Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Visual Jokes in Art History

Psychologists were not the first people to be interested in visual illusions nor the use of illusions or multiple interpretations within a painting.  The January 2011 issue of Smithsonian has a great article called "Feast for the Eyes" along with pictures about the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo who did such work for the Hapsburg dynasty (in the 1500s) who had humor enough to appreciate his work.  Check out the article at the link above-quite fascinating.

If you like the work of Arcimboldo, check out his complete works on this site.


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

1 comment:

Dave said...

Have you seen alan alda's segment on split brain research ? The right brain sees these paintings as faces....the left brain as veggies.