Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting
A pseudoscope is a binocular optical instrument that reverses depth perception. It is used to study human stereoscopic perception. Objects viewed through it appear inside out, for example: a box on a floor would appear as a box shaped hole in the floor…….It typically uses sets of optical prisms, or periscopically arranged mirrors to swap the view of the left eye with that of the right eye……..In the 1800s Charles Wheatstone coined the name from the Greek ψευδίς σκοπειν -- "false view". The device was used to explore his theory of stereo vision.
Basically, Pseudoscopic is 3D in reverse. That is, in aerial photography, swimming pools appear to look like buildings and buildings appear to look like swimming pools. In red and green plotters like the Kelsh and Multiplex this is achieved by reversing the lenses on the 3D glasses. The images will be reverse order. The right image will be viewed through the left eye, and the left image will be through the right eye………Switching the two pictures in a standard stereoscope changes all the elevated parts into depressions, and vice versa. The pseudoscope also changes convex into concave, and high-relief into low-relief.
In 1852, Charles Wheatstone, published his ideas in his paper "On Binocular Vision," in the Philosophical Transactions for 1852. Wheatstone's paper stimulated the investigation of binocular vision and many variations of pseudoscopes were created, chief types being the mirror or the prismatic.
The Dutch artist Escher was given a prismatic pseudoscope….” a simple means of undergoing the same sort of inversion that I have tried to achieve in my print 'Convex and Concave'.
Pseudoscopic properties are visible in the work of many artists. This is not necessarily because the artists who produced them had that in mind, but in their efforts at different times in the history of art, to represent 3 dimensions on a 2 dimensional surface and to understand and manipulate the picture plane, they selected visual elements which most readily adapted to pictorial representation. They believed that the requirements of 'making a picture' took priority over the mere need to be accurate in the literal sense. The flattening of space is obvious enough in some of the work of Piero della Francesca (see his unfinished Nativity) and Francesco Guardi, both showing the unmistakable flattening of telephoto lens effects. Monet and Canaletto did exactly the opposite; their works show wide-angle characteristics.
It is the work of the 19th century painter Cezanne, however, where pseudoscopic qualities literally come to the fore. His watercolours during the years 1885-1900 not only give background parity with foreground, but by his choice of the medium of watercolour, creates a remarkable overall pseudoscopic transparency, and in many instances an unmistakable X-Ray effect. The pseudoscopic content in his painting is however much more extensive and widespread than this, and may have escaped scholarly attention because of a general unfamiliarity with the properties of pseudoscopic vision. One distinguished essayist noticed these conflicts, but referred to them as 'binocular ambiguities'. The Cubists' indebtedness to Cezanne is obvious enough and well- documented. What is not obvious, is that the distinctly pseudoscopic handling of space in his paintings, destroyed and revised the classical role of virtual space within the picture plane'. This revision was one of the important pictorial innovations that helped to make Cubism possible, and paved the way for Modernism.
Piero della Francesca (1420–1492)
Nativity
Date between 1470 and 1475
Medium oil on poplar wood
Dimensions Height: 124 cm (48.8 in). Width: 123 cm (48.4 in).
Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016
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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com
John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico
January 2017
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