Rubin’s Vase Explained: Do You See Faces or a Vase?

How one unchanging border becomes two different objects

The same image supports two stable interpretations: a central vase or two facing profiles. Adapted from Bryan Derksen’s CC BY-SA 3.0 vector on Wikimedia Commons.

Before You Read: What Do You See First?

Do not search the image. Simply notice what appears: a pale vase in the centre, or two dark faces looking toward each other. Keep looking, and the other interpretation may arrive. Nothing on the page has changed, yet the object you experience has.

That small reversal is the point. Rubin’s Vase shows that vision does more than register light and edges. It organises a scene by deciding which region is the figure-the shaped object-and which is the ground behind it.

LOOK AGAIN :

Let your attention settle on the pale centre, then on the dark regions at the sides. The switch may be immediate, delayed or stubborn. All are ordinary responses; this is a perceptual demonstration, not a test you can pass or fail.

What Is Rubin’s Vase?

Rubin’s Vase is an ambiguous figure-ground image: one physical pattern permits two coherent percepts. When the central region is treated as figure, its border belongs to a vase. When the side regions become figure, the very same border belongs to two profiles.

Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin used related drawings while investigating figure-ground organisation in his 1915 doctoral work, Synsoplevede Figurer (“Visually Experienced Figures”) [1]. The familiar vase-faces display became the most memorable illustration of his central insight: a shared contour does not shape both neighbouring regions equally. Perception tends to assign the contour to one side, making that side appear more object-like.

How Does the Rubin Vase Illusion Work?

Border ownership changes the perceived object. The orange contour is identical in both interpretations; only its perceptual assignment changes.

1. The border has to belong somewhere

A contour usually marks the edge of an object. In this display, however, each curving edge could define the central region or the neighbouring profile. Assign it inward and a vase gains shape. Assign it outward and two faces gain noses, lips and chins. The unchosen region recedes and feels less formed.

2. Figure and ground are not equal roles

The figure usually feels nearer, more solid and easier to remember as a shape. The ground seems to continue behind it and receives less definite form. Rubin’s image makes this normally invisible organisation available to awareness because either side can plausibly take the figure role.

3. The alternatives compete

The display is often described as bistable: perception can stabilise on either of two interpretations and may alternate between them. “Bistable” does not mean that everyone switches at the same speed or that both percepts are equally strong. Attention, recent experience, display size and where the image falls on the retina can bias what is seen [2].

Reversing contrast changes the visual invitation, but the same two object interpretations remain available. Adapted from Bryan Derksen’s CC BY-SA 3.0 vector on Wikimedia Commons.

Why Do Faces Often Win Attention?

Faces are behaviourally important patterns, and the visual system is highly practised at detecting them. Once the side regions are organised as profiles, familiar features emerge along the shared border. Brain-imaging studies using vase-face displays have found stronger responses in face-selective visual regions when observers report seeing faces rather than the vase [3,4].

That finding does not mean a single “face area” flips the illusion by itself. Perceptual reversals involve interactions among early visual processing, object and face-selective systems, attention and broader recurrent activity. The image is valuable to researchers precisely because the retinal stimulus can remain constant while conscious experience changes.

Can You See the Faces and Vase at the Same Time?

You can know that both are present and rapidly move between them. Yet the clearest percept usually privileges one organisation at a time. The central region either owns the border and becomes the vase, or the sides own it and become faces. Trying to hold both equally vividly exposes the competition rather than removing it.

Colour, instructions and attention can bias the first interpretation, but they do not permanently settle the image. Even knowing the trick may not stop a reversal. Conceptual knowledge and immediate visual organisation are connected, but they are not identical.

Where Figure-Ground Organisation Matters

The same perceptual problem appears whenever an object must be separated from its surroundings: reading dark letters on a light page, spotting an animal against foliage, following a road sign in visual clutter or finding a button on a crowded screen. Designers use contrast, enclosure, spacing and layering to make the intended figure unmistakable. Artists and logo designers sometimes do the opposite, letting positive and negative space exchange roles to create a second meaning.

What Rubin’s Vase Does-and Does Not-Show

The display shows that object perception depends on organisation, not only on the physical marks reaching the eyes. A single border can support different shapes depending on which side is treated as figure.

It does not prove that perception is arbitrary, that people see whatever they wish, or that one image reveals personality, creativity or mental health. Both interpretations are tightly constrained by the contour. The demonstration is informative because ordinary vision usually resolves figure and ground so efficiently that we never notice the decision.

THE TAKEAWAY :

Rubin’s Vase contains no hidden second drawing. The vase and the faces are two organisations of the same border. What changes is not the stimulus but the visual system’s answer to a fundamental question: which side is the object?

Mini-Glossary

Figure - The region experienced as the shaped object in the foreground.

Ground - The region experienced as background, often appearing to continue behind the figure.

Border ownership - The perceptual assignment of a contour to one of the regions beside it.

Ambiguous figure - One image that supports two or more coherent perceptual interpretations.

Bistable perception - Perception that alternates between two relatively stable interpretations while the stimulus remains unchanged.

Evidence and Further Reading

[1] Rubin, E. (1915). Synsoplevede Figurer: Studier i psykologisk Analyse. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

[2] Ouhnana, M., Bell, J., Solomon, J. A., & Kingdom, F. A. A. (2020). Spatial heterogeneity in bistable figure-ground perception. i-Perception, 11(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669520961120

[3] Andrews, T. J., Schluppeck, D., Homfray, D., Matthews, P., & Blakemore, C. (2002). Activity in the fusiform gyrus predicts conscious perception of Rubin’s vase-face illusion. NeuroImage, 17(2), 890–901. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2002.1243

[4] Wang, X., et al. (2017). Category selectivity of human visual cortex in perception of Rubin face-vase illusion. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1543. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01543

Educational note:

This article explains a perceptual demonstration for general education. It is not a diagnostic test of eyesight, neurological function, or personality.