The Art of Art“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol
February 8, 2021 6.7K votes 1.5K voters 73.1K views
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Vote up the artwork with the most tricky optical illusions.
The history of optical illusions in art blends intent and expression, sometimes with a healthy dose of trickery and fun. Works of art throughout history reflect the circumstances, perspectives, and outlooks of the individuals who created them. This can be done consciously or unconsciously, incorporating new styles, techniques, and ideas. During the Middle Ages, Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture emphasized spirituality and symbolism, leading to a return to classical styles during the Renaissance.
Optical illusions in Renaissance art emphasize a fascination with physical perspective and individualism, while later 17th and 18th century artistic genres demonstrate experimentation with light, color, realism, and the abstract world. Artists in the 19th and 20th centuries continued to explore conceptual art techniques and mind-bending media.
Optical illusions in art - whether they be macabre, playful, or even mathematical - have a unique way of manipulating the human eye.
From one perspective, the woman in the work is simply looking in a mirror while seated at a vanity; from another, that mirror and her fleeting reflection are part of a skull.
One of Wenceslaus Hollar's numerous etchings, Landscape Shaped Like a Face incorporates rocks, water, trees, and the like to transform a simple piece of land into the profile of an old man.
Painter Pere Borrell del Caso's work Escaping Criticism gives the impression that a young boy is jumping through a frame, running away from whatever trouble follows him.
At first glance, Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The Vegetable Gardener looks like a bowl of vegetables. If you turn it upside down, the work of art morphs into the head of a man - presumably the gardener who grew and picked the vegetables.
Some observers, however, find decidedly sexual references in the nose, lips, and cheeks of the upside-down image.
As a work that changes the look of a ceiling into a multi-dimensional marvel, The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius by Andrea Pozzo makes it seem like figures are crawling down from above into the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome.
Andrea Mantegna transformed the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, or "Bridal Chamber," at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, Italy, into what appears to be a view of the heavens.
Look up and it seems as though blue sky, clouds, and onlookers are peering down from above.
