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What Is Genius?

Mar 17, 2015
by Caroline Miller
artistic genius and vision, Avinoam Safran, Bevil Conway, Degas, El Greco, Francis Bacon, Margaret Livingstone, Rembrandt, Stephen Mackink, Susana Martinez-Conde
2 Comments

Somewhere in my 50’s I decided to take up painting.  One of my first classes was level 1 drawing. Students were given a Rembrandt etching and asked to copy it.  The purpose of the exercise was to see how observant we were. Finishing the task early, I waited with a certain degree of smugness for the teacher to assess my work. To my surprise, instead of being complimented, he said  I’d failed the assignment.  Rembrandt had drawn the central figure’s head overly large, but I had corrected the distortion and returned the head its proper proportion.  In doing so, I had imposed my view of reality upon the master’s.  Puzzled, I asked the teacher why Rembrandt had committed the distortion.  He answered with a shrug.  “I can’t explain genius.”

Happily, science has given artistic genius attention of late and the results are surprising.  An intense study of Degas’s work shows that his style altered with his failing eyesight.  Unable to focus as his eyes grew older, researchers speculate  he was unable to delineate fine lines and so his later works “looked smoother and more natural to the painter (filtered through his own visual pathology) than to viewers with healthy eyes. (“Warped Perceptions,” by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Mackink, Scientific American Mind, March/April 2015, pg 24). 

 Studies of Rembrandt’s work, particularly his self-portraits, suggest he was wall-eyed. (Ibid pg. 25)  If so, Margaret S. Livingstone and Bevil R. Conway of Harvard Medical School conclude the artist lacked normal stereovision, an impairment which would affect the way he perceived images.  Likewise, asymmetry in the work of 20th Century British painter, Francis Bacon, suggests the “painter suffered from a rare neurological disorder called dysmorphopsia, which produces progressively changing and distorted perceptions.”  So writes Avinoam  Safran, of the University of Geneva (Ibid pg. 23.)

 For decades, critics suspected El Greco suffered from astigmata which would explain the artist’s elongated  figures.  Recent studies of his drawings, made in preparations for his larger works, suggests the contrary.  His preparatory studies show figures drawn with a detailed attention to accuracy and proportion.  The elongated distortions only appear in his finished pieces.   Apparently, El Greco’s figures were drawn out if proportion by design rather than as the result of faulty vision. (Ibid, pg. 24.)

 Science has given us new facts about the artists we revere.  But what makes them geniuses is still unclear?  Is it a quirk of biology or artistic intention?  Like my former teacher, I shrug.  Even great science fails to explain great art.     

El Greco

Courtesy of www.wikipainting.org

 

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2 Comments
  1. Pamela May 22, 2015 at 11:25 pm Reply
    What an interesting posting about art, distortion and genius, Caroline.
    • Caroline Miller May 23, 2015 at 7:33 am Reply
      Still puzzling the question. thanks Pamela for dropping by.

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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