Color illusions that deceive our brain (18 photos). White and black This is not a “Black Square”, but a “Black Square on a White Background”

Our vision can very easily deceive our brain with simple color illusions that surround us everywhere. Some of these illusions await you further.

How many colors are there in the picture?

Blue and green spirals are actually the same color - green. There is no blue color here.

The brown square in the center of the top edge and the “orange” square in the center of the front edge are the same color.

Look carefully at the board. What color are cells “A” and “B”? Does “A” seem to be black and “B” white? The correct answer is below.

Cells “B” and “A” are the same color. Gray.

Does the lower part of the figure seem lighter? Use your finger to cover the horizontal border between the top and bottom of the shape.

Do you see a chessboard with black and white squares? The gray halves of black and white cells are the same shade. Gray color is perceived either as black or as white.

The horse figures have the same color.

How many color shades are there, not counting white? 3? 4? In fact, there are only two - pink and green.

What color are the squares here? Only green and pink.

Optical illusion

We look at the dot, and the gray stripe on the orange background becomes... blue.

In place of the disappearing purple spots, a green spot appears, moving in a circle. But in reality it doesn’t exist! And if you concentrate on the cross, the purple spots disappear.

If you look closely at a point in the center of a black and white image for 15 seconds, the picture takes on colors.

Look at the center of the black dot for 15 seconds. The image will turn into color.

Look at the 4 dots in the center of the picture for 30 seconds, then move your gaze to the ceiling and blink. What did you see?

At the intersections of all white stripes, with the exception of the intersection where you are fixing your gaze at the moment, small black spots are visible that are not actually there.

Disappearance

If you look closely at the dot in the center for a few seconds, the gray background will disappear.

Concentrate your gaze on the center of the picture. After a while, the blurry color images will disappear and turn into a solid white background.

The most important property of our eye is its ability to distinguish colors. One of the properties related to color vision can be considered the phenomenon of a shift in the maximum relative visibility during the transition from daylight to twilight vision.

With twilight vision (low light levels), not only does the sensitivity of the eye to the perception of colors in general decrease, but also under these conditions the eye has a decreased sensitivity to the colors of the long-wavelength part of the visible spectrum (red, orange) and increased sensitivity to the colors of the short-wavelength part of the spectrum (blue, violet) .

We can point to a number of cases where, when looking at colored objects, we also encounter visual errors or illusions.

Firstly, sometimes we mistakenly judge the color saturation of an object by the brightness of the background or by the color of other objects surrounding it. In this case, the laws of brightness contrast also apply: the color brightens on a dark background and darkens on a light one.
The great artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci wrote: “Of colors of equal whiteness, the one that appears lighter will appear against a darker background, and black will appear gloomier against a background of greater whiteness. And red will appear more fiery against a darker background, and also all colors surrounded by their exact opposites."

Secondly, there is the concept of actual color or chromatic contrasts, when the color of the object we observe changes depending on the background against which we observe it. There are many examples of the effects of color contrasts on the eye. Goethe, for example, writes: “The grass growing in a courtyard paved with gray limestone appears to be an infinitely beautiful green color when the evening clouds cast a reddish, barely noticeable glow on the stones.” The additional color of dawn is green; This contrasting green color mixes with the green color of the grass and gives an “infinitely beautiful green color.”

Goethe also describes the phenomenon of so-called “colored shadows”. "One of the most beautiful cases of colored shadows can be observed during the full moon. Candlelight and moonlight can be completely equal in intensity. Both shadows can be made of the same strength and clarity, so that both colors will be completely balanced. Place the screen so that the light is full the moon fell directly on it, the candle is placed somewhat to the side at the appropriate distance; some transparent body is held in front of the screen. Then a double shadow appears, and the one that is cast by the moon and which is at the same time illuminated by the candle appears to be of a distinct reddish-dark color. color, and, conversely, the one that is cast by the candle, but illuminated by the moon, is of the most beautiful blue color. Where both shadows meet and combine into one, a black shadow is obtained."

Illusions associated with the structural features of the eye.

Look at the picture (below) close to the right edge of the monitor

Blind spot.

The presence of a blind spot on the retina of the eye was first discovered in 1668 by the famous French physicist E. Mariotte. Marriott describes his experience in verifying the presence of a blind spot as follows:

“I attached a small circle of white paper on a dark background, approximately at eye level, and at the same time asked to hold another circle to the side of the first, to the right at a distance of about two feet), but somewhat lower so that its image fell on the optic nerve of my I closed my right eye, while I closed my left one. I stood opposite the first circle and gradually moved away, keeping my right eye on it. When I was 9 feet away, the second circle, which was about 4 inches in size, completely disappeared from my field of vision. I could attribute this to his lateral position, for I could distinguish other objects that were even more to the side than he was; I would have thought that it had been removed if I had not found it again at the slightest movement of my eyes.”

It is known that Marriott amused the English king Charles II and his courtiers by teaching them to see each other without heads. The retina of the eye, where the optic nerve enters the eye, does not have the light-sensitive endings of nerve fibers (rods and cones). Consequently, images of objects falling on this place of the retina are not transmitted to the brain.

Here's another interesting example. In fact, the circle is perfectly smooth. We need to squint and we see it.

Optical effect of color.

This effect includes illusions or optical phenomena caused by color and changing the appearance of objects. Considering the optical phenomena of color, all colors can be divided into two groups: red and blue, because Basically, colors in their optical properties will gravitate towards one of these groups. The exception is green. Light colors, such as white or yellow, create an irradiation effect, they seem to spread to the darker colors located next to them and reduce the surfaces painted in these colors. For example, if a ray of light penetrates through a crack in a plank wall, the crack appears wider than it actually is. When the sun shines through the branches of trees, the branches appear thinner than usual.

This phenomenon plays a significant role in the design of fonts. While the letters E and F, for example, retain their full height, the height of letters such as O and G is reduced somewhat, further reduced by the sharp ends of the letters A and V. These letters appear lower than the overall height of the line. So that they appear to be the same height as the rest of the letters of the line, when marking them, they are moved slightly up or down beyond the aisles of the line. The irradiation effect also explains the different impressions of surfaces covered with transverse or longitudinal stripes. A field with transverse stripes appears lower than a field with longitudinal stripes, since the white color surrounding the field penetrates at the top and bottom between the stripes and visually reduces the height of the field.

Main optical features of the red and blue color groups.

Yellow visually, as it were, lifts the surface. It also seems more extensive due to the irradiation effect. The red color is approaching us, blue, on the contrary, is moving away. The planes, painted in dark blue, purple and black, visually decrease in size and move downwards.

Green- the most calm of all colors.

It should also be noted that the centrifugal movement is yellow and the centripetal movement is blue.

The first color pricks the eyes, the second color drowns the eye. This effect increases if we add to it the difference in lightness and darkness, i.e. the effect of yellow will increase when white is added to it, blue - when it is darkened with black.

Academician S.I. Vavilov writes about the structure of the eye: “How simple is the optical part of the eye, so complex is its perceptive mechanism. Not only do we not know the physiological meaning of individual elements of the retina, but we are not able to say how appropriate the spatial distribution of light-sensitive cells is to what needs a blind spot, etc. What we have before us is not an artificial physical device, but a living organ in which advantages are mixed with disadvantages, but everything is inextricably linked into a living whole.”

A blind spot, it would seem, should prevent us from seeing the entire object, but under normal conditions we do not notice this.

Firstly, because the images of objects falling on the blind spot in one eye are not projected onto the blind spot in the other; secondly, because the falling out parts of objects are involuntarily filled with images of neighboring parts that are in the field of view. If, for example, when examining black horizontal lines, some areas of the image of these lines on the retina of one eye fall on a blind spot, then we will not see a break in these lines, since our other eye will compensate for the shortcomings of the first. Even when observing with one eye, our mind compensates for the deficiency of the retina and the disappearance of some details of objects from the field of vision does not reach our consciousness.
The blind spot is quite large (at a distance of two meters from the observer, even a person’s face can disappear from the field of view), however, under normal vision conditions, the mobility of our eyes eliminates this “disadvantage” of the retina.

Irradiation

The phenomenon of irradiation is that light objects against a dark background seem enlarged compared to their actual size and seem to capture part of the dark background. This phenomenon has been known since very ancient times. Even Vitruvius (1st century BC), an architect and engineer of Ancient Rome, pointed out in his writings that when dark and light are combined, “light devours darkness.” On our retina, light partially captures the space occupied by shadow. The initial explanation for the phenomenon of irradiation was given by R. Descartes, who argued that an increase in the size of light objects occurs as a result of the spread of physiological excitation to places adjacent to the directly irritated area of ​​the retina.
However, this explanation is currently being replaced by a new, more strict one, formulated by Helmholtz, according to which the following circumstances are the root cause of irradiation. Each luminous point is depicted on the retina of the eye in the form of a small circle of scattering due to the imperfection of the lens (aberration, from Latin - deviation), inaccurate accommodation, etc. When we look at a light surface on a dark background, due to aberration scattering, the boundaries seem to expand this surface, and the surface seems to us larger than its true geometric dimensions; it seems to extend across the edges of the dark background surrounding it.

The effect of irradiation is more pronounced the worse the eye is accommodated. Due to the presence of light scattering circles on the retina, under certain conditions (for example, very thin black threads), dark objects on a light background can also be subject to illusory exaggeration - this is the so-called negative irradiation. There are a lot of examples when we can observe the phenomenon of irradiation; it is not possible to give them in full here.

The great Italian artist, scientist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci in his notes says the following about the phenomenon of irradiation: “When the Sun is visible behind leafless trees, all their branches located opposite the solar body are so reduced that they become invisible, the same will happen with a shaft placed between the eye and the solar body. I saw a woman dressed in black, with a white bandage on her head, the latter appearing twice as wide as the width of the woman's shoulders, which were dressed in black, when viewed from a great distance the battlements of the fortresses, separated. from each other by intervals equal to the width of these teeth, then the intervals seem much larger than the teeth...".

The great German poet Goethe points out a number of cases of observations of the phenomenon of irradiation in nature in his treatise “The Doctrine of Colors”. He writes about this phenomenon as follows: “A dark object seems smaller than a light one of the same size. If we simultaneously consider a white circle on a black background and a black circle of the same diameter on a white background, then the latter seems to us to be approximately 1/2 smaller than the first. If the black circle is made correspondingly larger, they will appear equal. The young crescent moon appears to belong to a circle of a larger diameter than the rest of the dark part of the moon, which is sometimes visible."

The phenomenon of irradiation during astronomical observations makes it difficult to observe thin black lines on objects of observation; in such cases it is necessary to aperture the telescope lens. Physicists, due to the phenomenon of irradiation, do not see the thin peripheral rings of the diffraction pattern. People appear thinner in a dark dress than in a light one. Light sources visible from behind the edge produce an apparent cutout in it. The ruler, from behind which the candle flame appears, is represented with a notch in this place. The rising and setting sun makes a hole in the horizon.

A few more examples.

The black thread, if held in front of a bright flame, seems to be broken at this point; the hot filament of an incandescent lamp seems thicker than it actually is; Light wire on a dark background appears thicker than on a light one. The sashes in the window frames appear smaller than they really are. A statue cast from bronze appears smaller than one made from plaster or white marble.

The architects of Ancient Greece made the corner columns of their buildings thicker than others, taking into account that these columns from many points of view would be visible against the background of a bright sky and, due to the phenomenon of irradiation, would appear thinner. We are subjected to a kind of illusion in relation to the apparent size of the Sun. Artists, as a rule, paint the Sun as too large compared to other depicted objects. On the other hand, in photographic landscape photographs in which the Sun is depicted, it appears to us unnaturally small, although the lens gives a correct image of it.
Note that the phenomenon of negative irradiation can be observed in cases where a black thread or slightly shiny metal wire appears thicker on a white background than on a black or gray one. If, for example, a lacemaker wants to show her art, then it is better for her to make lace from black threads and spread it on a white lining. If we observe wires against a background of parallel dark lines, such as a tile roof or brickwork, the wires appear thickened and broken where they intersect each of the dark lines.

These effects are also observed when the wires are superimposed in the field of view on a clear outline of the building. Probably, the phenomenon of irradiation is associated not only with the aberration properties of the lens, but also with the scattering and refraction of light in the media of the eye (the layer of liquid between the eyelid and the cornea, the media filling the anterior chamber and the entire inside of the eye). Therefore, the irradiation properties of the eye are obviously related to its resolving power and radiant perception of “point” light sources. The ability of the eye to overestimate sharp angles is associated with aberration properties, and therefore partly with the phenomenon of irradiation.

Astigmatism of the eye.

Astigmatism of the eye is a defect of the eye, usually caused by the non-spherical (toric) shape of the cornea and sometimes the non-spherical shape of the surfaces of the lens. Astigmatism in the human eye was first discovered in 1801 by the English physicist T. Young. In the presence of this defect (by the way, not all people manifest it in a sharp form), there is no point focusing of rays falling parallel to the eye due to different refraction of light by the cornea in different sections. Severe astigmatism is corrected by glasses with cylindrical glasses, which refract light rays only in the direction perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder.

Eyes completely free from this defect are rare in people, as can be easily seen. To test the eyes for astigmatism, ophthalmologists often use a special table, where twelve circles have shading of equal thickness at equal intervals. An eye with astigmatism will see the lines of one or more circles blacker. The direction of these blacker lines allows us to draw a conclusion about the nature of the astigmatism of the eye.

If astigmatism is due to the non-spherical shape of the lens surface, then when moving from clear vision of horizontal objects to viewing vertical objects, a person must change the accommodation of the eyes. Most often, the distance of clear vision for vertical objects is less than for horizontal ones.

In 1972, the English critic Henry Waites wrote:
“It would seem that it could be simpler: a black square on a white background. Anyone can probably draw this. But here’s a mystery: a black square on a white background - a painting by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, created at the beginning of the century, still attracts both researchers and art lovers as something sacred, as a kind of myth, as a symbol of the Russian avant-garde. What explains this mystery?
And he continues:
“They say that Malevich, having written “Black Square,” told everyone for a long time that he could neither eat nor sleep. And he himself doesn’t understand what he did. And indeed, this picture is apparently the result of some complex work. When we look at the black square, under the cracks we see the lower layers of paint - pink, lilac, ocher - apparently, there was some kind of color composition, recognized at some point as failed and recorded with a black square."

Tomographic scanning in infrared radiation showed the following results:

Kazemir Severinovich Malevich was born in Kyiv 23 February 18 '79. He grew up as a capable child, and in his school essay he wrote: “My dad works as a manager at a sugar factory. But his life is not sweet. All day long he listens to the workers swearing when they get drunk from the sugar mash. Therefore, when dad returns home, he often swears at mom. So when I grow up, I will become an artist. It's a good job. There is no need to swear at the workers, there is no need to carry heavy loads, and the air smells of paints, and not of sugar dust, which is very harmful to health. A good painting costs a lot of money, but you can paint it in just one day.”.
After reading this essay, Kozya’s mother, Ludviga Alexandrovna (nee Galinovskaya), gave him a set of paints for his 15th birthday. And at the age of 17, Malevich entered the Kyiv drawing school of N.I. Murashko.

In August 1905, he came to Moscow from Kursk and applied for admission to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. However, he was not accepted into the school. Malevich did not want to return to Kursk; he settled in an art commune in Lefortovo. Here, in the large house of the artist Kurdyumov, about thirty “communards” lived. I had to pay seven rubles a month for a room—by Moscow standards, very cheap. But Malevich often had to borrow this money. In the summer of 1906, he again applied to the Moscow School, but he was not accepted a second time.
From 1906 to 1910, Kazimir attended classes in the studio of F.I. Rerberg in Moscow. Letters from the artist A.A. shed light on this period of his life. Extera to musician M.V. Matyushin. One of them describes the following.
To improve his finances, Kazimir Malevich began work on a series of paintings about a women's bathhouse. The paintings were not sold expensively and required additional expenses for models, but it was at least some money.
One day, after working with his models all night, Malevich fell asleep on the sofa in his studio. In the morning his wife came in to take money from him to pay the grocer's bills. Seeing another painting by the great master, she boiled with indignation and jealousy, grabbed a large brush and painted the canvas with black paint.
Waking up, Malevich tried to save the painting, but to no avail - the black paint had already dried.
Art historians believe that it was at this moment that Malevich’s idea of ​​“Black Square” was born.

The fact is that many artists long before Malevich tried to create something similar. These paintings were not widely known, but Malevich, who studied the history of painting, undoubtedly knew about them. Here are just a few examples.

Robert Fludd, "The Great Darkness" 1617

Bertal, "View of La Hogue (night effect), Jean-Louis Petit", 1843

Paul Bilhod, "Night Fight of Negroes in the Basement", 1882

Alphonse Allais, Philosophers Catching a Black Cat in a Dark Room, 1893

Alphonse Allais, a French journalist, writer and eccentric humorist, author of the popular aphorism “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow,” was the most successful in such creativity.
From 1882 to 1893, he painted a whole series of similar paintings, not at all hiding his humorous attitude towards these “creative explorations of extramaterial realities.”
For example, a completely white framed canvas was called “Anemic Girls Walking to First Communion in a Snowstorm.” The red canvas was called “Apoplectic Cardinals Picking Tomatoes on the Shores of the Red Sea,” etc.

Malevich undoubtedly understood that the secret to the success of such paintings lies not in the image itself, but in its theoretical basis. Therefore, he did not exhibit “Black Suprematist Square” until he wrote his famous manifesto “From Cubism to Suprematism” in 1915. New pictorial realism".

However, this was not enough. The exhibition was rather sluggish, since there were quite a lot of various “Suprematists”, “Cubists”, “Futurists”, “Dadaists”, “Conceptualists” and “Minimalists” in Moscow by that time, and the public was already quite tired of them.
Real success came to Malevich only after Lunacharsky appointed him in 1929 "People's Commissar of the IZO NARKOMPROS." Within this position Malevich took his “black square” and other works to the exhibition “Abstract and surrealist painting and plastic arts” in Zurich. Then he held personal exhibitions in Warsaw, Berlin and Munich, where his new book “The World as Non-Objectivity” was also published. The fame of Malevich's Black Square spread throughout Europe.

The fact that Malevich used his position not so much for international propaganda of Soviet art as for promoting his own creativity did not escape his Moscow colleagues. And upon returning from abroad in the fall of 1930 Malevich was arrested by the NKVD on a denunciation as a “German spy.”
However, thanks to Lunacharsky’s intercession, he spent only 4 months in prison, although he parted with the post of “People’s Commissar of Fine Arts” forever.

So the first oneThe “Black Suprematist Square”, which was discussed here, dates back to 1915, and is now in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Malevich painted the second “Black Square” in 1923 especially for the Russian Museum.
The third - in 1929. It is also located in the Tretyakov Gallery.
And the fourth - in 1930, especially for the Hermitage.

These museums also house other works by Malevich.

Kazemir Malevich, " Red Suprematist Square, 1915

Kazemir Malevich, "Black Suprematist Circle", 1923

Kazemir Malevich, "Suprematist Cross", 1923

Kazemir Malevich, "Black and White", 1915

Kazemir Malevich, self-portrait, 1933,
State Russian Museum

Take a look from afar look at the drawing and say: how many black circles could fit in the free space between the bottom circle and one of the top circles - four or five? Most likely you will answer that four mugs will fit freely, but for the fifth, perhaps, there will not be enough space. When they tell you that exactly three mugs fit in the gap, no more, you won’t believe it. Take a piece of paper or a compass and see that you are wrong.

This strange illusion, due to which black areas appear smaller to our eyes than white areas of the same size, is called “irradiation”. It depends on the imperfection of our eye, which, as an optical apparatus, does not fully meet the strict requirements of optics. Its refractive media do not produce on the retina those sharp contours that are obtained on the ground glass of a well-tuned photographic apparatus: due to the so-called spherical aberration each light contour is surrounded by a light border, which increases its size on the retina of the eye. As a result, light areas always seem larger to us than their equal black areas.

In his “Doctrine of Flowers,” the great poet Goethe, who was a keen observer of nature (although not always a sufficiently cautious theoretical physicist), writes about this phenomenon as follows:

“A dark object appears smaller than a light one of the same size. If we simultaneously consider a white circle on a black background and a black circle of the same diameter on a white background, then the latter will seem to us to be about 1/5 smaller than the first. If the black circle is made correspondingly larger, they will appear equal. The young crescent of the Moon seems to belong to a circle of a larger diameter than the rest of the dark part of the Moon, which is sometimes visible (“ash light” of the Moon. - Ya.P.). In a dark dress, people appear thinner than in a light one. Light sources visible from behind the edge produce an apparent cutout in it. The ruler, from behind which the candle flame appears, is represented with a notch in this place. The rising and setting sun makes a hole in the horizon.”

Everything in these observations is correct, except for the statement that the white circle always seems larger than the equal black one by the same fraction. The increase depends on the distance from which the mugs are viewed. Now it will become clear why this is so.

Move the drawing with black circles further away from your eyes - the illusion will become even stronger, even more striking. This is explained by the fact that the width of the additional border always remains the same; if, therefore, at a close distance it increased the width of the light area by only 10%, then at a far distance, when the image itself becomes smaller, the same addition will no longer be 10%, but, say, 30% or even 50% of its width. This feature of our eye is usually used to explain the strange property of the following picture. Looking at it closely, you see many white circles on a black field. But move the book further away and look at the drawing from a distance of 2-3 steps, and if you have very good eyesight, then from a distance of 6-8 steps; the figure will noticeably change its appearance: instead of circles, you will see white hexagons in it, like bee cells.

I am not entirely satisfied with the explanation of this illusion by irradiation, since I noticed that black circles on a white background also appear hexagonal from a distance (see figure below), although irradiation here does not increase, but reduces mugs. It must be said that in general, existing explanations of visual illusions cannot be considered final; Most illusions have no explanation at all.