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Artists can arrange small shapes so that they form a completely different image when viewed from farther away.
Up close, you may see hundreds of individual marks, colors, or objects.
Step backward, and your brain combines those details into a larger recognizable picture.
This technique takes advantage of visual grouping and perceptual organization.
Mosaics are an especially obvious example: individual pieces may look meaningless on their own but form a detailed image when viewed together.
Modern digital artists also use the same principle with photographs and tiny repeated images.
The artwork can therefore have two visual scales—one you discover up close and another that appears when you step away.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art