anamorphosis definition

An anamorphosis is a drawing/painting that cannot be recognized unless seen from a certain distance, angle or with a lens/mirror that corrects itself.  During the 1700s anamorphosis was in particular celebrated as an artistic stunt. The distortion was often made by squaring the original piece and then making identical each of the squares into the same area of the distorted grid.  Another method was that the original piece could be created with distortion by using a distorting tool or by perforating lines of the piece, sending light through the original piece onto a curved surface area.  After this, the points of light would be connected with drawn lines.  An artist might chose to use both regular perspective an anamorphosis to create unusual effects - such as drawing a normal landscape and then using an uncommon angle to hide a face or figure in the composition.