Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine normal vision and eye disease in relation to art. Ophthalmology cannot explain art, but vision is a tool for artists and its normal and abnormal characteristics may influence what an artist can do. The retina codes for contrast, and the impact of this is evident throughout art history from Asian brush painting, to Renaissance chiaroscuro, to Op Art. Art exists, and can portray day or night, only because of the way retina adjusts to light. Color processing is complex, but artists have exploited it to create shimmer (Seurat, Op Art), or to disconnect color from form (fauvists, expressionists, Andy Warhol). It is hazardous to diagnose eye disease from an artist’s work, because artists have license to create as they wish. El Greco was not astigmatic; Monet was not myopic; Turner did not have cataracts. But when eye disease is documented, the effects can be analyzed. Color-blind artists limit their palette to ambers and blues, and avoid greens. Dense brown cataracts destroy color distinctions, and Monet’s late canvases (before surgery) showed strange and intense uses of color. Degas had failing vision for 40 years, and his pastels grew coarser and coarser. He may have continued working because his blurred vision smoothed over the rough work. This paper can barely touch upon the complexity of either vision or art. However, it demonstrates some ways in which understanding vision and eye disease give insight into art, and thereby an appreciation of both art and ophthalmology.
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Acknowledgements
All modern consideration of ophthalmology and art owes a debt to British ophthalmologist Patrick Trevor-Roper whose seminal book1 was originally published in 1970. I am grateful to Richard Keeler for proposing this topic for the Keeler Lecture, and to my colleague and co-author2 James G Ravin who has expanded my knowledge about eye disease in artists. Finally, as an academician writing about art, I am grateful to museums and organizations that are now making images of great art available as free access for scholarly publication: Google Art Project (and contributing museums), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and Wikimedia Commons and Foundation (and contributing museums).
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Marmor, M. Vision, eye disease, and art: 2015 Keeler Lecture. Eye 30, 287–303 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/eye.2015.197
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/eye.2015.197
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