Julian beaver different angles of a skull

ANAMORPHOSIS

In reply to the question 'what is art?' many people might tend to think of a two-dimensional surface covered in paint and enclosed by a frame. However, early cave paintings like those found at Lascaux were, needless to say, painted on the uneven face of the rock, composed out of natural resources with a creativity enhanced by various psychoactive substances and brought alive by the irregular light of a blazing torch and a far cry from the blank, bleached white canvas that is now the conventional starting point for a work of art.

Although painting styled to give an illusionary effect has a much longer history, anamorphic art develops in the early Renaissance. Before the Renaissance the science of vision and the arts were two separate realms but perspective created a bridge between reality and perception.

As painters began to master the principles of perspective they started to play with the rules that they were learning and developing. Anamorphosis refers to a p