"Very few artists have painted sunsets before, during and following major volcanic eruptions."
—C. S. Zerefos, V. T. Gerogiannis, D. Balis, S. C. Zerefos, and A. Kazantzidis, Atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions as seen by famous artists and depicted in their paintings, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, v.7, pp.4027-42, 4029 (2007)
My scattered contributions to AB have included more than a few rants about the sciences encroaching on the arts by presuming to explain or account for them in purely scientific terms. Indeed, as recently as yesterday, Natalie Angier published an article about a researcher whose findings suggest that, as Angier puts it, "the artistic impulse is a human birthright, a trait so ancient, universal and persistent that it is almost surely innate." The subtext is that such an impulse will, with sufficient study, be wholly explicable in biological terms. I continue not to buy it, but that’s not what I’m about here.
Instead, I want to highlight another story from today, courtesy of AP. It reports on the study from which I’ve drawn my epigram, a line which, frankly, reads like some of the best of John Ashbery’s disconcerting one-liners (for instance, "We were on the terrace drinking gin and tonics / When the squall hit."). Here, science uses works of art as artifacts for the study of climate change, notably by examining the red-green chromatic ratios in paintings of sunsets by artists working around the times and places where volcanic eruptions occurred. Glancing at the appendices to the study, one would think one were reading a journal of art history. There appear works by famous and lesser known artists—Turner, Rubens, Le Lorrain, Degas, among many others in a vast enumeration—paintings whose R/G ratios "provide proxy information on the aerosol optical depth following major volcanic eruptions," allowing the researchers to develop ways to begin to discern "environmental information content in art paintings."
This is a fascinating undertaking, an interdisciplinary hybrid, remarkable at least because the two disciplines are so starkly grafted onto each other, the science picking up precisely where the art flags. Yet despite their clearheaded grasp of the utility as mere vessels of data of these paintings, the researchers can’t refrain from dabbling in the arena of aesthetics. They close with a quote by Turner, which they naively co-opt for their own purposes: “I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like.” I think I know what Zerefos and the other researchers intend by including this remark. However, although I know almost nothing about Turner, I highly doubt he intended so simple a reading. Certainly, his cryptic line doesn’t wholly support one.
Accidental Blogger 
9 responses to “Painting by the Numbers (Dean)”
Dean, what meaning did you ascribe to Zerefos et al including the Turner quote?
I was curious enough to google for its original context. It appears that Turner meant quite literally what he said in that statement.
Wouldn’t the same apply to the sunset pictures- meaning that he painted as he perceived it, rather than trying to manipulate the viewer into seeing something that he didn’t really see.
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Sujatha, Thank you for taking the step I rather deliberately avoided, one reason being that Zerefos et al. impose their own context without bothering to unveil Turner’s. They are obviously intending to draw from a simplistic notion of verisimilitude to establish the scientific value of such paintings. Turner, they seem to suggest, was interested in attaining a purely objectively accurate record of the storm depicted in the painting that is the subject of the anecdote.
But I think the situation is far more complex, and Turner’s quip and its context reveal this. He denies a desire to be “understood,” yet he goes on to describe carefully what he endured to record the storm. His experience far exceeded the merely visual. This was far from a controlled experiment. He chastises the mother who responded so favorably and empathetically to the painting for, well, failing to understand the painter’s circumstance. It seems to me that if he “wished to show what such a scene was like,” he meant to do so from a very particular point of view, namely, that not of a painter or artist, as the anecdote notes, but of an “author.” Zerefos’ naive reliance on a presumed desire by Turner to achieve visual verisimilitude is forcefully challenged by this account.
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I think the chastising of Kingsley’s mother as having ‘no business to like it’ is more of a curmudgeonly discarding of her claim to empathy with his mental processes in portraying it. He painted because he wanted to express himself and his vision and condense the vividness of his experience lashed to the mast as an original ‘author’ of the situation, rather than as a mere visual representation, viewers’ and critics’ opinions be damned. Visual verisimilitude is not striven for, yet it is achieved by the painting.
There may be caveats, of course, as is sounded by these lines in the NYT article:
And James Hamilton, the curator at the University of Birmingham, who has written books on Turner, said that while Turner claimed to paint what he saw, it’s dangerous to put too much weight on an artist’s interpretation.
”They (artists) are not making absolutely clear and accurate records of what they can see,” he said. ”It’s very hard to tell when artists are being absolutely accurate and when they’re using vivid sky as a platform to more vivid painting.”
From Turner’s own account, it must be said that for someone who could have just invented his own perception of the snowstorm , he went to extraordinary lengths to experience one and put his impressions of it down on canvas.
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I didn’t read Zerefos’ paper in Atmospheric Chemistry but I did look at the linked article in the NYT. I don’t know exactly how much art works tell us about climate conditions but I wouldn’t dissmiss the possibility either. One can find all sorts of patterns to back up a pet theory. Artisitic verisimilitude is probably more relevant to patterns in cultural practices (dress, ideals of beauty, religious rites etc.) but I don’t doubt that artists also depict nature as they see it. However art is as often about flourish as about accuracy.
Dean, would you agree that Turner was a bit of a pissant himself? In his obsession he may have unknowingly jumped the boundary between the more permissive artistic representation and scientific exactitude. His extraordinary attempt at depicting a snowstorm at sea by putting himself through a harrowing experience and then refusing to allow anyone else to “empathize” with his ordeal smacks of unnecessary purity. Art after all is not science and Turner was not a meteorologist. Why did he go to such silly lengths to capture a snow storm when “Soapsuds and Whitewash” would have been perfectly acceptable?
But all this is not to say that artists don’t “internalize” colors in very personal and intense ways. Remember synesthesia. And there may be actual physical causes behind what they see. The r/g ratio of volcanic sunsets could indeed have made the post Krakatoa artists see red. But what I don’t understand is how that serves as a future climatic model. Aren’t volcanic eruptions sporadic? (Perhaps I should read the paper). I had also read somewhere that Van Gogh was treated with arsenic for insanity in the latter days of his life. Arsenic affects the optic nerve which makes one see “yellow.” His later paintings (landscapes included) supposedly have more yellow than his earlier works.
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On the basis of the slim evidence of the anecdote to which we’ve been referring, I’d say yes, Turner was irritatingly obsessive. (Obsession per se isn’t a bad thing, but varieties of it are obnoxious. Uhm, Mailer?)
So does arsenic reduce the amount of yellow one sees? That would explain the increase in yellow in Van Gogh’s later paintings, right? Why would somebody who sees more yellow as a result of an artificial stimulus then need to use more yellow pigment to create the effect?
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No, he saw yellow where there was none. He painted what he saw.
I know how you feel about scientists officiating over art. How about them becoming fashion consultants?
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That story about “global warming ready” clothing is more a product of pseudo-journalism and marketing than imperial science.
But I’m still not satisfied with the Van Gogh anecdote: If his vision was tainted with more yellow than was really there, then why would he have to use more yellow paint to create the effect? Wouldn’t his tainted vision effect how he saw his own paintings? Therefore, he would paint exactly as he always had. Put another way, if he saw yellow “where there was none,” then he would have no reason to apply more yellow on his painting “where there was none.”
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His yellows were not becoming more yellow. His non-yellows were becoming yellow.
If he saw yellow where there was white or green, he would paint that yellow. So overall he was using more yellow.
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The cause of Van Gogh’s “yellow vision” was ascribed to digitalis and not arsenic as I remembered.
It is a nice coincidence that days after our discussion here, the NYT has this article out today.
But the ophthalmologist, Michael F. Marmor of Stanford who has done the study on how various physical ailments may have affected artistic output doesn’t concur on Van Gogh’s supposed affliction:
Dr. Marmor rejected speculation that van Gogh’s affinity for yellow in his paintings came from “yellow vision,” caused by taking digitalis to treat supposed epilepsy. “He could not have taken enough of it to have that effect,” Dr. Marmor said. “It’s too toxic. He loved yellow throughout his career.”
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