Seven Little Known Birds of the Inner Eye. Mulk Raj Anand

helpful to the artist. For instance, in modern abstract art the illusion of movement is often attained by the interplay of convex and concave forms.

      6. Optical illusion: figure in horizontal-striped bathing suit looks slimmer.

      7. Irradiation phenomenon: black figure looks smaller.

      Gropius notes that stripes and the contrast between light and dark can produce very odd optical effects. "The girl in the bathing suit looks more slender in horizontal than vertical stripes" (Fig. 6). Another optical phenomenon is that called "irradiation": a bright figure on dark background looks bigger than a black figure on a bright background (Fig. 7).

      Gropius suggests further that our eyes close automatically if a car coming from the opposite direction stirs up mud or slush, even when the windows of our car are up. If we look down from the balcony of a twenty-storey building, we feel giddy even if there is a railing to protect us from falling. But if the same railing is covered with cardboard or paper, and gives support to the eye, giddiness often disappears through the illusion of safety.

      People often feel lost or Lonely in wide-open spaces. This feeling is identified as agoraphobia, the dread of open spaces, sometimes felt by sensitive people crossing a large open square.⁶ And the loss of the human sense of balance when one looks down from great heights is a familiar phenomenon, as attested, for example, by the visitors to India's Kutub Minar in Mehrauli, who want to descend immediately, once they look out from the top of this minaret. The dizzy height of the Kutub Minar makes one lose contact with the earth. The head often swirls and one may even feel bilious, as if in an airplane (Fig. 8). Gropius confirms this when he says that "people get lost in a space the size of which is not in keeping with the human scale."

      If, however, in a vast area some vertical planes were created on that open space, like wings on a stage, such as shrubs or fences or walls, the illusion of safety would be reinstated, and the dread would disappear, for the eyes of the person groping in space could find a frame of reference to act as a psychological support. When the eyes hit a solid in the field of vision they register its outline just as radar does.⁷ This is confirmed by the experiments in the paintings of Irene Rice Pereira, who has also analysed the historical breakthrough of man from one-, two-and three-dimensional space areas to the expanding universe.⁸ And so our eyes, which are the instruments of our organism and our subconscious, deceive us in many ways. This happens at any time when the human being is not directing the personality with a deliberate will to concentrate in active contemplation, or to allow deeper awareness by relating to the inner life of a work of art.

      The deceptive phenomena can be illustrated by a number of distortions easily created from the curvature of the retina, by delicate dissociations of the space-perceiving senses, if we twist and turn the basic stimuli received by the eye. In this way, abstraction, simplification and distortion can be understood as quite simple artistic means by which it becomes possible to express soul-body experiences beyond the habitual three-dimensional space areas of common sense.

8. Kutub Minar, Mehrauli, India.

      Artists have frequently resorted to the clever interplay of various elements of structure to create the illusion of mobility. The Kailasa Temple in Ellora, south-central India, cut from the giant rock on three sides, has been given the appearance of a moving cloud (Fig. 9). The Cubists generated movement by superimposing multiple planes in their pictures.

      The important considerations in all optical illusions are space-time relations, judged in terms of human scale. In all ancient civilisations, the human frame has served as a yardstick. Le Corbusier has rightly emphasised the Modulor as the basis of all architecture, since the human being symbolised in the Modulor is the measure of all structures, of where man lives and moves and has his being. The silhouettes of giant temples like Khajuraho, Puri, Konarak, Bhuvaneshvar (Fig. 10) and Mahabalipuram were obviously intended to communicate the majesty of the invisible power dominating the vast space, so that people seeing the huge hulk of such a temple would feel awe and reverence for the gods. The approach to the garbha griba, or the inner sanctum of the temple, is made intimate by the narrow doorway in the small room. The abundant carvings on the outer wall surfaces, as well as inside, direct the optical vision to seek the course of memory, sensation, hope, fear, purpose, which may have already risen to the surface through alliance with the grace of the curves, the excitement of the angles, the gestures of the chisel and the harmony of the composition.

9. Kailasa Temple, Ellora, India.

10. Bhuvaneshvar Temple, India.

      An object painted in brown wax seems heavier than if it were coloured grey or white or yellow. A life-size sculpture on a high pedestal, standing against the bright sky, looks smaller than the same sculpture in the artist's studio because, against the open space of the sky, light nibbles away at its sides. (This phenomenon is scientifically called "irradiation,") Therefore, carvers often make figures more than life size, to compensate for this illusion.