Masters of Illusion Video

This short film, hosted by James Burke, is a fascinating examination of the concept of how we see things, and specifically how imageries that appear to our eyes to be three-dimensional are rendered convincingly on flat, two dimensional surfaces. In a movie studio special effects lab, Burke shows viewers how visual illusions practiced today actually began during the Renaissance, when painters first mastered the skills of incorporating the idea of depth into paintings. The principle of “linear perspective,” where all lines end to a common vanishing point, sounds complicated, but the examples shown in this documentary make the idea perfectly clear to the viewer. After this, paintings completed before the Renaissance were shown, and it was immediately clear to the viewer that artists who hadn’t mastered perspective drew scenes that appeared incredibly flat on the canvas. But when artists such as Michelangelo practiced using perspective, art suddenly leaped forward. This is an unusual documentary that makes fascinating a subject that most people have never considered, though it relates to things we see everyday. I liked this spin on how art came “to life” and making the making of it three-dimensional.