Perspectives on science and art

Abstract

Artists try to understand how we see, sometimes explicitly exploring rules of perspective or color, visual illusions, or iconography, and conversely, scientists who study vision sometimes address the perceptual questions and discoveries raised by the works of art, as we do here.

Figure 1

The Annunciation (1311) by Duccio in daylight (top) and candlelight (middle). Bottom shows fixation regions in daylight (green) and candlelight (red). From reference [4].

Figure 2

Portrait of a Woman (1895) by Raja Ravi Varma. Bottom panels quantify the eye-centering (top) and bi-modal head distribution (bottom) in 600 years of portraits. Bottom panels from references [5•,7].

Figure 3

Several portraits by Picasso (right), and photographs of each subject (left): From top: Jacqueline Picasso (1957), Jacqueline Picasso (1955), Marie-Thérèse Walter (1936), Françiose Gilot (1946), Emilie Marguerite Walter (1939), Ambroise Vollard (1910), and Wilhlm Uhde (1910).

Figure 4

Still Life with Commode (1887–1888) by Paul Cezanne.

Figure 5

Chair Jardin de Luxembourg (1985) by David Hockney.

Figure 6

(Left) Colliding shadows in Lorenzo di Credi’s Annunciation (1480–1485). (Right) Impossible reflection in Vermeer’s Young woman with a water jug (ca. 1662).

Figure 7

Emoticons. Who cannot determine the expressions even though there are no noses, foreheads, and the resolution is low?