Week 5 | Gestalt Principles | Mao

Hanging before me (I'm starting to think a lot of my bulletin art can be used as design examples by the way) is Freud's infamous "What's on a Man's Mind" graphic illusion. Here we have the convergence of two entities: a naked women and a your iconic 19th century fellow (perhaps Freud himself) camouflaged into one sketch. From far away, you see head of the man and his unmistakable mane of facial hair. However, looking closely you will find the unclothed woman resting her voluptuous frame against the man's facial shrubbery, to which it almost looks as if she, herself has an army of hair growing from behind. You also find the substitution of her thigh in the domain of his nose, in addition to his eyes, replaced by her pubertal netherlands.

This portrait indeed encapsulates the Gestalt principles of design-- focusing on the part to whole relationship in which the eye assimilates pieces of images as an entire entity. Because the contours of this woman's body follows the same outline of the man's face, the gestalt successfully uses the line to represent one dimension of two separate objects. "When the eye completes a line or curve in order to form a familiar shape, closure has occurred" (p. 64 Arntson). This type of closure occurs throughout the entire image, as we associate the curves of her body with the structure of his eyes, temples, cheeks and even brain.