3-24-10 Idea Post

Photography vs Human Vision


I re-read a chapter in Proust was a Neuroscientist (Jonah Lehrer) this weekend while I was waiting for my flat tire to get changed, only this time I took notes.

Chapter 5 on Paul Cezanne: The Process of Sight touches on the development of photography and its effect on the painting world. "How could the human hand compete with the photon?" (pg 99). While the era of painting came to an end with the invention and availability of the photograph, not all artists believed in its ability to depict realism.

It was thought by many (and still is for that matter) that the human eye acts just like the lens of a camera: collecting and processing millions of light particles to be translated into a visual plane for brain comprehension. In fact, the brain and imagination play an unexpected and even more vital role in visual perception. "If the mind did not impose itself on the eye, then our vision would be full of voids. For example, because there are no light sensitive cones where the optic nerve connects to the retina, we each have a literal blind spot in the center of the visual field. But we are blind to our own blind spot: our brain unfailingly registers a seamless world." (pg 117)

With the realization that "the mind makes the world, just as a painter makes a painting," Paul Cezanne invented modernist art and was a major player in post-impressionism (pg 113). "I tried to copy nature," Cezanne confessed, "but I couldn't. I searched, turned, looked at it from every direction, but in vain" (pg 104).

Cezanne sought to paint the world as our eyes interpret it, one carefully contemplated brush stroke at a time. He abandoned pointillism and began painting entire images in patches and strokes he called les taches and les touches. His paintings also began to incorporate large blank areas of canvas he called nonfinito. Many viewed his paintings as incomplete without realizing that he had dissected our vision well before his time. He left it up to the viewer's eyes and mind to complete his paintings.

"The mind is not a camera. As Cezanne understood, seeing is imagining." (pg 118)
Mon Sainte-Victoire seen from Lauves, 1904-1905

"Modern neuroscientific studies of the visual cortex have confirmed the intuitions of Cezanne... visual experience transcends visual sensations. Cezanne's mountain arose from the empty canvas because the brain, in a brazen attempt to make sense of the painting, filled in its details." (pg 117).

Foliage, 1895-1900

I strongly recommend this book to EVERYONE. Not only does it have this great chapter on Paul Cezanne, it also has chapters on Marcel Proust's The Method of Memory, Walt Whitman's The Substance of Feeling, Auguste Escoffier The Essence of Taste, Igor Stravinsky The Source of Music and more. You will appreciate the world in an entirely different way, I promise!