Reflections in art.
When artists depict a mirror in a painting, it necessarily lacks the most obvious property of a mirror: as we move around the painting of the mirror, the reflections we see in it do not change. And yet representations of mirrors and other reflecting surfaces can be quite convincing in paintings. Here, we will examine the rules of reflection, the many ways that painters can break those rules without losing the impression of reflection and the rules that cannot be broken. The rules that govern the perception of reflection are a small subset of the physical rules of reflection.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. patrick.cavanagh@univ-paris5.fr
Patrick
P
Cavanagh
Jessica
J
Chao
Dina
D
Wang
D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010151:Paintings; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011601:Psychophysics / Q000379:methods