Human portraits reveals shift in culture, cognition

Date:
June 15, 2020
Source:
Santa Fe Institute
Summary:
Human cognition and cultural norms have changed the composition of
human portraits, according to a new analysis of European paintings
from the 15th to the 20th century.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Throughout history, portraits featuring the human profile have evolved
to reflect changing cultural norms. A new study led by Helena Miton,
a Santa Fe Institute Omidyar Fellow, and co-authored by Dan Sperber
of Central European University and Miko?aj Hernik, of UiT the Artic
University of Norway, shows that human cognition plays a critical role
in the evolution of human portraiture.


========================================================================== "These cognitive factors cause greater spontaneous attention to what is
in front of -- rather than behind -- a subject, Miton says. "Scenes with
more space in front of a directed object are both produced more often and judged as more aesthetically pleasant. This leads to the prediction that,
in profile- oriented human portraits, compositions with more space in
front of depicted subjects (a 'forward bias') should be over-represented."
To test their prediction, the research team looked at 1831 paintings by
582 unique European painters from the 15th to the 20th century. They not
only found evidence that this forward bias -- where painters put more
open space in front of their sitters than behind them -- was widespread,
they also found evidence that the bias became stronger when cultural
norms of spatial composition favoring centering became less stringent.

In the accompanying image, the portrait on the left (Adrian Brouwer,
1630) is an example of a composition with the sitter centered. On the
right, a portrait by Pierre Auguste Renoir (1905) shows the forward bias,
with more free space in front of the sitter than behind her. The study
showed this type of spatial composition increased over time.

"Culture and cognition are two interacting domains," Miton explains. "With
most cultural phenomena, you're going to have some kind of influence
from cognition.

Our idea is to work out how we identify these factors and how we work
with that type of causality." The research team identified cultural
norms that favored centering portraits, especially in the earlier
periods. These preferences clearly loosened over time, resulting in more diverse portrait composition.

The widespread presence of a forward bias was robust. Previous studies
found some evidence of a forward bias in the production of a handful of painters, but these results suggest that this bias in spatial composition
was widespread - - particularly remarkable since it goes against a
cultural norm that favors centering sitters.

According to Miton, this research approach can be extended to quantify in
a more general way (and with a more general painting data set) how much artistic norms loosen and how much variation increases over time. Beyond
the art world, the approach can also look at the role cognition plays
in other cultural phenomena, from writing systems to medical practices.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Santa_Fe_Institute. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Helena Miton, Dan Sperber, Mikołaj Hernik. A Forward Bias
in Human
Profile‐Oriented Portraits. Cognitive Science, 2020; 44 (6)
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12866 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200615140831.htm

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