Endless Enigma, The (精装)

Fascinated by optical phenomena and in an attempt to explore the limits of painting, painters have long been creating picture puzzles, shifting perspectives and composite pictures - ambiguous images that is, whose various levels of meaning depend entirely on the observer's point of view. It is this multifarious tradition that this book is dedicated to, beginning with the season pictures by Guiseppe Arcimboldo to Indian and Persian miniatures of imaginary anthropomorphic landscapes and finally to works by the great masters of surrealism Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. Thus, the Catalan painter genius came up with no less than seven strata of perception for his work "Das endlose Ratsel" (The Infinite Riddle), in which parts of the picture merge into ever new scenarios depending on the individual area the viewer focuses on. This presentation of ambiguous pictures taken from different cultures and epochs reveals the enormous complexity of this artistic phenomenon, underlining the meaning of the artistic method. It accompanies the exhibition at Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, February 22 - June 8, 2003.