ABSTRACT
Painters, critics and historians of art have rebelled against the whole concept of the perfect picture and the faithful image. The notion of an image that is literally and actually indistinguishable from the reality is a myth. The point-projection theory of the perfect picture asserted that the objects represented would be seen “through the frame of the picture as if through a window” and, if this was true, it was implied that the pictured scene would be indistinguishable from the real scene. It is possible to suggest a new theory of pictorial perception only because a new theory of visual perception has been formulated. The heart of the theory is the concept of optical information. Information consists of invariants, in the mathematical sense, of the structure of an optic array. Displays which are ambiguous or reversible with respect to what is seen have been interpreted as proving that perceiving depends more on the perceiver than it does on external stimulus.
