Rembrandt's Textural Agency: A Shared Perspective in Visual Art and Science

Abstract

This interdisciplinary paper hypothesizes that Rembrandt developed new painterly techniquesnovel to the early modern period -in order to engage and direct the gaze of the observer. Though these methods were not based on scientific evidence at the time, we show that they nonetheless are consistent with a contemporary understanding of human vision. Here we propose that artists in the late 'early modern' period developed the technique of textural agencyinvolving selective variation in image detail -to guide the observer's eye and thereby influence the viewing experience. The paper begins by establishing the well-known use of textural agency among modern portrait artists, before considering the possibility that Rembrandt developed these techniques in his late portraits in reaction to his Italian contemporaries. A final section brings the argument full circle, with the presentation of laboratory evidence that Rembrandt's techniques indeed guide the modern viewer's eye in the way we propose.

Using blur to affect perceived distance and size

“…By doing so, the blur and disparity at the viewer’s eyes are matched, yielding the desired impression of three-dimensional structure. The blur rendering can guide the viewer’s eye to the intended object [Kosara et al 2001; DiPaola et al 2009]. This would be common for entertainment-based content.…”

“…For example, photographers and cinematographers direct viewer gaze toward a particular object by rendering that object sharp and the rest of the scene blurred [Kingslake 1992; Fielding 1985]. Eye fixations and attention are in fact drawn to regions with greater contrast and detail [Kosara et al 2002; Cole et al 2006; DiPaola et al 2009]. These applications of blur may help guide users toward certain parts of an image, but our analysis suggests that the blur manipulations could also have the undesired consequence of altering perceived scale.…”

Saliency-Based Artistic Abstraction With Deep Learning and Regression Trees

“…An eye-tracking study by DiPaola et al 17 provides support for this, as they found that the gaze of participants was drawn to areas of finer textural detail in Rembrandt-style portraits, and suggested that ''portrait artists, perhaps even as early as Rembrandt, guided the viewer's gaze through their selection of textural detail.'' This variation in the abstraction process is not addressed in our work, but this provides an interesting opportunity for improvement in future works.…”

“…Many cognitive scientists have asserted and given varying degrees of evidence that visual artists exploit the properties of the human cognitive and visual systems. [12][13][14][15][16][17] For all humans, researchers have shown that vision is an active, or a constructive process. 16,18,19 We ''construct'' the internal model based on the representation of these experiences.…”

Warholian Repetition and the Viewer’s Affective Response to Artworks from His Death and Disaster Series

“…This model has been practiced in recent empirical research around the actual experience of artworks in relation to art theory [40,41,42]. With respect to the Death and Disaster Series, definitive determination of whether Warhol achieved neutrality from negative images is perhaps a form of Gedankenexperiment or 'thought experiment'.…”