Thursday, August 13, 2009

More red is redder than less red...

Lamp: illusion

Some months ago, I wrote the post below the line. If you have read this post already, link over to this site — Mighty Optical Illusions. It is dedicated to illusions and is quite entertaining. Be warned: the lamp illusion is not for young kids.
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When I was studying at Ryerson my art criticism professor liked to say, "More red is redder than less red." What he meant was that in any painting a very large area of red paint has a completely different appearance from the identical colour applied to only a small patch of canvas and surrounded by an other colour or colours. Even if the paint was applied sequentially and all paint from the same tube, the two different sized coloured patches would look different.

He said this rule held for modern works by artists such as Piet Mondrian as well as for paintings by old masters. At the time, we were studying the abstract expressionist art of Hans Hofmann, Mr. Push-Pull on the picture plane, and the author of "Search for the Real and Other Essays." I followed all the arguments but I wasn't always convinced. Today, I stumbled upon this, and now I'm convinced. My professor was right.

Optical Illusion: blue and green are same colour

O.K. That's all I can show you. I am not into stealing another person's blog. If your interest is peaked visit: Richard Wiseman blog.

p.s. I took the image into Photoshop and read the colours with the densitometer and they were identical. I then cropped a square of pure colour from each and placed the squares side by side and they matched.

If you have a comment, I'm all ears.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Addendum: someone sent me a comment with a link to the following optical illusion created by Professor Edward Adelson of M.I.T. Again, if you want to know more click the Optical Illusion link.

Optical Illusion: square A and square B are the same tint of grey


...and for today, "That's all folks!"

Cheers,
Rockinon!

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