'Vintage
Illusions' by Gianni A. Sarcone and Marie-Jo Waeber
Great
artists or unknown illustrators, fun postcards or acute
perspective analysis: our grand parents knew all about
optical illusions, even if they didn’t always recognize
the cerebral mechanisms that created them...
he
oldest optical illusion? Perhaps it was performed by
the first prehistoric woman to put on make-up. But
joking aside, it can easily be reasoned that the concept
of optical illusion is as old as man himself. Notwithstanding
the lack of any written trace the first human beings
certainly would have noticed optical phenomena such
as mirages, the size of the Moon
at its zenith, sticks or poles which appear to
be broken in two when half immersed in water, a negative
image after having looked at the sun… One of
the first optical illusions (or ambiguous images) knowingly
created by man
is
from 2500 years ago: in some coins
from the Island of Lesbos, Greece, you can see the
profiles of two animals facing each other apparently
herbivores such as calves or goats, which however form
a third animal, a ferocious animal (a wolf?) seen from
the front.
Dogs
or Skiers?
The
Painter Salvador Dalí is
the author of a great many surreal canvasses, also
of this photomontage, created from two photos which
show some skiers coming down a slope and a box or
bed of puppies. The bodies of the skiers becoming
the eyes and noses of the puppies. As in other cases
on this page the work comes to us in the form of
a postcard.
How
tall is the top hat of this gentleman in proportion
to the maximum width AB? At first glance it seems
evident that AB is less than CD.
Yet it is enough to measure then with a ruler to see
that the exact opposite is true: the height CD of the
hat is slightly less than the width AB. It is an interesting
version of illusion by Müller-Lyer.
The
same mistake is made with this ward-robe (see below)
the green line CD seems clearly shorter than AB formed
by the two walls, but in fact they are perfectly
equal.
These two images are from the end of the 1800’s
(1886 to be exact).
The
article featured on this page is adapted from our
'Optical Illusions Chronicles' (Visione,
in Italian) in Focus
Giochi review, issue #4. If you like this kind
of educational articles, why not to subscribe to Focus
Giochi and receive them in your mailbox?
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• Not
only Artists
Certainly great names from art (Arcimboldo, René Magritte,
Salvador Dalí and many others) utilized optical
illusions towards artistic ends, but here we present
some old curiosities created by less well known artists
(or unknown) but not less worthy. In the engraving by William
Hogarth (Above) titled Perspective Absurdities which
is from the frontispiece of a Manual of perspectives
from 1754, we note a platform of absurd situations or
impossibilities. For example, the fisherman in the foreground
is fishing
a line further out than the fisherman on the riverbank.
The man on the hill seems as big as the woman lighting
his pipe from the bedroom window. The flock of sheep
in the foreground and the trees on the hill get bigger
and bigger as they get further and further away covering
the pub’s signboard. Finally, who or what is
the hunter in the boat shooting at? And what about
the blackbird? It seems disproportionate to the tree
on which it is perched.
The
World as a Head of Hair
Published
as a postcard, this work by James Montgomery
Flagg from 1913 is called “Map of
the World”. As you can see (in the planisphere
above) a girl’s face is hidden. The artist
is better known as the poster artist who created
the image of a finger pointing Uncle Sam with the
slogan “I want you!”.
Magnetic
Eyes
This
notable illustration by Aleksandr Rodchenko (1923)
was used for the cover of a book of poems from the
poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. From whichever point you
look at the woman, she seems to be insistently gazing
at you!
Two
Bal...d Heads
Yes,
our grandfathers too were great teases and appreciated
'subtle' naughty allusions and jokes! Like this drawing
which plays on the ambiguity of bald headed gentlemen
that appear also as the large chest of the lady.
Postcards with optical allusions such as this were
in the early past of the last century printed in
their millions.
he
oldest optical illusion? Perhaps it was performed by
the first prehistoric woman to put on make-up. But
joking aside, it can easily be reasoned that the concept
of optical illusion is as old as man himself. Notwithstanding
the lack of any written trace the first human beings
certainly would have noticed optical phenomena such
as mirages, the size of the 
Italy
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