Neuroscience Reveals That Viewing Artwork in Museums Engages the Mind Extra Than Reproductions

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.

by way of MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why is Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring Con­sid­ered a Mas­ter­piece?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

A ten Bil­lion Pix­el Scan of Vermeer’s Mas­ter­piece Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring: Discover It On-line

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Actual­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­ready on Your Good­telephone

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring, Utilizing Mate­ri­als Discovered Across the Home

A Guid­ed Tour By way of All of Vermeer’s Well-known Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

Artists Might Have Dif­fer­ent Brains (Extra Gray Mat­ter) Than the Remainder of Us, Accord­ing to a Current Sci­en­tif­ic Research

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.