ABSTRACT
The tricky nature of anamorphic images keeps them at a distance from the seriousness of art and they rarely play a role in artistic paintings, with the exception of some few examples. This chapter analyses perspectival anamorphic images: mirror anamorphoses are not taken into account, for reasons that—will start to appear less and less arbitrary. It focuses on the pragmatic nature of anamorphic images. The first step to understand anamorphic images consists in realizing that perspective drawing is not only a technique for representing depth on a flat surface: it is also a means for calling the onlooker's attention to the phenomenal texture of perspective distortions. The second step consists in realizing that images themselves are objects of perception and are, therefore, subject to perspective foreshortening. The nature of anamorphic images rests on this overturning, which is part and parcel of the definition of this kind of image, whose meaning depends, at least partly, on the performance of their reception.
