Artist use their eye sight to survey a
scene, scenery, faces etc, which guides them over the canvas and provide
feedback on the colour and form of the work. Through this article Gaurav
Goswami provides information about some of the famous artist who has been known
to struggle with vision impairment.
Prime concern of an artist
Painter delivers the three dimensional
world on a flat surface. In a way, in which artists depart from reality, by
filtering it through their perception into a physical object capable of
inducing a similar perception in the viewer. That is why a perfect vision is
the basic necessity for an artist, failing which; can happen in old age or
caused by an injury, can translate into an eerie loss of precision and detail
in painting.
An aging artist’s vision
Studies have established that, the
aging eye of an artist makes fewer tears, the cornea may lose clarity, the
pupil stays smaller in both light and dark, the lens becomes – thicker, dense,
more yellow and less elastic, and the retina loses a small percentage of its
nerve cells every year. The artwork produce by such artist becomes complicated
as the eye or brain forces them to see their surroundings in ways that diverge
from standard experience.
Some famous artists with suspect
vision
Many famous artists have been known to
struggle with eye diseases that changed the vision of their works later in
their lives.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Da Vinci is believed to have suffered
from a type of eye disorder called intermittent exotropia; a condition which
causes one or both eye to turn outward. Researchers have suggested that the
disorder may have helped him because it would have given him the ability to
switch to monocular vision, in which both eyes are used separately, and allowed
him to focus on close up flat surfaces.
Claude Monet
Diagnosed with cataracts in 1912,
Monet was recommended to undergo surgery. Cataracts are a progressive
cloudiness of the lens inside the eye, producing blurred and dulled vision that
can’t be corrected with spectacles. Claude Monet refused to undergo treatment
and visual impact of his disorder is demonstrated in two paintings of the same
scene: the Japanese footbridge over his garden’s lily pond. His first painting,
painted ten years prior to his cataracts, is full of detail and subtle us of
colour. The second painting, painted a year prior to his relenting to the
surgery – shows musky and dark colour.
Francis Bacon
The works of 20th century British
painter Francis Bacon are notorious for their power to unsettle.
Neuroscientists have proposed that painter suffered from a rare neurological
disorder called dysmorphopsia, which produces progressively changing and
distorted perception. Bacon himself described his perception of faces as ever
changing, with mouth and the head in constant motion.
Edger Degas
French artist Edgar Degas, 1834-1917,
experienced progressive visual loss in the last 30 years of his life; this was
concluded by Ophthalmologist Michael F Marmor in 2006, after he went through
Degas correspondences. The disorder has not effect on Degas’s shading, colour
and overall composition of the painting, but showed significant impact, as his
paintings became coarse and lost refinement.
Distinguished mentions
Cezanne and Pissarro were myopic;
which suggests the soft lines and vibrant colour found in their paintings.
United States painters Mary Cassalt; 1844-1926 and Homer Martin; 1836-1897
suffered from cataracts. William Turner; 1775-1851 suffered from early, slight
colour blindness and later cataracts. Rembrandt was speculated to have vision
disorder.
A tricky path
A particular challenge to verify these
speculations is that artists are free to represent the world in whatever
fashion they see fit. But considering for one moment that these artists did
actually suffer from these visual disorders then understanding the challenges
they faced further illuminate the accomplishments they achieved.
