6. Facial recognition, depth, movement, fine vs broad.

Part of an essay on Vermeer, brain channels, neural stimulus, visual perception and art appreciation

A 20,000-word essay on the interface between the fields of Vermeer, Art History and cognitive science, neuroscience and neuresthetics

written by Vermeer specialist, art historian Drs. Kees Kaldenbach, Amsterdam.

Chapters:

1) Foreword
2) Introduction and terminology. houding, perception of reality, realism, illusionism and trompe l’oeil
3) Understanding Vermeer’s Perception of Reality; a Discussion of Characteristics
4) Brain and colour
5) Form as registered by the brain
6) Facial recognition, depth, movement, fine vs broad
7) Using this knowledge in studying and appreciating Vermeer
8) Workshop matters, Painters’ Supplies, Palette, The fijnschilder style versus the loose style, fourteen Qualities listed by Philips Angel
9) Naturalness, enticing the viewers
10) Delft artists influencing Vermeer
11) Vermeers Early, Middle, Late period. Camera Obscura
12) Vermeer’s World of Interiors: a Reality or a Construction
13) Landmark Vermeer literature (in print on paper form)
14) Digital Art History Studies and Presentations on Questions - on Perception of Reality in Vermeer Paintings
15) External CD-Rom, DVD, film material on Vermeer
16) Selected Bibliography

Updated June 9, 2016. Updated 15 February 2017.

3.2.3. Facial recognition

The third visual brain multitasking area highlighted by Zeki is facial recognition. This separate area in the brain is geared for recognizing faces and expressions of the face. It responds when meeting new persons and decides within a split-second whether we must either greet or ignore, approach or flee, embrace or fight the person approaching. In the early savannah days of our ancestors, this quality was of life or death importance, when a correct and fast valuation and behavioural decision regarding what kind of person was approaching was potentially lifesaving.

In Vermeer paintings there are faces of women and men - most ar shown in profile, some in three-quarters, and some are full-frontal. Particular faces are even half hidden by caps. All seem to belong to a particular family line, betraying kinship in their facial features and body stance. Sometimes we see a painterly sfumato [a method of hazing or fuzzying outlines, used famously in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa] produced by wet-in-wet oil paint.[1] This sfumato may induce an ambiguous content and a multivalent reading of the faces, arms and hands or other parts of the body. It also forces the human eye to return time and again to that particular border in order to find out what is going on and to gauge whether the object is hovering in and out of focus.
One particular face stands out in the Vermeer crowd: that of the Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis), causing a deeply rooted response in many observers. Here, Vermeer has delivered a world-class masterpiece in painting the singular features of this young girl’s head, slightly turned and tilting upwards, her particular facial expression quizzical and open to many readings all of which work so well, as she seems to affirm and confirm all of these separate readings. Her expression thus succeeds in communicating with each of us on an emotional level.


3.2.4. Depth

Ramachandran adds two other vision systems in the upper region of the brain, which deals with building an active understanding or ‘opinion’ of both 3D depth and movement.[2]

3.2.5 Movement

It is essential for the human brain to correctly gauge movement in space.
Vermeer paintings however are quite the opposite from fleeting movements. They are mostly filled with stillness and moments of introspection.
The activities chosen by Vermeer all require a moment of a few seconds of remaining absolutely still, either in letter reading, weighing with scales, or looking outside. The few exceptions to this rule may are in the Braunschweig / Brunswick painting and the Mauritshuis Girl’s head.


3.2.6. Fine versus Broad.

Richard L. Gregory adds the visual brain perception quality of fine versus broad:
“There are also separate ‘channels’ for the fine detail and broad brush strokes of a scene. Visual scientists speak of ‘spatial frequencies’ by analogy temporal frequencies of sound. When we look at a painting, the texture of the picture (literally the brush strokes) is processed by a different spatial frequency band from the depicted objects; but when the texture and objects are similar in scale they become (sometimes deliberately) confused.” [3]

Ian Gordon uses slightly different terms. He describes this same effect in terms of high spatial frequency channel [=fine] versus a low spatial frequency channel [=broad].
“The spatial frequency of a black-and-white grating […] is the number of cycles of black and white stripes per degree of visual angle. The reader of this page is currently using a high spatial frequency channel to discriminate the printed letters.” [4]
Seen from a distance or seen towards the side of the centre, these letters will blur into a grey area block. Vermeer actually painted a few of such grey areas in books and wall maps within his paintings.

According to Ellis, colour perception is taking place as a broad-band activity.
“…the artist must learn to allow the ventral stream of neural activation, which tends to look merely for instantiations of categories of utility, to be subordinate to the dorsal stream, which is more sensitive to the details of incoming data.”[5]

Notes

[1] A trick widely available these days in the computer software package Adobe Photoshop.
[2] Ramachandran 1998: 101.
[3] Gregory 1998: 71.
[4] Gordon in Woodfield 1996: 68.
[5] Ellis 1999: 169.

1) Foreword
2) Introduction and terminology. houding, perception of reality, realism, illusionism and trompe l’oeil
3) Understanding Vermeer’s Perception of Reality; a Discussion of Characteristics
4) Brain and colour
5) Form as registered by the brain
6) Facial recognition, depth, movement, fine vs broad
7) Using this knowledge in studying and appreciating Vermeer
8) Workshop matters, Painters’ Supplies, Palette, The fijnschilder style versus the loose style, fourteen Qualities listed by Philips Angel
9) Naturalness, enticing the viewers
10) Delft artists influencing Vermeer
11) Vermeers Early, Middle, Late period. Camera Obscura
12) Vermeer’s World of Interiors: a Reality or a Construction
13) Landmark Vermeer literature (in print on paper form)
14) Digital Art History Studies and Presentations on Questions - on Perception of Reality in Vermeer Paintings
15) External CD-Rom, DVD, film material on Vermeer
16) Selected Bibliography

Contact information for Private Art Tours:

Menu of tours. See client testimonials.

Drs. Kees Kaldenbach , kalden@xs4all.nl

Haarlemmermeerstraat 83 hs

1058 JS Amsterdam

The Netherlands

telephone 020 - 669 8119

(from abroad NL +20 - 669 8119)

cell phone 06 - 2868 9775

(from abroad NL +6 - 2868 9775

Please note: All materials presented on this 2000+ item web site are original and therefore copyrighted. If passages are quoted (in essays, dissertations, books or other works, written or otherwise) then references must be made in the proper way. That is, the quoted passages must be attributed to the author, and the source of the material (i.e. this website) must be cited.

Written 2002-2003. Published online, July 17, 2011. Updated July 17, 2011.

"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom