Optical Illusions Work

Christian Aranas

Art 381

Joseph Delappe

I attended the artist talk for the Optical Illusions work by Dr. Gideon Caplovitz. I found this particular artist talk to be quite an interesting one. Also it was difficult paying attention to what the Dr. was presenting for my eyes are a bit sensitive to light and color. His whole presentation played upon the eyes and how it reacted to certain stimulations such as Optical illusions.

I can tell you that it was definitely an experience and I learned quite a lot especially since I’m also taking a psychology class and we touched upon the subject of optical illusions quite briefly. Of the many artists that Dr. Caplovitz presented, he kept referring to much of Hermann Grids artwork. This particular artist loved playing with the receptive field of the eyes.

A receptive field, from what I learned from the lecture, is how you play with the art that causes your eye to react differently to the areas. Certain parts of the art would cause your eye to see things that aren’t truly there. There was this one optical illusion where you stared in the middle of a certain piece and you would then see a pink ball rotating among a circle of green balls. Another particular piece of work was the painting of circular snakelike images that would look like they were moving if you looked at a certain spot. I thought that was quite interesting.

Dr. Caplovitz also stated the importance of edges. This type of illusion gave certain pieces the illusion that there were lines separating part of the art. There was this drawn piece that had a tiger within it that was constructed all with black and white bars. It looked like there was a line to give the tiger volume but in reality there wasn’t. It was definitely trippy.

Depth was also something optical illusionist used. It is a texture gradient that artist such as Victor Varysely and Michael Tompset used to create a monocular depth cue. I guess it kept the eyes moving. This artist talk was interesting and I’m glad I attended it. Optical illusion art is definitely one of my favorites to decipher and learning about the techniques used gives it so much more meaning than just a picture that messes with your eyes.