Reading a painting and movement from left to right

[Timothy C. Tyler]

How do you feel about light moving across a painting. Does it flow most normally or naturally left to right. It has been presumed this happens to "Westerners" due to our manner of reading the written word in this fashion.

I think it does and I think I'm not alone. I'd like to see some examples especially famous ones of both versions. Here's a point I believe it so strongly that I place "stoppers" to slow the locomotion of the eye across a painting. Others do it and have done for centuries. There are hundreds of stoppers along the right edge of paintings.

Sargent was aware of this in El Jaleo and leaned the figure in the opposite direction to counter the effect. In "Boit Daughters.." he put the famous red screen as a stopper.

[Karin Wells]

I agree with you Tim, I think that paintings are read left to right....and top to bottom....just like a book.

I tend to put "stoppers" not only on the right hand sides, but on the top edges of my paintings.

[Chris Saper]

I am in complete agreement that Westerners will tend to "read" paintings from left to right; and that a person's first written language dictates their "default" reading direction. The notion of how a painting is "read" is one that I spent many hours researching when putting together text for "Painting Beautiful Skin Tones". (Includes interviews with a developmental pediatrician, a neuro-psychiatrist, two opthalmic surgeons and a speech therapist,as well as a lot of literature review.) Although there is a variety of opinion, there is some support in the literature for the idea that there is a "direction of language".

This idea of a learned visual direction, is, I think, the same mechanism that causes Americans to look the wrong way and step out into traffic in London. I believe it results in tendencies for the Israeli-born viewer to read from right to left and the Chinese-born viewer to read from top to bottom.

I also think it is very important in setting out the composition of a paintng to recognize this idea. To get the left-to-right reader to comfortably read your work from right to left, you can help immensely by giving them obvious visual clues about the eyepaths that you place in the work. Otherwise the painter can risk presenting the discomfort that comes with straddling a visual fence (like the vase-face thing, or the even-distribution of values/shapes/etc thing). One of the most basic things a painter can do is to place proportionately more negative space between the edge of the canvas and the front of the head than is placed between the edge and the back of the head, as Jim shows in the flipped/cropped version. (I mention this as a convention, although, like any convention, I have seen painters break them very successfully, but I am convinced, not accidentally)

I also think that this is the underlying reason that European painters so often placed subject with light coming from the upper left, rather than the upper right...it just felt more comfortable.

I'm interested in other opinions...?

[Steven Sweeney]

Speaking of the direction of Chinese reading, I was recently on tour at a gallery in Taipei, and when we entered one exhibition room and the group of Westerners started to disperse to view the pieces, the curator brought us back and made sure we viewed the exhibition in counterclockwise fashion, thus ensuring that we approached each piece from its right side and "read" it right to left. (I'm not speculating -- the curator explained what he was up to.) This seemed reasonable, especially owing to the presence in Chinese collections of much ancient calligraphy, written in vertical, right-to-left columns.

Interestingly, it is now perfectly acceptable and, in my limited experience more common than not, for Chinese characters to be written left to right, a modern "Westernization" of the written language that was, some explain, compelled largely by the global language of mathematics, computer language, and modern finance, which generally require a left-to-right reading. I wonder if the change in directional sensibilities will work its way into Chinese art?

I don't know the psychology behind such preferences, don't know why a portrait subject facing my left seems to be engaging me and one facing my right seems simply to be looking at something else (someone more interesting, likely, which makes me want to turn and look, too!) The unprovable theory I have about myself concerns my substantial hearing loss in my left ear, so that if the "reading" of a painting forces me to turn my head to the right, I wind up putting a deaf ear, and perhaps a "deaf eye", to the painting.

I was working on a pastel head study some time ago, the subject facing my right, and the "problem" with that pose was raised. The "stopper" that was suggested and successfully introduced was simply to have the subject keep his head in the same position but turn his eyes to look at me. It's nearly impossible to fall unwittingly out of a painting in which the subject has you in his or her sights.

And though when once living in a Commonwealth country I very quickly adapted to driving on the "wrong" side of the road (and preferred it and had an awful time unlearning it when I returned to the U.S., much to my passengers' consternation), I never did get the hang of looking the "wrong" direction when stepping off a curb. I suppose the "good news" is that if I had stepped out in front of a city bus, I would never even have heard it coming.

Steven

[Tarique Beg]

I think if we grow up reading text and looking at books in two or three languages from our earliest years, we tend to make context switches without even being aware of it.

In India, most of us have to learn two compulsory languages, English and Hindi, plus our regional language. For me it happened to be English, Hindi, and Urdu.

Now, English and Hindi are read from left to right whereas in Urdu we read from right to left. In fact, we even open an Urdu book from what an English reader would consider to be the back cover. So, just as I automatically pick up an English or Hindi book so that the binding is on the left, I can't help picking up an Urdu book so that the binding is on the right (considered to be the back of the book by Westerners). If I were to read to the last page of an English book and close it, the binding is now on the right, whereas when you reach the last page of an Urdu book (Urdu uses the Persian Script) the binding is on the left after you close it. The strange thing is that all this happens automatically without consciously thinking about it.

I suspect, the same thing happens with visuals because just as I can't imagine an English comic book with the story flowing from the right to left, I can't imagine an Urdu comic book with the illustrations flowing left to right. I think our mind senses the surrounding context and then makes a psychological switch so that the visual looks right or wrong according to the context we sense.

Finally, this opens up an interesting question about whether portrait painters should take into account the predominant way the client and the viewers of the client's portrait will tend to interpret visual input. The question is, should the painting be more visually pleasing to the painter (as interpreted from the painter's cultural background), or should the painting be more pleasing to the client and the client's viewers (her/his family and friends from the same cultural/linguistic background).

[Timothy C. Tyler]

Well Tarigue, that is interesting...I don't feel I could produce something pleasing with my strong existing bias, I would wonder if any "western" artist could. The question is like another often asked: who's in charge of the work the client paying for it or the artist making it.

[Michael Fournier]

Well after reading all the posts I have given this a lot of thought. At first I completely agreed with the original post that you should consider that your painting will be read from left to right by Westerners.

But then I read Tarique's post and it made me think about it more. And here is my take on this.
Ask your self this: Have not western raised individuals been able to appreciate the composition and beauty of a painting done by eastern artists and loved it just the same as a western artist's work?

And have not many who grew up in eastern cultures seen western paintings of the great masters and seen the beauty and genius of their work?

Sure I will agree that we defiantly are products of our culture and our tastes and way of viewing the world are tainted by that culture.

But beauty is universal!

In fact a study was done on just that subject and although there were many differences in how we ornament ourselves and as to what cultures considered attractive. It was found that the basic concepts of beauty were very similar. On the whole all cultures found the more symmetrical the features of a face were the more beautiful the person was considered. And although there were very different tastes from one person to another as well as cultural differences in appearance. They found that a person considered attractive was usually found to be attractive across all cultures.

And I feel that same can be said for Art. After all you are not reading a painting you look at it.

So one person's gaze may enter from the right the other from the left so what?? Let's decorate a room with two doors one front left the other front right. Would you not decorate it to be equally as attractive no matter which door you entered from?

And once in that room no matter how you entered you would move to the center and if it was not interesting you would continue out the other door.
The same for a painting it is what is at the center that matters (not actual center but center of attention) If it is well composed and captures the attention as you want it does not matter which door you enter.

You will stop in the same spot. If not then the painting fails no matter which door you enter you will just leave out the other side.

Just my take on it.

[Steven Sweeney]

There are stacks of "Harry Potter" books in the store down the street, with the spines on the wrong side, the covers upside down, and the text written backwards and sideways. Breaking all the rules, it's a publisher's nightmare, a mess . . .

. . . unless you read Chinese. And even if you don't, the arrangement is mesmerizing, provocative, if you've never before thought about "seeing" that way. Even if you don't read Chinese, it's tempting to purchase the book.

Like many of the practices and admonishments that make it into the lore, their mere repetition may have given them an unearned credibility. As I browse through some of the portrait galleries on this site, I see lots of poses that follow the "rule", the subjects facing our left so that we can "read" the portrait. And yet I see far more than a few in which the artists apparently didn't know the rule -- portraits of Rosalynn Carter, Gerald Ford, George Bush, of academic and religious and other notables, focusing their gazes on something off to the right side of the setting. Not one of them looks "wrong" for having tweaked the rule.

Perhaps what we should really be trying to decide here is whether red wine or white wine is required with a red-meated fish, if you don't happen to care for wine, or whether a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, if hunting birds isn't why you're here.

[Steven Sweeney]

I note in passing that excellent demonstration portrait video tapes by Daniel Greene, Burton Silverman, Peggy Baumgaertner and others pose the subjects generally facing to the right.

[Tarique Beg]

Tim

I guess it could be argued, that if a client looks at your work and consciously chooses you to paint her picture, then it should be obvious to her that she is choosing your perception of her, with your sense of aesthetics, influenced by your background, to project her personality. So, I think you have every right to portray a such a client in your way. Furthermore, if you are painting in the Classical Western Realistic style, then the rules of that style should obviously apply.

Nevertheless, I've seen paintings by Western artists who after having immersed themselves for some time in a different culture produced works that captured the atmosphere and essence of that culture, in a way that is very convincing even to the people of that culture. I'm referring, in particular, to the many British artists who painted Indian subject matter in the days of British rule. My feeling, as someone who has come to the West from a hybrid culture, is that our biases are really not as strong as we imagine. I feel that after a while of being immersed in a different culture, we gradually begin to see things through the spectacles of that culture.

It's something like the drawing of a vase that can also be interpreted as the profile of two people arguing. After staring long enough, you suddenly begin to see the other picture.