V. Speculum

Seen from the front, V. Speculum features two truncated triangles against a cream background: one, colored gray, extends downward, and a second, black and trimmed with green, extends upward. As the viewer might expect from the artist’s interest in perceptual science, however, the painting is full of trickery. By positioning the shapes at the edges of the canvas, the artist has encouraged viewers to peer to the side. When they do so, the painted flank comes into view, transforming what had been visible as a triangle, face on, into a rectangle. Shadows caused by the depth of the stretcher are cast onto the adjacent wall and mimicked by paint. Real shadows and painted “shadows” con- flate, while seemingly vertical lines are revealed, on closer inspection, to be subtly curved. Colors alter slightly when the painting is viewed from different angles, making it hard to distinguish whether it is a change in the lighting conditions or in the shade of paint that is at play. Baer describes her work of the period as having been engaged with the “dia- lectic of the object versus sleight-of-hand. . . . There can be,” she insists, “no mark within a painting’s format which does not deceive.”