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Optical illusions & the art of seeing

Explore optical illusions, impossible objects and illusion art with pictures, viewing instructions and explanations. Follow the science and history behind each example, from classic visual puzzles to fractals and camouflage in nature and human design.

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The collection

Repeating asymmetric light-to-dark gradients arranged in circular patterns.

Peripheral drift

Jocelyn Faubert & Andrew M. Herbert

Still gradients seem to drift at the edge of vision.

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A concave mask photographed or animated to demonstrate apparent convexity.

Hollow-face illusion

Longstanding demonstration; studied by Richard Gregory & others

A hollow face can look like a face turned toward you.

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An animated red-and-green ring with striped surfaces whose apparent depth can reverse.Moving image

Ambiguous Ring

Donald E. Simanek

You should experience a sense of perceptual confusion as you note the paradoxical nature of the depicted ring.

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A person stands beside a pavement painting that appears to open into a vast blue crevasse.

The Crevasse

Edgar Müller (1968 –), a German illusionist street painter

You should have the visual experience of a woman seeming to stand on top of a crevasse. However, although the woman is real, the crevasse is just a cleverly constructed 2D drawing on the…

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A rectangular loop of steps that appears to ascend continuously.

Penrose stairs

Oscar Reutersvärd; independently Lionel & Roger Penrose

A staircase that climbs forever and gets nowhere.

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Wireframe cube with all twelve edges visible and no shading.

Necker cube

Louis Albert Necker

Which face is in front? A wireframe refuses to decide.

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A repeating black-and-white sawtooth strip on grey with ambiguous depth orientation.

Sawtooth Ambiguous Figure

Peter Ulrich Tse, neuroscientist

You should experience a 'Gestalt switch' between experiencing the triangles as pointing downwards and resting on the dark grey lower plane, or as pointing upwards and resting on a light…

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The impossible cuboid — A public sculpture appears to form an impossible cuboid.

The impossible cuboid

J. Verhoeff, D. Baas Becking, and P. Bakker; photograph by Wikifrits

A public sculpture appears to form an impossible cuboid.

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An upright line meeting the midpoint of an equal-length horizontal line.

Horizontal–vertical illusion

Nineteenth-century researchers including J. J. Oppel

The upright line seems longer than its equal horizontal partner.

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Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity: three seated angels around a pale table, with obliquely drawn seats and footstools opening across the foreground.

The Trinity

Andrei Rublev

Three angels gather around a table in a space whose furniture opens towards the viewer instead of following a single distant vanishing point.

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Sierpiński Carpet — A square becomes an endlessly nested lattice of holes.

Sierpiński Carpet

Wacław Sierpiński

A square becomes an endlessly nested lattice of holes.

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A white dove and an outlined cloud against a red field, used in a colour-adaptation demonstration.

The Colour Dove Illusion

Yuval Barkan and Hedva Spitzer

In the first few seconds you should notice that the dove appears red—a faint version of the red that was in the background of the first image. You are experiencing a positive afterimage…

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Heighway Dragon — Repeated right-angle turns fold a simple line into a complex shape.

Heighway Dragon

John Heighway, Bruce Banks, and William Harter

Repeated right-angle turns fold a simple line into a complex shape.

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Sierpiński Triangle — Triangles repeat inside triangles at every scale.

Sierpiński Triangle

Wacław Sierpiński

Triangles repeat inside triangles at every scale.

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Enlarged image from the selected gallery entry