Bertie is a funny man. Bertie is a magician. Bertie remembers your name. Bertie has looked at more pictures than most of us have had hot dinners. Bertie loves a trick. Bertie showed how easy it is to trick the mind. Our minds. Repeatedly.

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Words such as illusion, ambiguity, perception, deception, perspective, trompe l’oeil, surrealism and camouflage all jostled for attention during the lecture. Always two dimensional, never three.

As a magician Bertie delighted in whisking us through the centuries introducing each new master of the craft like rabbits out of hats. Who knew that two Greeks, Zuexis and Panhassius were fighting over who was the better artist as early as 5th C BC?  Pliny the elder bothered to record the encounter. Zuexis said to Panhassius admire my fruit so luscious that birds try to eat it. Now pull off the curtain off your picture and show us what you have done…..”  Of course, his rival had painted a curtain so realistic everyone was fooled.

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But what is the point of this extraordinary skill? Bertie proposed multiple theories each one illustrated with wonderful examples.  Humans have always delighted in trickery, but it is also useful; for instance, when you want another storey on your church.  Andrea Pozzo created an illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface producing a lofty, heavenly vault for the church of St Ignatius in Rome which the commissioners, the Jesuit order, were unable or perhaps unwilling to fund.   Nearer to home we were reminded of Antonio Verrio’s Staircase of Hell and Drawing Room of Heaven in Burghley House, Lincolnshire. Grisaille or monochrome painting kept step to give the appearance of sculpture for those who had neither the space or perhaps the money for the real thing.

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Trompe l’oeil is a progressive form of trickery or art; whichever you prefer.  Bertie romped through multiple examples: Gijbrecht’s letter rack, Van der Vaart’s Chatsworth violin, William Michael Harnett’s Faithful Colt, Magritte’s bowler hats and apples, Van Eyk’s famous convex mirrors, Bridget Riley’s lines, false curtains, birds flying backwards and forwards, backs of pictures, stairs up or down, misrepresented reflections. We went well beyond the eponymous Ambassadors by Holbein, skirting faces made from vegetables or fish to Dali and beyond.

 Outdoor art followed with Sidewalk/Street art. Kurt Wenner, Leon Keer, Julian Beever and Edgar Meuller all being names to follow up on Google.  Bertie lingered on Banksy briefly. Surely he is a king trickster.  Images such as shredding of the Girl with the Red Balloon live at the auction, the Well Hung Lover or Mind the Crap crowded the screen.   Seconds later we were veering off again into pattern, illusion, geometry and camouflage.

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Indoors, outdoors, upside down, right way up; my brain was frazzled and dazzled by this stage.  I think my personal favourite of all the slides was John Pugh’s 1981 image of the Parthenon bursting out of Taylor Hall, Chicago State University.

Just to tangle our minds further Bertie finished with a magic rope trick further delighting the audience - how did he do that? What were those artists doing? What do we make of it all? What should we make of it all?

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Do we care other than it was a delight for the eye, stimulating to the mind and made us all laugh – truly a magical evening.

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For further details of our Lectures, Visits and Events please go to www.TASAlton.com 

Lucy Picton-Turbervill