Patrick Hughes (artist)

Patrick Hughes (born 20 October 1939) is British artist working in London. He is the creator of "reverspective", an optical illusion on a 3-dimensional surface where the parts of the picture which seem farthest away are actually physically the nearest.

Life

Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham, went to school in Hull and enrolled at the James Graham Day College in Leeds in 1959. Later he taught at the Leeds College of Art before becoming an independent artist. He has three sons by his first wife, Rennie Paterson, and was later married to the author Molly Parkin. Hughes lives above his studio near Old Street, London, with his wife, the historian and biographer Di Atkinson.John Slyce, "Reverspective" Momentum, London, 2005]

He has been represented by Angela Flowers, now Flowers East, gallery for more than forty years.

Art

Hughes' early works were often playful, putting things back to front or squashing them flat, like "Clown" (1963) and "Liquorice Allsorts" (1960), setting words against images, like "One Two" (1962), or against themselves, like "Tick Cross" (1962). He explored visual oxymorons and paradoxes. His fascination with the illusion of perspective began with works like "Infinity" (1963), "Three Doors" (1964) and "The Space Ruler" (1965).

In the 1970s Hughes hung his investigations of perception and illusion on the motif of the rainbow in a series of prints and paintings, such as "Pile of Rainbows" (1973), "Prison Rainbow" (1973) and "Leaning on a Landscape" (1979). Later prints like "Leaf Art" (1975) and paintings like "Realistic Paint" (1977) expressed similar interests with colour. [B. Smith, P. Hughes, "Behind the Rainbow: Patrick Hughes, Prints 1964-83" Paradox Publishing Ltd, 1983]

His first "reverse perspective" or "reverspective" was "Sticking Out Room" (1964), which was a life-size room for the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 1970. He returned to explore the possibilities of reverspective in 1990 with "Up the Line" and "Down the Road" (1991) Since then, his reverspectives have been shown in London, New York, Santa Monica, Seoul, Chicago, Munich and Toronto.

He explains reverspective:

The picture surface of "Vanishing Venice" (above) is 3-dimensional, made of two pyramids protruding towards the viewer with the tops cut off: the bases of the pyramids are farthest away (flat against the wall). The two lighter rectangles which appear to be in the distance at the end of the buildings are the flat tops and thus the part of the image physically nearest to the viewer (see diagram left).

Hughes' reverspective is the subject of scientific papers on the psychology of perception, by Nicholas Wade [Wade, Nicholas. "Fooling the eyes: trompe l'oeil and reverse perspective", "Perception", 1999, Volume 28, pp. 1115-1119.] and Thomas Papathomas of Rutgers University's Laboratory of Vision Research. [Papathomas, Thomas V. "Experiments on the role of painted cues in Hughes’s reverspectives", "Perception", Volume 31, pp. 521-530, 2002.] [Papathomas Thomas V & Bono Lisa. “Experiments with a hollow mask and a reverspective: Top-down influences in the inversion effect for 3-D stimuli,” "Perception", 33, 1129-1138, 2004.] [ Papathomas Thomas V. “Art pieces that ‘move’ in our minds – An explanation of illusory motion based on depth reversal,” "Spatial Vision", 21, 79-95, 2007. ]

Writing

Hughes has written three books investigating themes that parallel his art, "Vicious, Circles and Infinity: An Panoply of Paradoxes," with George Brecht (N.Y. Doubleday, 1975); "Upon the Pun: Dual Meaning in Words and Pictures," with Paul Hammond (London, W.H. Allen, 1978); and "More on Oxymoron" (Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 1984). He has written for "The Observer", the "The Guardian", the "ICA Magazine", among others on art, artists and interesting lives. A collection of his writings, "Left to write" was published by Momentum in 2008. John Slyce's biography, "Patrick Hughes: reverspective," was published in 2005.

Influences

Hughes was influenced by the surrealistic Lilliput (magazine), comics and the absurdist theatre of Ionesco and N. F. Simpson, as well as the work of Paul Klee and Surrealists, particularly Rene Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and Marcel Marien. The Leeds-based surrealist Anthony Earnshaw was a friend and inspiration.

References

* B. Smith, P. Hughes, "Behind the Rainbow: Patrick Hughes, Prints 1964-83" Paradox Publishing Ltd, 1983
* John Slyce, "Reverspective" Momentum, London, 2005

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.patrickhughes.co.uk/reverspective.htm Official web site]
* [http://www.flowerseast.com/ Flowers East gallery]
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1322 Patrick Hughes' work in the Tate gallery]