We might appreciate living in an period that doesn’t require us to travel internationally to know what a particular murals appears to be like like. On the identical time, we might instinctively underneathstand that regarding a murals in its original type feels different than regarding even probably the most religionful reproduction. That features the ten-billion-pixel scan, previously featured right here on Open Culture, of Johannes Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Earring — which happens to be the exact same painting utilized in a latest scientific examine that investigates precisely why it feels a lot extra interesting to have a look at artwork in a museum quite than on a display or a web page.
The examine was commissioned by the Mauritshuis, which owns Vermeer’s most well-known painting. “Researchers used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to disclose that actual artworkworks, including Woman with a Pearl Earring, elicit a powerful positive response a lot larger than the response to reproductions,” says the museum’s press launch.
“The key behind the attraction of the ‘Woman’ can also be primarily based on a singular neurological phenomenon. In contrast to other paintings, she manages to ‘captivate’ the viewer, in a ‘sustained attentional loop.’ ” This course of most clearly stimulates part of the mind known as the precuneus, which is “concerned in a single’s sense of self, self-reflection and episodic memories.”
Woman with a Pearl Earring wasn’t the one painting used within the examine, however it professionalduced by far the goodest measurready difference within the viewers’ neurological reaction. The others, which included Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait (1669) and Van Honthorst’s Violin Player, lack the distinctively prominent human features that encourage additional looking: “As with most faces, visitors look first on the Woman’s eyes and mouth, however then their attention shifts to the pearl, which then guides the main focus again to the eyes and mouth, then to the pearl, and so forth.” Museumgoers put oning electroencephalogram-reading headunits is probably not fairly what Walter Benjamin had in thoughts when he put his thoughts to defining the “aura” of an original artworkwork — however they’ve, these 90 or so years later, lent some scientific support to the concept.
Related content:
A Guided Tour By way of All of Vermeer’s Well-known Paintings, Narrated by Stephen Fry
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceguide.
