The Current Picture

Within the screen, one viewer sees a configuration of the Virgin Mary, another a storm at sea, a third the blossoming of an exotic tropical plant. But the Kalliroscope is more than a Rorschach in flux. It is also a work of art, a study in hydrodynamics, a patented invention, a decoration, a toy--and with sales already exceeding 15,000--one of this year's most successful novelty items.

The Kalliroscope resembles a glass-fronted picture frame and is filled with a nonflammable cleaning fluid called perchloroethylene. A multitude of tiny flat crystals suspended in the liquid reflect light. Thus when the Kalliroscope is held in the palm of a hand, or under a bulb, or near any source of heat or cold, it produces a demonstration of convection currents appropriate for a Physics I classroom: warmer liquid rises while cooler liquid descends, forming currents that rearrange the light-reflecting crystals into ever-moving patterns. A mere change in position sets a small Kalliroscope (3 in. by 5 in., $15) in motion; larger models (5 in. by 7 in., $50) are electrically heated and kept in constant agitation.

The creator of the Kalliroscope, Paul Matisse, 37. has also made outsized versions. About 25 of them, some as big as 2 ft. by 4 ft. and costing as much as $3,500, were sold through Manhattan's Howard Wise Art Gallery--one of them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Still, Matisse--grandson of the French Post-Impressionist--insists that his creation is not strictly art. "What's in a Kalliroscope," he says, "is not man but nature, a reminder that the only inevitability is change."

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