Neuroscience Shows That Viewing Art in Museums Engages the Brain More Than Reproductions

We may appre­ci­ate liv­ing in an era that does­n’t require us to trav­el across the world to know what a par­tic­u­lar work of art looks like. At the same time, we may instinc­tive­ly under­stand that regard­ing a work of art in its orig­i­nal form feels dif­fer­ent than regard­ing even the most faith­ful repro­duc­tion. That includes the ten-bil­lion-pix­el scan, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, of Johannes Ver­meer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring — which hap­pens to be the very same paint­ing used in a recent sci­en­tif­ic study that inves­ti­gates exact­ly why it feels so much more inter­est­ing to look at art in a muse­um rather than on a screen or a page.

The study was com­mis­sioned by the Mau­rit­shuis, which owns Ver­meer’s most famous paint­ing. “Researchers used elec­troen­cephalo­grams (EEGs) to reveal that real art­works, includ­ing Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, elic­it a pow­er­ful pos­i­tive response much greater than the response to repro­duc­tions,” says the muse­um’s press release.

“The secret behind the attrac­tion of the ‘Girl’ is also based on a unique neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Unlike oth­er paint­ings, she man­ages to ‘cap­ti­vate’ the view­er, in a ‘sus­tained atten­tion­al loop.’ ” This process most clear­ly stim­u­lates a part of the brain called the pre­cuneus, which is “involved in one’s sense of self, self-reflec­tion and episod­ic mem­o­ries.”

Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring was­n’t the only paint­ing used in the study, but it pro­duced by far the great­est mea­sur­able dif­fer­ence in 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 at the Girl’s eyes and mouth, but then their atten­tion shifts to the pearl, which then guides the focus back to the eyes and mouth, then to the pearl, and so on.” Muse­um­go­ers wear­ing elec­troen­cephalo­gram-read­ing head­sets may not be quite what Wal­ter Ben­jamin had in mind when he put his mind to defin­ing the “aura” of an orig­i­nal art­work — but they have, these 90 or so years lat­er, lent some sci­en­tif­ic sup­port to the idea.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

A 10 Bil­lion Pix­el Scan of Vermeer’s Mas­ter­piece Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring: Explore It Online

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

A Guid­ed Tour Through All of Vermeer’s Famous Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

Artists May Have Dif­fer­ent Brains (More Grey Mat­ter) Than the Rest of Us, Accord­ing to a Recent Sci­en­tif­ic Study

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.