Re Monet Fusing Suprise

[P3D Peter Homer <P.J.Homer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had not heard that Monet paintings could be viewed stereoscopicaly but
there have been other examples of stereo paintings accidental or otherwise.
In the last century Brewster tried to claim that Wheatstone had not
invented/discovered stereosopy using a pair of drawings by the Florentine
artist Cimenti as part of his evidence. Dali who has been discussed
recently apparently was inspired to try stereo painting on discovering that
the Dutch artist Gerard Dou had produced stereo pairs probably
unintentionaly. An example is actualy reproduced in the Japanese
stereograms book as well as Dalis paintings but is rather small and dark to
to judge how stereo it is. Arthur Girling discovered while cross viewing
the Magritte painting " Man with a Newspaper" that it is stereoscopic and
as far as I am aware was the first person to do so . Only one purely art
book that I know of even refers to stereo in relation to this painting and
that was published since Arthurs discovery. It actualy consists of four at
first site identical images of a room except for the presence of the man of
the title in one of them. But they can be viewed stereoscopicaly and
something I discovered for myself which Arthur did not notice you can turn
the image on its side and view top and bottom pairs stereoscopicaly as well
or diagonaly for that matter.
 Since then I have seen this refered to in as Stereo World article about
this pictures use for the cover of JAMA (Journal Of the American Medical
Association) so other people have noticed this as well. The reason for
using the image for JAMA I imagine is because Magritte based the image on
an illustration from an earlier medical journal with just the one image .
There seem to be other "Stereo" images produced by Magritte "The End Of
Contemplation " is like a more conventional stereo as there are just two
images and the text for the 1969 Tate exhibition catalogue even cites
stereo as its inspiration . It is not clear whether the Author noticed its
stereo properties or was just refering to its two images . It is
stereoscopic but not as good "Man with a Newspaper" and it could be
unintended just due slight inacuracies between the two. Golconda is the
painting where it apears to be raining bowler hated men they show wallpaper
effect stereo. "A nights Museum " Is similar to "Man with A Newspaper" but
with different objects in each compartment of a divided box . Its is viewed
obliquely so the parrallax difference between the compartments means that
they are also stereoscopic if cross viewed . I think this is also the
secret behind Man with a Newspaper except the parrallax applies to the
objects in the box as well Magritte may have intended it to be seen as four
seperate rooms of a house but identicaly furnished . This means that two of
the rooms have their windows opening into other rooms yet still showing the
outside world ,but then Magritte was a surrealist. I think that he may not
have intended the stereo effect or even ever known it was there.
P.J.Homer



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