Reposted by Unterlinden
#Pareidolia is a creativity tool for artists. Did Doré spot a devilish head in Grünewald's painting?
Sources:
※ Matthias Grünewald: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ma...
※ Gustave Doré: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gu...
See also: snrk.de/how-gustave-...
![https://snrk.de/#kitty
[top]: Matthias Grünewald: 'Visit of Saint Anthony to Saint Paul', retinex filtered, vectorized and color desaturated detail from one of the panels of the Isenheim altarpiece (1512–1516).
[bottom]: Henry Holiday: from an illustration to the chapter "The Beaver’s Lesson" in Lewis Carroll’s "The Hunting of the Snark".](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:l6iae4tlmgtc4xzkeb3oyjrn/bafkreidcu5na6hvfgbiijg2vojt6i4quvki36jjp6tocr4qbeoxubwqndu)
![https://snrk.de/#Arnheim
"We have neglected the gift of comprehending things through our senses. Concept is divorced from percept, and thought moves among abstractions. Our eyes have been reduced to instruments with which to identify and to measure; hence we suffer a paucity of ideas that can be expressed in images and an incapacity to discover meaning in what we see. Naturally we feel lost in the presence of objects that make sense only to undiluted vision, and we seek refuge in the more familiar medium of words. […] The inborn capacity to understand through the eyes has been put to sleep and must be reawakened."
Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007): Art and Visual Perception, 1974, p. 1](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:awes4jin25g27m764rffl4jd/bafkreigmkh3lgina3gte7j4feb74jfxlje7ld4amhiej4p3j3hihdzkizy)
![※ Left: "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea" by Salvador Dalí.
※ Right: Same image viewed after blurring or looking at it from a distance of 20 meters I order to recognize the portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
From Jay Clouse, @jay.blog (https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j4qhffmuzbw7bk76p7fbe42z), "What Salvador Dali taught me about creative work" (https://web.archive.org/web/20200918064223/https://jayclouse.com/what-salvador-dali-taught-me-about-creative-work/), 2017
"[...] In 1976, Dali read a piece in Scientific American which claimed that the human eye could recognize an image with the minimum resolution of 16 x 16 (or 256 pixels). Below is the accompanying example in the magazine, which you will recognize as Abraham Lincoln.
Dali, who strikes me as sort of a brilliant jerk, called bullshit and set out to create a painting of lower resolution that could be recognized. His painting, shown below, used only 121 pixels.
Dali’s painting, when viewed up close, reveals an image of his wife, Gala, looking out of a window (hence the title, Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln). But when viewed from afar (you guessed it: about 20 meters) you see the full image of Lincoln that Dali intended.For the last couple of days, I’ve struggled to keep the Lincoln view of what I’m working to accomplish. I know that I am painting Lincoln, but all I see is Gala.
But the reality is, I’m looking too closely at the work. I’ve got the canvas right up in front of my nose, and all I see is the micro view that makes up the macro view.It’s an easy trap to fall into. When you worry that your work isn’t accomplishing what you set out to do, take a step back (about 20 meters) and take another look. Sometimes you just get too close. [...]"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:awes4jin25g27m764rffl4jd/bafkreiaep7y2xuusq344e6loasq3vwaet6pf2n3pcyuzuc2izwn4lmnpgy)
