From "Scientists confirm long held theory about what inspired Monet" (CNN).
I thought it was going to be cataracts, but, no... air pollution.
"In general, air pollution makes objects appear hazier, makes it harder to identify their edges, and gives the scene a whiter tint, because pollution reflects visible light of all wavelengths" [said Anna Lea Albright, a postdoctoral researcher for Le Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique at Sorbonne University]....
The team looked for these two metrics, edge strength and whiteness, in the paintings — by converting them into mathematical representations based on brightness — and then compared the results with independent estimates of historical air pollution.
Don't you love it when something you thought was a human being's inspiration turns out to be an outside force, something that happened to him? It's especially demoralizing when it's some malady or misfortune.
[A]rt critic Sebastian Smee has lambasted the study, saying that it confuses "internal creative choices with external stimuli." He argued that increased pollution can't be used to explain the artists' stylistic evolution, and that some of their works are "mythological," rather than a picture of objective reality....
Speaking of myth... what about the myth of the artist as a creative, individualistic genius?
From Smee's essay, "Art history, not air pollution, explains changes in Monet’s paintings
Art isn’t science. A new study clouds the facts" (WaPo):
Monet was famous for his desire to depict the world as he saw it, but you cannot read even his work as a straightforward index to external conditions such as pollution levels. Paintings are not like tree rings or geological studies. They are complex products of human imagination, feeling and philosophy....
ADDED: Clicking from the sidebar at the Smee piece, I got to another Smee piece, "How good, really, was Pablo Picasso? The exemplary modern artist died 50 years ago this month, and we’re still trying to clean up his mess":[T]his latest study... is grossly (and trendily) tendentious. And it ignores whole bodies of exhaustively researched and powerfully argued literature, presumably because that literature falls under the category of the “humanities” rather than the “sciences,” and because no one these days can be made to believe anything that doesn’t have metrics attached.
And yet … questioning Picasso’s greatness is part of a venerable critical tradition. Despite the underlying consensus, there have been many productively provocative naysayers.... [including Hannah] Gadsby’s brief, comedic takedown of the artist in her Netflix documentary, “Nanette.”
That had a link to Smee's 2018 essay, "How Hannah Gadsby’s evisceration of Picasso helped her change stand-up comedy," which — I was delighted to see — raised the problem discussed above, explaining an artist's work as the product not of individual genius but some mindless malady:
Gadsby recounts how, after giving a performance in which she mentioned that she took antidepressants, a man came up to her, saying: “You shouldn’t take medication because you’re an artist. It’s important that you feel. If Vincent Van Gogh had taken medication, we wouldn’t have had the sunflowers.”
Gadsby absolutely rips into this idea. And I cheered when she did.
She tells us that Van Gogh was, in fact, being treated with medication, and that this medication — a derivative of the foxglove — has a little-known side effect: it can intensify the user’s perception of the color yellow. So it’s possible, says Gadsby, that “we have the sunflowers precisely because Van Gogh medicated.”
Van Gogh is, of course, the patron saint of all those who romanticize a link between mental illness and creativity. Their thinking is not only erroneous (serious mental illness is more often incapacitating and not at all conducive to high level creativity), it’s pernicious, because it discourages desperate people from seeking relief. Gadsby’s retort is a great way to puncture the myth.
Myth. There's that word again. A myth is what other people believe, according to the human inclination to believe what you want to believe, when you are a person who doesn't want to believe.
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I dunno. My impression is that the abstract is a bit surreal. Sure, it's a more contemporary take, but sounds like so much pop art.
If it were pollution, it would be everybody's paintings. Not just Monet and his students. Was it everybody's paintings?
Reminds me of the theory that the sky in Munch's The Scream was because of Krakatoa.
I think you need to apply your "bulls**t" tag to this one.
Had ten years to save the planet?
I guess there was no air pollution in the Netherlands.
Although Van Gogh might argue to the contrary--but as you note, it was probably the drugs. Sure.
I often read your comments as pure sarcasm. But you often condemn sarcasm. So I am not sure whether you even stop to consider whether this sort of "scientific" foolishness is just pure bullshit dressed up as academic inquiry.
I do see the "bad science" tag. You should have an "academic bullshit" tag.
"Well, my head’s full of questions
My temp’rature’s risin’ fast
Well, I’m lookin’ for some answers
But I don’t know who to ask"
Not really in my wheelhouse, but some suggestions:
1. Classic or ancient art: even if most of us only doubtfully belong in the natural world, heroes belong with their beauty and accomplishment; artists are in the service of beauty and nature.
2. Christian art, either non-existent or iconographic, not realistic: this world, roughly "natural," is insignificant in comparison to the world God has promised us.
3. Renaissance: even if most of us only doubtfully belong, the saints belong, somehow transcending or uniting the natural world and God's world. Some of the Greek and Roman heros, including philosophers, are re-discovered or re-interpreted.
4. Modern art: any world we "know" is chaotic or inscrutable; the artist is the true hero for somehow capturing or conveying or imagining our situation.
As crockpot theories go, my personal favorite is that the Little Ice Age spruces grew more slowly, causing the growth rings to pack in more tightly, and thus produced denser wood -- explaining the most preferred sound of the Stradivarius violins made from those spruces.
No proof; other theories abound. And then there was the double-blind test that found experienced violinists rated Stradivarius violins last among those they had been given to try out.
Nope. I don't buy the air pollution or the mental illness theories of impressionism. It arose with photography, as photography marked the decline of the realistic portrait market. Prior artists were valued for replicating and as the best camera humanly possible. After photography hit the scene this was no longer needed and no longer special.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
Also see Tim's Vermeer (2013), where a commercial video professional demonstrated how easy it is to replicate the "old master" Vermeer using a mirror and lens system.
When I first started studying art in middle school, I thought most Impressionist work looked like the way I saw without glasses.
In the documentary "Tim's Vermeer," a fellow named Tim Jenison suggests Vermeer achieved his spectacular effects with the aid of a camera obscura and a mirror. He comes close enough to reproducing one that way that I found it plausible. Every artist interviewed in the movie reacts with some variation of "Oh wow! Of course! How cool!" And every critic with some variation of "Feh! Nonsense! Vermeer was a super genius!"
There was a perception study (I think this is what it was) that came out some years ago - I wish I could remember more about it! What sticks in my mind is that it did the same thing to the concept of free will. It concluded that free will is just an ex-post-facto justification for our actions, and proved it, or "proved" it, by measurements of time and brain activity: there's a stimulus, there's a response, and then there's a conscious decision to take the response.
I can see that explanation, for simple, more or less instant responses. I reject it when there's clearly plenty of time to think and consider and decide. Similarly, I can see the possibility that the impressionists noticed something about their world and then decided to make artistic use of it. But I reject the idea that they couldn't paint in representational, ultra-photo-realistic fashion like their forebears because their world was blurry. Air pollution doesn't make an indoor still life look fuzzy. And Picasso (I know, not an impressionist) had excellent traditional painting chops before he started exploring his perceptions.
I've got no problem with attempts to find scientific explanations that contribute to artistic movements - for instance, I'm sure there was a time when a new pigment was developed and the artists of the day all started painting more blue things, or the like. But I think science is getting out over its skis when it attributes everything to its explanations and nothing to people's decisions.
Isn't all art compelled by influences outside the artist?
I saw the Gadsby special on Netflix. I suppose you can call it stand up comedy, but it was more like a one act play. It was funny and affecting and well worth watching.....Interesting to note how politics intersects with art. Gadsby is a lesbian and has a masculine appearance. She is now to all appearances a more sympathetic figure than Picasso.....The wit of Oscar Wilde was depreciated because he was gay, and his comedies were considered frivolous and superficial because of his gayness. Now his gayness is a feature and not a bug. Picasso was a womanizer. It used to be considered part of his creative force. Now it's a bug and not a feature.....Dali was insufficiently critical of Franco. His art was depreciated because of that. Some people claim that on some levels he was a more imaginative and accomplished artist than Picasso. I don't think he was a womanizer. Maybe now his reputation will start to exceed that of Picasso. Something like that has happened with Keaton versus Chaplin. People now feel more comfortable embracing Keaton rather than the marginally pedo Chaplin.....The reputation of an artist is to some extent dependent on their politics and their sexuality.
What art movement will go extinct if we prevent climate change. Will no one think of the poor starving artists?
Didn't some of these cats spend time in the tropics, painting their little impressionist hearts out? I seem to remember Vincent and Fiji connotations.....and now I'm wondering how much coal Fiji burns to keep that winter chill at bay.
It was cataracts! They interfered with all of the artists perception of form and color!
That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it. Took me all of 60-seconds to develop this theory. Much more efficient than all of those other studies. And just as worthwhile.
"I think you need to apply your "bulls**t" tag to this one."
There is no bullshit tag.
There's "propaganda," "rhetoric" and — something else entirely "civility bullshit" (which is only for bullshitting about civility).
This theory can be proven. NYC pollution is so bad, they have a DA seeing a crime where there is none.
anti-art ideology
almost like we can explain artists through scientific research
I was going to blame AI
but my AI Monet of Jack the Ripper is rocking!
"When I first started studying art in middle school, I thought most Impressionist work looked like the way I saw without glasses."
See Page 6 of my "Amsterdam Notebooks."
"As crockpot theories go..."
Crockpot theories? Is that a thing — slow-cooked and tender?
Or just a typo for "crackpot"?
I recently used a crockpot to remove old paint from window fixtures. I found the crockpot theory on the internet. Worked quite well.
Don't you love it when something you thought was a human being's inspiration turns out to be an outside force, something that happened to him?
Don't you love it when 'experts' just make shit up?
Seriously, if you have a conclusion, no matter how whacky, you can always work backward to find the causes you're wanting to promote...
Morty Seinfeld was on the case long before now.
There is probably no one cause for the rise of Impressionism as a mode of painting. The smog obscuring the landscape seems quite plausible as one cause, as does vision problems experienced by Monet (and others, such as Degas). Also plausible (and probable) is, as mentioned above, the rise of photography as a means of recording the natural world, which freed painters to explore other possibilities than being mere recorders of the world. Once on the path away from being mere copiers of nature, painters swiftly pursued a myriad of pictorial experiments, leading to the many modes of artistic expression we see today.
"And every critic with some variation of "Feh! Nonsense! Vermeer was a super genius!""
Really? There's been lots of serious debate about Vermeer's use of the camera obscura for decades. I remember reading about it in the NYRB in the 1980s.
Here's a book from 2001 about the debate.
Those must be some ignorant critics, but you say "every critic." I find that really hard to believe.
I don’t see how air pollution explains Van Gogh’s art or Monet’s seascapes.
Kai Akker said...And then there was the double-blind test that found experienced violinists rated Stradivarius violins last among those they had been given to try out.
Funny how often that happens (another example--wine tasters in blind tests preferring the cheap wine). Years ago, an old girlfriend and I brought an expensive bottle of maple syrup to a diner and did our own blind test with the little plastic containers they provided for our pancakes. We couldn't tell the difference.
People are so primed to choose what they expect to choose that they vastly over-estimate their discrimination.
The invention of photography meant that exact imitation of nature wasn't a goal for some painters. Hence, impressionism. Artists gave their attention not to clarity, but to what reduced it. If it wasn't smog, it was fog, glare, heat haze or bad eyesight.
But kudos to Sebastian Smee's parents. Who doesn't love a Dickensian or Seussian moniker?
How about blaming the headline writer. Scientist isn't saying anything about inspiration.
It seems obvious increased pollution would have some effect on landscape painting. How to prove the obvious. Take some paintings, assign numerical value to similar scenes, compare dates of paintings, compare dates to supposed pollution levels, derive correlation. Lots of variables involved especially as regards an Impressionist.
A hypothesis confirmed by a model.
almost like we can explain artists through scientific research
The colorful carbon clump theory of humanity is tres chic.
I'm no great fan of Picasso, but I don't see how anyone could seriously say that Dali was more creative. If the Robert Pattinson film about Dali was trustworthy, though, Dali may be ready for a comeback as an LGBTQ artist.
Any art is better than no art at all.
Vermeer and the camera obscura reminded me of the neolithic cave art of France and Spain. What compelled some one to bring a smokey, flickering torch deep inside a cave and create beautiful representations of nature. Then leave a hand print as if to say," I did this. I was here." In reality Vermeer left us something beautiful. No matter how he accomplished it. Just enjoy it.
And every critic with some variation of "Feh! Nonsense! Vermeer was a super genius!"
Does that include the art critics who thought Han van Meegeren's forgeries had to be genuine Vermeers?
Monet always claimed to be a painter of the 'momentary effects of light', i.e., he was not depicting objects, he was depicting the light reflected from objects under various conditions (time of day, etc.).
How was he supposed accomplish that and not come out looking like a Hudson School painter if he didn't embellish his art with 'haziness, whiter tint' etc.?
In other words, Monet described explicitly what he was trying to achieve, so why all the theories for external agents as the cause of this art? It was intentional.
Good Lord, man. The difference between sugary restaurant faux maple and the real deal is distinctive. Egregious conflation!
Good point, Robert Cook. We are all helpless before the crowd to some degree.
I recently visited the Musee D'Orsay. You know, it's an old train station, and has a huge clock on the front of the building facing the Seine.
The most popular exhibit at the Musee was the reverse side of the glass window clock. People were lined up to have a picture taken against the reverse side of the clock.
After photography, painters were free to present, not re-present.
Wish I'd thought of that.
We saw an exhibit some years ago that had photography of the same scenes at Étretat that the Impressionists were painting. It was eye-opening. By that time (e.g. the 1880s), Étretat had become a place of mass, middle-class summer beach tourism with crowds arriving from Paris by train. But the Impressionists carefully left that out of their paintings -- instead they showed empty headlands and beaches or maybe they included a few rustic traditional fishing boats. It's pretty much what beach resort landscape painters do now, isn't it? Anyway, pollution as the key ingredient -- and on the sea coast of Normandy in the 1880s? Not buying it.
I should have said, "The three or four art critics interviewed in the movie." The lack of clarity is on me. One of them was Robert Hughes. Delighted artists included David Hockney.
I look out the window, but I can't see the sky
'Cause the air pollution is a-fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an ape man
Don't you love it when something you thought was a human being's inspiration turns out to be an outside force, something that happened to him?
Actually, a lot of artists believe this, too.
Inspiration might come from God.
In fact we have a word for that.
Epiphany!
So...
An architect who designed a building
which was under construction by a company
whose employee fell from a great height
in front of Einstein on a train
is the principal reason we have Relativity?
Or does the credit go to a sunny day?
Re: Jamie:
And Picasso (I know, not an impressionist) had excellent traditional painting chops before he started exploring his perceptions.
I disagree. He had competent traditional painting technique. "Excellent" would be someone like Bouguereau. Or, in a slightly less academic vein, Sargent or Whistler. All from an earlier generation, yes, but all great artists (though I know lots of people would disagree about Bouguereau, haha).
But competent painters were not unusual in those days (and indeed, are if anything even more common today, although they're not what the high-end art market wants). No one today would know Picasso's name if he hadn't switched over to the flat, distorted, almost cartoony style of his more famous work. His early paintings aren't bad -- they're actually quite nice in some cases, and more to my personal taste than his mature work (which I find stiff, affected, and visually uninteresting). But they'd be sitting in a museum storage room somewhere, waiting for an exhibition on minor artists from the turn of the century, along with the works of other competent and talented young academic artists of the late 19th and early 20th century.
"Scientists confirm long held theory about what inspired Monet"
But in going on about the effects of air pollution on Monet's work, are those 'scientists' talking about 'inspiration' or 'perception' or perhaps some form of 'causation'? Granted, the article's author may not have chosen the headline but the point remains. What 'inspires' another seems a particularly ill-suited subject for scientific investigation of any kind. Even stranger is the notion that those 'scientists' 'confirmed' anything. As AA has often noted, there's no way 'scientists' or anyone else can determine what 'inspired' another person even when the players are contemporaries -- absent a statement from the artist on the subject, that would require an exercise in mind-reading which is guess-work in the ordinary case and ridiculous here given the distance of over 100 years since the relevant paintings were created.
Perhaps Monet's perception was impacted by the haziness that air pollution can cause. But perhaps not -- it's a function in part of how close the person is to the scene or object perceived. His paintings often include objects or scenes at greatly varying distances from the perspective of a viewer. No reason to believe that Monet hadn't seen those objects/scenes up close as well as at a distance. And talking about the 'causation' of human choices and actions is a fool's errand. Even those who reject any explanation that is not materialistic and (theoretically) completed determined by physical laws will know that no such explanatory mechanisms have been posited (let alone demonstrated) for human mental activity.
Now do an analysis of Monet's many paintings of a farmer's thatched-roof shack, which I call his "Bran Muffin period".
He must have been hungry.
" ... by converting them into mathematical representations based on brightness — and then compared the results with independent estimates of historical air pollution."
Correlation does not imply causation.
Here's what confounds me about these explanations. If, say, El Greco's paintings are the involuntary result of his astigmatism, wouldn't he have seen the difference between the subject of the painting and the painting? If he were to repaint his painting, wouldn't it have become ever more involuntarily divorced from realism?
Weren't there ever windy clear days at Monet's gardens? Why wouldn't he have titled his paintings "Blurry, Polluted Day at Avergnon"
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