People normally tend to pay attention to objects which are visible. But there is another vision behind the subject which is not directly shown to them. Many artists are interested in images which are not directly seen. Here are some examples of artworks showing both visible and invisible features. The examples go back to the nineteenth century.   

 

Diego Velazquez, The Toilet of Venus, 1647-51, 122x177cm

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 320x270cm

Adolph von Menzel, Room with a Balcony, 1845, oil on cardboard, 58x47cm

Edouard Manet, A Bar at The Folies-Berger, 1882, oil on canvas, 96x130cm

Edouard Manet, a French painter who focused on scenes of contemporary life, was the first to concentrate primarily on the material visibility of paint. A Bar at The Folies-Berger, the last important work by Manet before his death in 1882, shows a scene at the Parisian nightclub. There is a woman standing at the bar. The image is primarily a portrait of a barmaid, facing the viewers from behind a bar. The viewers, however, can see a hall with a crowd under the chandelier as well as a man standing in front of the bar. Manet considered him to be off the canvas though the man’s figure is in the painting. While the man in the left corner is not directly shown in the perpendicular frame, viewers can imagine this feature.  Manet explored the rendering of a mirror’s reflection, which had been inspired by Diego Velazquez’ Las Meninas.

 In the view of these artists, they searched for a different understanding of their own perspective to demonstrate invisible objects. These painters implicitly showed the objects in their paintings as if they were trying to make the viewers able to picture the features off the canvas.

 Velazquez, Menzel, and Manet draw invisible objects from visible objects that were off the frames, which can help viewers imagine the objects although the actual objects are not shown. They suggested the objects as a sort of perception issue and viewers can be aware of the objects through the painting without experiencing them directly.