass popularization was to later have effect on the Surrealists.[3]^: 120-130

As seen from the viewing tower

Approximation of the same scene from directly above

Mole & Thomas, Human Statue of Liberty (1919), 12,000 people in the flame of the torch, 6,000 in the rest of the shape.

By the twentieth century, some artists wanted to renew the technique of anamorphosis for aesthetic and conceptual effect. During the First World War, Arthur Mole, an American commercial photographer, used anamorphic techniques to create patriotic images from massive assembled groups of soldiers and reservists. When seen from a tower at their base, the gathered people resolved into recognizable pictures.[8]

Marcel Duchamp was interested in anamorphosis. His last work Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946–66) used mild anamorphosis to force viewers into the position of peep-hole voyeurs in order to see a nude, anonymous human body.[1]

Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí used extreme foreshortening and anamorphism in his paintings and works. A glass floor installed in a room next to his studio enabled radical perspective studies from above and below.[9] The Dalí Theatre and Museum features a three-dimensional anamorphic living-room installation; the Mae West Lips Sofa that looks like the face of the film star when seen from a certain viewpoint.[10]^: 156[11]^: 28 Interestingly, Lacan also compared Holbein's 16th-century painting to Dali's imagery, rather than the other way around.[1]

Anamorphic mosaic art

Since the mid-20th century, many artists have made use of anamorphosis in public artworks. American land art pioneer Michael Heizer's Complex One (1972-1974), a massive earth and concrete structure in the Nevada desert, creates a rectangular frame for a mastaba when viewed from a specific location.[1] Inspired by Luxor and other ancient monumental sites, it is part of the larger work City, an enormous sculpture running a mile and a half long. The entire work will not be completed until 2020.[17]

Shigeo Fukuda, a Japanese artist and designer globally renowned for his satirical posters on anti-war and environmental advocacy,[18] created posters and sculptures making use of both types of anamorphosis in the 1970s and 1980s.[19] He also wrote multiple books on the topic of optical illusions.

Felice Varini's 2014 work Three Ellipses for Three Locks in Hasselt, Belgium is an image of three loops that are made up of segments painted on to over 100 buildings. It is only visible from a specific vantage point over the city.[13]

Jean-Max Albert, Un carré pour un square, from the specific vantage point, Place Fréhel, Paris(1988)

French artists that have created recent anamorphic installations include François Abélanet[20] and Jean-Max Albert.[21]

Markus Raetz's Kopf is a large scale public installation that reveals the form of a person's head in profile when viewed from a specific vantage-point. It was installed in a public park in Basel, Switzerland.[1]

While anamorphic images were not his exclusive area of focus, the American artist Jonathan Borofsky created installations in the 1980s using anamorphic techniques, exhibiting at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art.[1]

Jonty Hurwitz pioneered the use of a mathematical technique to create catoptric sculptures that resolve in a cylinder.[22] In 2013 he produced a public work for the Savoy Hotel's River Room.[23]

The Swedish artist Hans Hamngren produced and exhibited many examples of mirror anamorphosis in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sara Willet's paintings focus on anamorphic images.[21]

Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave also widely uses anamorphosis in her paintings, whereby her original drawings or paintings are stretched out and revert to a 'normal' dimension once the drawing or painting is pleated to its final form.[24]

Beginning in 1967, Dutch artist Jan Dibbets based an entire series of photographic work titled Perspective Corrections on the distortion of reality through perspective anamorphosis. This involved the incorporation of land art into his work, where areas dug out of the Earth formed squares from specific perspectives.[1]

3d anamorphic sidewalk painting by Tracy Lee Stum at the Macon, Georgia's International Cherry Blossom Festival in front of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame

Anamorphic effects are popular in street art, sometimes called "Slant Art" when accomplished on sidewalks. Examples are the sidewalk chalk drawings of Kurt Wenner and Julian Beever,[16] where the chalked image, the pavement, and the architectural surroundings all become part of an illusion. Art of this style can be produced by taking a photograph of an object or setting at a sharp oblique angle, then putting a grid over the photograph. Another elongated grid is placed on the sidewalk based on a specific perspective, and visual elements of one are transcribed into the other, one grid square at a time.

In 2016, the street artist JR completed a massive temporary anamorphic illusion over the Louvre's pyramid, making the modern structure disappear and the original building appear as though it was still in the 17th century.[25]