Julian Beever

 

Julian Beever is an artist who has spent 10 years creating pavement art in Europe, USA and Australia. Many of his creations are optical illusions, such as this one, where Julian appears to be perched on a ledge, waiting for Batman and Robin to climb the building and rescue him.

In reality, there is just pavement in front of him, and the street below together with the expectant crowd, plus the blazing building below him, are all tricks played on the eye (a modern example of trompe l’oeil – a French term that means literally ‘trick the eye’).

While many of his pictures can take a whole day to create, by the next day they are often gone, vanished under the feet of passing pedestrians. It is a very evanescent art form, one that lives mostly through photographs taken at the time.