Drawing
Making things look as we 
perceive them does not always 
depend on exactly copying our 
retinal image.  In some cases, 
distortion is responsible for a 
product of enhanced clarity.  At 
the Parthenon, all vertical 
elements cant slightly inward 
and all horizontals are convex.  
The result is a composition 
whose complexity lends to an 
aesthetic drama, contrived for 
visual effect, yet carried out in 
the same mathematical order 
with which the whole of the 
building was organized.  This 
drawing, and the one that 
follows, represent the 
distortion of vertical and 
horizontal elements in an 
exaggerated form.  (Courtesy of 
Joshua P. Teas)

Psychologists have often 
thought that what one draws 
can be taken to be a good index 
of what one perceives. For 
example, children at a certain 
age will often copy letters 
backward. Does that mean they 
perceive an S as an S? If they 
did, they should draw the S 
correctly because, once drawn,
 it too should be perceived 
backward. Otherwise the 
drawing and the letter copied 
ought to look different. A 
similar problem arises with the 
interpretation that some art 
historians make of El Greco’s 
elongated paintings of people--
namely, that he suffered from 
astigmatism, a defect in the 
lens that can stretch the 
image. There is an error in 
reasoning here that has been 
called the El Greco fallacy. If El 
Greco misperceived the shape of 
people, he should also have 
misperceived his paintings of 
them; only by painting them 
correctly would he have 
misperceived both in the same 
way. Otherwise, his paintings 
would have looked different to 
him than did the object 
painted.