Patrick Hughes — Reverspective Art

Series 1 of this collection from the renowned artist drops Sat, 30 April at 8 AM PT, only on the VeVe app for iOS and Android!

VeVe Digital Collectibles

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VeVe

4 min readApr 28, 2022

Patrick Hughes

Patrick held his first solo show in 1961 at the Portal Gallery, London. A few years later, Hughes made two seminal reverse perspective works, Infinity and Sticking-out Room. In the 1970s Hughes’ name became synonymous with rainbow paintings, which also became very popular as prints and as postcards; people enjoyed them as decoration, but for Hughes the rainbow represented a solid experience.

In the late 1980s Hughes revisited exploiting the difference between perspective and reverspective and solidifying space. For the last 25 years his 3-D reverspective paintings have been hughesually in demand, exhibited around the world and featured in many public collections. The experience of seeing a Patrick Hughes sculptured painting in reality is really to experience unreality and the paradox of illusory space and movement.

Reverspective Art

Reverspectives are three-dimensional paintings that when viewed from the front initially give the impression of viewing a painted flat surface that shows a perspective view. However, as soon as the viewer moves their head even slightly, the three dimensional surface that supports the perspective view accentuates the depth of the image and accelerates the shifting perspective far more than the brain normally allows. This provides a powerful and often disorienting impression of depth and movement. The illusion is made possible by painting the view in reverse to the relief of the surface, that is, the bits that stick farthest out from the painting are painted with the most distant part of the scene.

Series 1

Two pieces of Reverspective Art — Crate Expectations and Contemplating Venice — make up Patrick Hughes’ first series for VeVe!

Crate Expectations (2018)

Crate Expectations is made in reverspective, also the overall image is in reverspective. When the painting is hanging on the wall it appears to go away towards infinity, as well as turning and twisting as the reverspective structure is viewed by a moving observer or video camera. The various things depicted, the lifebelts, moon, apple, rainbows, sun, polyhedron, and beach ball can be seen in an array of crates. These wooden crates are useful imagery in my art because they are so readily susceptible to perspective, and particularly to the vivid movement coming from reverspective.

Drop Date: 30 April 2022, 8 AM PT
List Price: 200.00
Editions: 1,590
Rarity: Ultra Rare
Edition Type: First Edition
License: Patrick Hughes
Brand: Reverspective Art
Series: Series 1
Available: Globally

Contemplating Venice (2021)

Contemplating Venice is one of a series of works Patrick has made using the Venice scene. It has six planes in reverse perspective — Patrick’s invention of 1964 — and two flat ends. Patrick found the buildings of Venice a very useful resource, because the architecture contains a large number of details, so each window or door or balcony or balustrade in perspective is pointing the way to the horizon even though the structure is going in the reverse direction. The shimmering reflections and shadows in the water help the whole image to move from left to right and up and down.