Anamorphosis

Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices or both to view a recognizable image. Some of the media it is used in are painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word 'anamorphosis' is derived from the Greek prefix ana‑, meaning 'back' or 'again', and the word morphe, meaning 'shape' or 'form'. An optical anamorphism is the visualization of a mathematical operation called an affine transformation. The process of extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual viewer, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable spectator. There are two main types of anamorphosis: perspective (oblique) and mirror (catoptric). More-complex anamorphoses can be devised using distorted lenses, mirrors, or other optical transformations. Examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance (fifteenth century). The first examples were largely related to religious themes. With mirror anamorphosis, a conical or cylindrical mirror is placed on the drawing or painting to transform a flat distorted image into an apparently undistorted picture. The deformed image is created by using the laws of the angles of the incidence of reflection. This reduces the length of the flat drawing's curves when the image is viewed in a curved mirror, so that the distortions resolve into a recognizable picture. Unlike perspective anamorphosis, catoptric images can be viewed from many angles.:131 The technique was originally developed in China during the Ming Dynasty. The first European manual on mirror anamorphosis was published around 1630 by the mathematician Vaulezard.:147, 161 With Channel anamorphosis or tabula scalata two different images are on different sides of a corrugated carrier. A straight frontal view shows an unclear mix of the images, while each image can be viewed correctly from a certain angle. The prehistoric 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.:7-8 During the Renaissance, artists' experimentation with optics and perspective led to more advanced development of anamorphic imagery. At this time, religious thought and science were equally important to the technique's growth in Europe. :70 The earliest known example, known as Leonardo's Eye, was executed by Leonardo da Vinci and is included in the Codex Atlanticus (1483-1518). He later completed several large-scale anamorphic commissions for the King of France. Vignolo credited Tommasso Lauretti as the originator of a perspectival anamorphic technique in one of the earliest written descriptions in Two Rules, compiled between 1530 and 1540 but not published until 1583. Without access to Vignolo's work, many other descriptions and examples were created before 1583.:29-30,32-33 The Ambassadors (c. 1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger is well known for the prominent oblique anamorphic transformation in the painting. In this artwork, a distorted shape lies diagonally across the bottom of the frame. Viewing this from an acute angle transforms it into the plastic image of a human skull. The painting is regarded as a vanitas – a meditation on the transience of life – with the skull a symbolic memento mori. The altered perspective required to see the image reflects the contemporary practice of painting skulls on the reverse of otherwise tranquil paintings. Four centuries later, the painting inspired the psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan to note 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.