Complementary Quantitative Approach to Unsolved Issues in Art History: Similarity of Visual Features in the Paintings of Vermeer and His Probable Mentors

Minseo Kim; Jeounghoon Kim

doi:10.1162/leon_a_01401

Complementary Quantitative Approach to Unsolved Issues in Art History: Similarity of Visual Features in the Paintings of Vermeer and His Probable Mentors

Leonardo ◽

10.1162/leon_a_01401 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 52 (2) ◽

pp. 164-174

Author(s):

Minseo Kim ◽

Jeounghoon Kim

Keyword(s):

Art History ◽

Quantitative Approach ◽

Visual Features ◽

Johannes Vermeer ◽

Artistic Styles

Who is the most probable mentor to Johannes Vermeer? To provide complementary evidence for this question, the authors quantitatively analyzed and compared the visual features of the works of Vermeer with those of artists proposed as his possible mentors. The results showed that Vermeer and Gerard ter Borch have similar artistic styles in many respects.

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Utjecaj interpretacija pojma periferijske umjetnosti Ljube Karamana i Miroslava Krleže na dalmatinsku povijesti umjetnosti

10.31261/pn.4038.29 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 498-510

Author(s):

Ivana Prijatelj Pavičić

Keyword(s):

Interwar Period ◽

Art History ◽

Central European ◽

Cultural Paradigm ◽

Miroslav Krleza ◽

History Of ◽

Artistic Styles ◽

Definition Of ◽

True Center ◽

External Forces

Although the so-called „Vienna school“ practised an universalist approach to history of arts, their prominent acters like Alois Riegel and Max Dvořák influenced the nationalist ideas among the Central European art historians in the interwar period. An evident example of such an influence is Croatian art historian Ljubo Karaman (1886‒1971) ‒ a Vienna student who studied the art relations between center and periphery from early 1930s on. His thoughts on this topic were collected in his 1963 book Problemi periferijske umjetnosti. O djelovanju domaće sredine u umjetnosti hrvatskih krajeva (Problems of Peripheral Art. On Influence of Local Surrounding on the Art of the Croatian Areas). Colonial character of the Karaman’s definition of the center/periphery relation is clear in his notion that the dissemination and assimilation of the artistic styles is always one-way: from developed center to the province. His definition of „peripheral art“ appeared as a reaction to the works of famous „Vienna school“ scholars from early 20th century (particularly Polish-Austrian art historian Strzygowski). It is based on the idea of external, political and artistic influences in Dalmatia as external forces of artistic exchange. A prominent writer and encyclopaedist Miroslav Krleža turned upside-down the idea of the artistic transfer from the advanced West toward underdeveloped East/Balkans as a periphery at the edge of civilisation. In his discussion on the Second Congress of writers in Zagreb he promoted the idea of the periphery as a true center. During 1950s, Krleža strongly influenced the formation of a new cultural paradigm, and forging of the new scientific paradigm within art history in Croatia. In her paper, the author explores how texts of the Croatian art-history scholars regarding ancient Dalmatian art were influenced by Karaman’s and Krleža’s ideas and concepts on peripheral, provincial, and border-line art.

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Task-dependent eye-movement patterns in viewing art

Journal of Eye Movement Research ◽

10.16910/jemr.13.2.12 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Nino Sharvashidze ◽

Alexander C Schütz

Keyword(s):

Eye Movement ◽

Art History ◽

Visual Features ◽

Scanning Strategy ◽

Processing Style ◽

Movement Data ◽

Movement Characteristics ◽

Fixation Locations ◽

Subjective Confidence ◽

Art Schools

In art schools and classes for art history students are trained to pay attention to different aspects of an artwork, such as art movement characteristics and painting techniques. Experts are better at processing style and visual features of an artwork than nonprofessionals. Here we tested the hypothesis that experts in art use different, task-dependent viewing strategies than nonprofessionals when analyzing a piece of art. We compared a group of art history students with a group of students with no art education background, while viewing 36 paintings under three discrimination tasks. Participants were asked to determine the art movement, the date and the medium of the paintings. We analyzed behavioral and eye-movement data of 27 participants. Our observers adjusted their viewing strategies according to the task, resulting in longer fixation durations and shorter saccade amplitudes for the medium detection task. We found higher task accuracy and subjective confidence, less congruence and higher dispersion in fixation locations in experts. Expertise also influenced saccade metrics, biasing it towards larger saccade amplitudes, advocating a more holistic scanning strategy of experts in all three tasks.

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A quantitative analysis of the taxonomy of artistic styles

Journal of Eye Movement Research ◽

10.16910/jemr.13.2.5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Viviane Clay* ◽

Johannes Schrumpf* ◽

Yannick Tessenow* ◽

Helmut Leder ◽

Ulrich Ansorge ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Deep Learning ◽

Quantitative Analysis ◽

Reaction Time ◽

Art History ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Future Research ◽

Singleton Search ◽

Artistic Styles ◽

Psychological Experiments

Classifying artists and their work as distinct art styles has been an important task of scholars in the field of art history. Due to its subjectivity, scholars often contradict one another. Our project investigated differences in aesthetic qualities of seven art styles through quantitative means. This was achieved with state-of-the-art deep-learning paradigms to generate new images resembling the style of an artist or entire era. We conducted psychological experiments to measure the behavior of subjects when viewing these new art images. Two different experiments were used: In an eye-tracking study, subjects viewed art-style-specific generated images. Eye movements were recorded and then compared between art styles. In a visual singleton search study, subjects had to locate a style-outlier image among three images of an alternative style. Reaction time and accuracy were measured and analyzed. These experiments show that there are measurable differences in behavior when viewing images of varying art styles. From these differences, we constructed hierarchical clusterings relating art styles based on the different behaviors of subjects viewing the samples. Our study reveals a novel perspective on the classification of artworks into stylistic eras and motivates future research in the domain of empirical aesthetics through quantitative means.

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