Pictorial art is typically viewed with two eyes, but it is not binocular in the sense that it requires two eyes to appreciate the art. Two-dimensional representational art works allude to depth that they do not contain, and a variety of stratagems is enlisted to convey the impression that surfaces on the picture plane are at different distances from the viewer. With the invention of the stereoscope by Wheatstone in the 1830s, it was possible to produce two pictures with defined horizontal disparities between them to create a novel impression of depth. Stereoscopy and photography were made public at about the same time and their marriage was soon cemented; most stereoscopic art is now photographic. Wheatstone sought to examine stereoscopic depth without monocular pictorial cues. He was unable to do this, but it was achieved a century later by Julesz with random-dot stereograms The early history of non-photographic stereoscopic art is described as well as reference to some contemporary works. Novel stereograms employing a wider variety of carrier patterns than random dots are presented as anaglyphs; they show modulations of pictorial surface depths as well as inclusions within a binocular picture.

绘画艺术通常是用两只眼睛观看的，但它并不是需要两只眼睛来欣赏艺术的意义上的双眼。二维具象艺术作品暗示了它们所不包含的深度，并且运用了各种策略来传达画面上的表面与观看者距离不同的印象。随着惠斯通 (Wheatstone) 在 1830 年代发明立体镜，可以制作两张具有明确水平差异的图片，从而创造出新颖的深度印象。立体镜和摄影几乎同时公开，他们的婚姻很快就巩固了。现在大多数立体艺术都是摄影的。惠斯通试图在没有单眼图像线索的情况下检查立体深度。他无法做到这一点，但一个世纪后，Julesz 用随机点立体图实现了这一点。描述了非摄影立体艺术的早期历史，并参考了一些当代作品。新颖的立体图采用比随机点更广泛的载体图案，以立体图的形式呈现；它们显示了图像表面深度的调制以及双目图像中的内含物。