more optical illusions.
The illustration (above) isn't a particularly good example of the genre; usually the brain clicks back and forth between two visual interpretations, but here, the double-image merges into one, women and skull. It's that failure that made me post this picture; the optical illusion seems to fail on purpose, because artists with the most simplistic message are often the most insistent. Vanity is the flip-side--the optical illusion--of an unstated and lonesome fixation on mortality. It's banally morbid, but has an emotional effect on me; I don't know why.
The Optical Illusion Exhibition, by the way, is only one of many exhibitions at the Neuroscience Art Gallery, which I found by reading Lee W. Potts' The Eyes Have It.
Posted by nchicha at September 8, 2003 05:28 AMDoes anyone know the actual name of this piece, or who painted it?
Posted by: Troy on January 8, 2004 11:27 PMI, too, would love to know the mane of the piece and by whom it was done. I grew up looking at it in my grandmothers house and love it.
Posted by: Nathan on March 2, 2004 03:16 AMThis is a piece by Charles Allan Gilbert from around 1897, titled "All is Vanity".
Posted by: Julia on March 23, 2004 09:45 PMI have a print by Gilbert,a lady in a blue gown. She is holding a large bunch of yellow roses. Who is she? bayoumamajama@AOL.com
Posted by: Jama on April 6, 2004 10:30 AMWho was the lady in the blue dress? I played with that dress in 1948 when her trunk was opened.It smelled of honeysuckle and jasmin.There were a lot of her things in there. It was a large blue steamer trunk and Mary Rose NYC was painted in white on the side. It was later stolen after my mother's death.I think the Mary Rose was the name of the steamliner. I have looked at the lady in my Gilbert print since I was eight and wondered about her. How did her trunk get down to coastal Mississippi? There was also a small oil painting of marsh grass and water.Did Gilbert ever paint in south Mississippi?
Posted by: Jama on April 28, 2004 02:13 PM