I’m reading a book by Peter Medawar that features quite a nice ‘intelligence test’:
*'To many eyes, some of the figures (particularly the holy ones) of El Greco’s paintings seem unnaturally tall and thin. An ophthalmologist who shall be nameless surmised that they were drawn so because El Greco suffered a defect of vision that made him see people that way, and as he saw them, so he would necessarily draw them.
“Anyone who can see instantly that this explanation is nonsense and is nonsense for philosophic rather than aesthetic reasons is undoubtedly bright. On the other hand, anyone who still can’t see it is nonsense even when its nonsensicality is explained must be rather dull.” *
Hold back with posting an answer, just say if you got it instantly and are a Medawarian bright person, or cannae grasp it and are a Medawarian dim bulb. I’ll post the answer tomorrow - it can easily be found with a google search for the impatient.
I’m a bit of a 40 watter - I got the gist of it but it took ages. I asked my wife and she took about a nanosecond to say the right answer
Well, obviously if El Greco thinks the people he sees are unusually elongated, so will he think the people in the picture he is painting are unusually elongated; but he’ll think he’s painted them elongated when he actually hasn’t, and they’ll look normal to the rest of us; and I thinkthat’s all quite simple.
I’m with the “Not even sure what the question is” but at the risk of showing myself for the dim bulb I am, and without recalling any Greco painting, I’d say two things…
[ol]
[li]I can’t see how any physical defect in his eye could possibly make him see people as elongated and not every other physical object, so he’d paint everything as elongated.[/li][li]Even if he saw something as elongated, he wouldn’t paint it extra-elongated, he’d paint is as he saw it. And what he sees/paints as elongated, everyone else sees as normal. [/li][/ol]
I get it. Without reading any of the replies, is it:
The same distortion would apply to everything the artist saw, including his own painting, as he composed it - for that reason, he would paint it as thin as he saw it, but because he’s also seeing the painting in thin-vision, the two effects balance out to nothing - the paintings should appear normal to anyone)
If he painted what he saw then his view of his own painting would be similarly distorted. The figures would look correct to people with normal vision.
Now to check things out…
While I would be suspicious of someone’s reasoning process if they didn’t immediately pick up on this I can’t say I’d go so far as too call someone who instantly gets this as “bright”. That seems more like a way of complimenting people who really aren’t particularly bright: “There’s something wrong with that statement; if you can figure it out you’re smart!” Not pointing out that there’s a problem would be better but only slightly…
If El Greco is painting something that he sees as distorted, he’s going to paint it how he sees it, but the distortion applies to what he’s painting as well. For example, if he sees everthing upside down he’s going to paint it that way, but the painting itself will also look upside down to him, meaning he’ll be painting it right side up. What he draws isn’t what he sees, but it should still be what we see. There’s still something about that that bothers me, but I can’t quite put a finger on it.
My theory is that sight isn’t the only way you can get the “measure” of the human form. Unless El Greco never touched another human being, he should have had a pretty good feel (ahem) for the typical proportions involved.
Without reading: Wouldn’t the painting itself be “elongated” the same way to the artist, and therefore “foreshortened” (that is, normal) to us? A painting that looked *elongated *to him would look super duper elongated to us.
I don’t think I explained it very well, though I think I get it. I blame my lack of eloquence on the wine I had with dinner…
