Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Archive

 

Volume 15 Number 2, August 2014

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Mather, George. The Psychology of Visual Art: Eye, Brain and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Paperback: 211 pages; ISBN-10: 0521184797: ISBN-13: 978-0521799430, Price: US$ 34.99; £21.99

 

Reviewed by

 

Amy Ione

The Diatrope Institute

 

 

The Psychology of Visual Art: Eye, Brain and Art by George Mather of the University of Lincoln is the latest offering by a vision scientist to explore the scientific bases of visual art. As I read the book, I was reminded of how often I have heard art historians say that one cannot fully appreciate visual art without some knowledge of its narrative, iconography, and other cherished qualitative tenets of the art historical canon. Mather demonstrates that one could similarly argue that a full appreciation of visual art requires a detailed consideration of the visual system’s structure. He shows that increasing our scientific understanding of how we “see” similarly elevates our engagement with art and can also foster a deeper appreciation of what the artist conceived.  In his words:

 

 [T]he insights gained from science in no way diminish the contributions of scholars in other disciplines including art history, art theory and philosophy. But science should occupy a legitimate place in the spectrum of disciplines that can be applied fruitfully to deepen our understanding of art. (p. 177)

 

This call for a broader perspective on our experience of visual art translates into a detailed examination of intersections between vision science and visual art. The book opens with a chapter on art through history that allows him to set the stage nicely for how he will approach visual art. He notes that science is not the right vehicle for all aspects of art and frames a position that allows him to advocate for science as one of the many perspectives we can bring to our engagement with art, without denying the validity of the others. Since there is little science in this chapter, I think it is intended to make general readers “feel” comfortable and to see how the science he presents fits within the historical, cultural, and social approaches to art.

 

Chapter 2, “Art and the Eye,” begins to integrate scientific research. Topics include the nature of light as it relates to our visual experience, the structure of the eye, contrast coding, and examples of how optical defects affect art (the cataracts of Cassatt and Monet, the retinal degeneration of Degas and O’Keefe, etc.). A particularly good section is his description of illumination and the task of the eye and brain to tell us about the objects we see in the visual field in terms of their shapes, surface properties, and position in a scene. He points out that when an artist pays particular attention to edges a painting can work better, particularly since variations in illumination are more informative than absolute illumination.

 

Chapter 3, “Art and the Brain,” looks at the structure of the brain and how visual art is shaped by the modular architecture of visual processing in the brain. One key point here was that art is a whole-brain activity. He also notes that it is researchers infer the relationship between brain structures and their function from studying the behavioral consequences of damage, As a result, there are many clinical case studies that speak to art. His examples included the impact of stroke (e.g., Anton Raderscheidt’s self-portraits show unilateral neglect and the progression of Alzheimer’s (William Utermohlen), etc.  This chapter also mentions various topics that have nothing to do with brain structures per se such specific sensory qualities of genres (motion, scale, etc.) and explains that these areas are more fully developed in later chapters.

 

Chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with how we perceive scenes and pictures.  First, Mather summarizes how the cerebral cortex breaks the visual scene down into basic sensory attributes such as form and color and then constructs representations of individual shapes and objects.  His key point here is that as far as we know there is no single area of the brain that puts all of the information back together to build a single internal representation of an entire visual scene.  Topics like perspective and change blindness are used to talk about the strategies artists adopt to balance our perceptual judgment of properties like size, shape, and color with a sense of what we know about object properties.  Next he deals with the paradoxical nature of pictures, or how an actual scene might differ from the approximation we might encounter on a flat surface.  Topics discussed ranged from visual cues, cultural transmission, and the development of pictorial competence to the difference between perceiving pictures and reading words, pictorial inconsistences, and reflections.  Overall these chapters did a particularly good job in discussing how viewers are tolerant of distortions and inconsistencies.  I also thought he did a good job of explaining that there is little evidence to support the view that pictorial competence is a culturally transmitted skill similar to the ability to read.

 

Chapters 6 and 7 cover motion and color. I thought the motion discussion was the strongest part of the book. Here he combined research with examples from art and asserts that both static images and movies are effective because they automatically trigger neural responses that are normally generated by natural moving images. The color chapter seemed a bit paler by contrast. One strong section talks about paint pigments and how the binding agent selected by an artist has a profound effect on a finished artwork. A watercolor, for example, does not generally have the robust lusciousness of an oil painting. Artists, of course, know this intuitively because they work with the materials on a regular basis.

 

The final three chapters of the book discuss aesthetics and evolution. These struck me as more generalized and theoretical, although there is solid science to back the conclusions. Topics here should appeal a great deal to neuroaestheticians. Currently art historians, by contrast, seem more focused on context and narrative than formalism.  Perhaps this explains why at times the chapters seemed to be more about how we see images than visual art.  At other times, they also seemed less about art than other examples in the book. Even still, Mather raised some intriguing questions.  At one point he compares Richard Taylor’s statistical fractal studies of Jackson Pollock’s work with the Op art and conceptual work of artists like  Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt, and Gerhard Richter, asking why would they reproduce the statistics of natural images in their work. His far-reaching discussion brings in historical correlates (e.g., some of Ruskin’s ideas) and concludes that art and architecture may reflect a preference for patterns that was conditioned during our evolution by our exposure to natural images.

 

Since aesthetic theories and evolution link to biological aspects of humans I agree with Mather that they deserve a place at the table. As he points out, aesthetics link psychology and art nicely because there is a melding of objective and subjective elements. As a scientist, it is not surprising that he argues empirical methods allow researchers to make objective measures of aesthetic judgment and to relate these measures to the physical characteristics of visual images. He also looks at evolutionary adaptations and how a reward system steers individual preferences.  One particularly astute section links John Ruskin’s writings to fractal patterns, as noted above. [Ironically, a few pages later, when dealing with evolution, Mather notes that Ruskin was among those who criticized Darwin’s views on aesthetics.]

 

All in all, I think Mather produced an excellent and stimulating survey. I particularly liked the book’s originality.  Many books that combine art and science read as if the authors are using the same boilerplate cases.  Mather’s, by contrast, read more like someone who was thinking about how to make the subject clear. It is essentially works like textbook, with chapter summaries at the end of each section.  Because each chapter contained so much information I found it helpful to start with the summaries before reading the chapters.  He also does a nice job of cross-referencing information from chapter to chapter.  That said, some of the details underscore how challenging it is to write about subjects outside one’s own field. For example, he has a wonderful Brook Taylor (1685-1731) illustration that is labeled as a drawing from Pirenne’s book. (No doubt Pirenne included it too!) Perhaps he could have indicated that Taylor set forth the true principles of the art in an original and more general form than any of his predecessors in his 1715 essay Linear Perspective?

 

The end result was a sense that Mather was not talking down to non-scientists so much as he was intent on communicating the scientific information as a scientist to enlarge the conversation. Although I really needed to stretch at times to grasp concepts, I appreciated the challenge. I also think parts of the book would work more effectively in a classroom where an instructor could have animated some of the dryer material and encouraged discussion (or even demonstrations) on the use of color in painting, the laws of form perspective and pictorial depth optical effects, brightness, contrast, and so on.

 

A few points stood out. First, to his credit, Mather presents the science without compromising art’s unique qualities. Second, his neuroscientific approach to visual art is more comprehensive than Livingstone’s 2002 edition of Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, for example  (I have not read her updated version, which was released a few months ago.) Mather’s particular focus is on the role of the human eye and brain, which together constitute the visual system of the brain. His premise is that the structure and function of the visual system determine the nature of all visual experience and must inevitably make a major impact on visual art and artists. In presenting these ideas he ranges through Western art history, often manipulating pictures to make his points. Although Livingstone similarly includes historical material, her book seemed more focused on luminance and thus more weighted to Impressionism and twentieth century art.

 

Finally, perhaps it is because human beings are very visual that vision has long dominated so much of discussion about art and our sensory systems. While the discussion is changing to some degree, the visionary process nonetheless remains of great interest as we learn more about how the brain creates the mental percepts that we subjectively experience as seeing. Because experimental psychology looks for methods to empirically study the mind and sensations, I have always thought that the field offers an excellent way to meld the subjective quality of art with empirical information.  Therefore, because Mather’s The Psychology of Visual Art effectively merges the art and science sides of our visual experience I recommend the book. It seems particularly relevant for libraries, especially at universities with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs.  Artists and humanists who are seeking to enlarge their understanding of how we see and experience the world will also find this book aids them in deepening their visual experience.