How does a painting read?

[Mike McCarty]

I've never fully bought into the notion that a painting should be oriented left to right because we read a newspaper in that fashion. It seems to me that in that first split second, or gestalt:

"the study of perception and behavior from the standpoint of an individual's response to configurational wholes with stress on the uniformity of psychological and physiological events and rejection of analysis into discrete events of stimulus, percept, and response,"

our brains are capable of falling into any number of methods of deciphering information. Reading words, whether left to right or up and down, requires a syntax or the result would be chaos. However, when we leave our front door our brain understands that the world will not be ordered in any preconceived fashion. It accepts the dynamic nature of the "picture" and is able to analyze further using a more complicated calculus.

Try reading the following text. It's amazing how little syntax the brain actually needs.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

[Allan Rahbek]

Mike,

I believe that our brain functions in different ways in different situations.

In most situations it serves as a detector of what we find is the most important informations for us. We find what we are looking for.

Some people look at a portrait just to read the mood of the sitter. They look at the eyes, mouth and the areas around there. If that is pleasing everything is OK. That

[John Crowther]

I completely agree with you, Mike. I have a theory about how the mind works -- most of our thinking is done in what I call "thought stacks," that is, an idea or perception springs into our mind with all the elements, or syntax, of the thought piled up in a stack. To communicate with others, or for others to communicate with us, our thoughts are turned into what I call "information streams." Incidentally. the right brain processes in stacks, the left brain processes in streams. Writing, music, and drama all come to us in information streams, but a painting hits us first as a stack, holistically, and only afterward, if it all, do we start to analyze what we're seeing in streams. We artists talk about centers of interest and directing the eye into the painting, but the viewer isn't aware of this process in the same way that someone reads a book, or watches a film, where we haven't had the full experience until we reach the end. Indeed, artists aren't always conscious of how or why they're leading the viewers's eye to the center of interest, although the process of actually doing the painting is one of turning our "stacked" thoughts into the information stream of brush stroke after brush stroke. So no, we don't look at a painting left to right or top to bottom, perceiving it in streams. It's one of the fascinating things about gestalt, the way it works on us without our being aware of it.

John C.

[Kimberly Dow]

I have nothing of importance to add - just wanted to say that I had my 11-year-old read that - no problems. That's pretty nifty.

[Mike McCarty]

Kim,

It is pretty nifty that our brains can do so many complicated things so quickly.

I think the reason we are able to read that paragraph is because our brain is instantly evaluating the next word possibilities based on the "context" of those words it has successfully deciphered. Once it discovers the jest, and probable direction of the sentence, it can go into a mode of "reasonable expectation" as to what the next word should-could-might be. And with the paradigm that it instantly constructs it can just fill in the blanks or ignore the mistakes.

But still it is a sequential process, unlike the gestalt which we experience when we process a painting. The sum of all is presented instantly for the eye to take in. I think the artist can have a lot of control over where the eye begins it's journey, and how the eye proceeds through the experience. But I don't think we approach this kind of visual material from any preprogrammed direction.

[Linda Nelson]

I tihnk tihs is an incrdllbely itrenistng tahred!


I think it is fascinating to read the comments so far. I would like to add that, in portraiture, we have the additional unconscious brain evaluation of the "beauty" or "acceptability" of a face. As humans, we have learned to exam the outer surface as means of analyzing and judging if anothe r is the right one as a mate. For example, we have a tendency, throughout the globe cultures, to prefer faces that are symmetrical. The more symmetrical the more we declare it desirable. I have read that there is indeed a relationship (albeit generalized) to the symmetry of one face and the overall health of an individual. Or at least the minimization of defects (ills).

On our paintings, although these faces are two dimensional pieces, I feel it is embedded in our psyche to analyze faces and features. This is, in fact an interesting methods to make a subject more (or less)attractive while not actually changing any features per se.