Some thoughts about how we work out what is going on in a space, about the relations in a space between the various things in it. Thoughts based on a busy, realistic painting, a painting depicting a space which comes to us ready cooked, as it were, rather than in the form of the raw ingredients that we get from a real space in real life. With the various tricks of his trade, the painter is helping things along, simplifying the task of the eyes and the brain.
And then some thoughts about the extent to which those relations are made conscious.
The raw painting.
The painting marked up with points of reference for what follows.
This late sixteenth century painting of a wedding feast by Brueghel being that at reference 1. In life, a large painting, 114 × 164 centimetres, that is to say 45 × 65 inches, roughly four feet high by five feet wide. The point here being to catalogue some of the devices it uses to delineate its space and to mark the spatial relationships between pairs of objects in it.
In what follows, by in front of, we mean from the point of view of someone looking at the picture. At the wedding feast, through a mysterious hole in the wall, as it were.
We cannot use here all the tricks available to a real person, viewing a real scene. In particular, the use of slight head movements to clarify relationships (this thing is in front of that thing) and the use of both eyes together to determine range (this thing is a long way in front of that thing). On the other hand, as noted above, we are helped along by the artist who, by the use of the various tricks and conventions of his trade, conveys the sense of how things are.
The composition
Paintings of this sort are composed, they are arranged. There is a large scale plan within which the small scale details are arranged. A large scale plan which is not usually so apparent in a real world scene – except perhaps in a case such as this where there is an element of staging involved – the product of custom & convention in such matters, if not of the wedding planner.
The interior space is marked out by the four red dotted elements: top, back, side and floor. The floor stands out as a fairly uniform stage for much of the action. The back and side are more complex but also contain stretches of fairly uniform colour to tie them together and are marked as vertical with a few strong verticals. The top by being a dark band at the top.
Within this roughly building-brick-shaped space, the centre of the composition is marked by the green hanging on the right hand wall. Most of the action is all the people around the table, the two blue dots. With, we are told, this right hand wall actually being hay, the room being a hay barn co-opted for its present purpose.
Alternative centres of interest provided by the three textured, brown elements: the pouring left, the playing centre and the carrying right.
But how do we know all this? How prominent is this knowledge in consciousness?
Maybe at this level, the composition is a guide to how attention will flit about the image, the paths it will follow, the jumps it will make, rather than knowledge that can easily be written down. I associate to the maps produced by eye trackers, for an old example of which see Figure 6 of reference 3. While the snap above is the sort of thing one might produce now, with the hot colours showing where the eyes linger, perhaps a composite from many eyes, from many viewings. At least that is what I think it is. Now called heat maps and much favoured by web page designers who can compute them from the clicks and scrolls on their pages.
The relations
A: the paper crown is in front of the green hanging. Most improbable that the crown is something behind a cunningly shaped hole in the hanging. So the crown is in front of the hanging. Crowns don’t hang in mid-air and we can see the point of suspension, so the crown is touching the hanging. By the same token, the hanging is touching the wall.
B: the person in the green hat is in front of the person in the white hood. Green hat is an entire head and shoulders, white hood is partially occluded. Given the relative sizes, white hood is some way behind green hat, so not touching. Any other interpretation is very improbable.
C: the wooden bench is in front of the wall, which it slightly occludes. The vertical shadow just to the right of the bench and the fact that nothing but wall is to be seen through the gaps in the back of the bench both suggest that the bench is close to the wall. A suggestion which is reinforced by the shadow behind the head of the lady in the white hood, at the right hand end of the green hanging.
D: the basket is in front of the large brown jar is in front of the small white jar. What might be called the rule of whole over part. Given that we are looking slightly down on them, they are close together.
E: wine being poured from large jar into small jar. A complication in that here we have a transparent object, probably of interest to the painter from a professional point of view. The man in green holding both jars provides a physical link between them, making them quite close together. The small jar appears to be more or less below the large jar. The flow of wine confirms this.
F: the black hat is on the head of the man with the red top. Rule of whole over part says that the hat is over the head. The hat appears to be enclosing the head. This, plus our knowledge of hats and heads, means that the top of the head is probably inside the hat.
G: the yellow porridge is more or less liquid and has been poured into the bowls. Surface looks flat and even. Porridge enclosed by the rims of the bowls. Porridge because that is what one has a wedding feasts. Bowls resting on the door which is being used as a tray. First, because the shadows suggest proximity. Second, because bowls do not float in the air.
H: the white wrapper below the red jacket. In front of the forearm left. Behind the forearm right. Above the dark breeches below. Relation with the back of the jacket not so clear. Is it tied around, with the jacket falling a little over the tie? Is it as short jacket, with the white wrapper going up and under? Maybe knowledge of clothing of the day would help? What appear to be white ties below? Ties which appear behind several of the men.
The man to the left playing the bagpipes is dressed very similarly to our man. A shirt rather than a wrapper?
I: on careful inspection, an empty porridge plate resting on the edge of a rustic table. Gravity says that the plate is resting on the rail. Not the sort of thing one notices on a casual look at the painting.
J: the grey cylinder is a weight bearing leg of the bench, holding up the board above, pressing down on the floor below. A leg which is let into or otherwise attached to the board, part of making the board into a piece of furniture. Weight suggested by the rounded, passive bulk of the man above. A little unsatisfying visually in that the other, balancing leg, to the left, can barely be seen behind the white leg. Something which catches the attention and makes one take another look.
K: the stool to the right worries visually in the same way, with the balancing leg to the right rather lost behind the leg and the white apron.
L: we are told the space is actually a barn, and this yellow is straw or hay jammed in between the timbers. With the fact that it is straw or hay suggested by the dark band above and the rounded corner. At least something other than a skim of some kind of cement or plaster. There is also the consideration that a barn might well be a place both suitable and convenient for a wedding, presumably at a time when few villages ran to public buildings other than churches.
M: the pole is in front of the large piece of white apron is in front of both right and left legs. The small piece of white apron left is behind the left leg and the angle of its lower edge suggests that it wraps around to join the large piece. An impression reinforced by the apron string running around the back.
N: the hand is wrapped around the handle, at least partially.
Some general principles
Eyes are pretty good at direction and colour; and, working together, they can have a stab at range. The results of all of which can be qualified by prior knowledge and expectations. For present purposes, we leave aside the contribution which might be made by the other senses.
It is often straightforward to analyse the scene in front of us into stage, backdrop and possibly one or both wings, as in a theatre. We then populate the stage with the foreground objects. Objects which can be positioned on that stage by the relations of to the left of, to the right of, behind and in front of. To which end the brain makes extensive use of gravity and occlusion.
Relations between objects can be described in the same way, with the addition of: on top or underneath (with gravity in mind); touching, near or far; inside or outside (in the sense of F above); and, around (in the sense of L above).
Objects which might well move around but which, for the most part, do not fly around and need to rest, either on the ground or on top of other objects which are so resting. Or, less likely, to be suspended from something which is so resting. We expect such support to be commensurate with the weight of the object being supported. So a very thin leg at J above would surprise and would attract attention [gravity].
Object which, for the most part, keep their shape, give or take a certain amount of movement of limbs and wings.
Objects which, for the most part, are opaque.
The appearance of objects includes a great deal of regularity and redundancy. This regularity and redundancy can often be used to (correctly) infer than one object is partially occluded by another, that one object is behind another [occlusion].
A more complicated principle
We have said that most of our objects are opaque. It is also the case that many of them are both solid and persistent, which means that they bump into each other, rather than mingle in a more intimate way.
However, a bird can disappear inside a bush or a tree. A small animal can disappear inside the long grass. A buffalo calf can be disappear inside a herd of adults. A tourist can be swallowed up in the crowd. A Dartmoor pony can be swallowed up by the mist. Which is different from Jonah being swallowed by the whale, as usually in such a case one does not re-emerge in one piece.
A pile of sand can get mixed up with a pile of shingle, either just at the margins or more seriously, intentionally.
Complications which are mostly mixed up with change and movement, which we have not attempted to address.
Conclusions
A lot can be deduced about object relations from the picture itself, by applying the principles of gravity and occlusion – the first of which requires internalisation of the effects of gravity and the second of which requires internalisation of the appearance of the things which crop up in everyday life. More can be deduced by applying general knowledge and knowledge about the painter and the sort of scenes which were his subjects. And the present suggestion is that the brain does most of this deduction under the covers, below the threshold of consciousness.
But where do the results of all this deduction reside? Some of it is implicit in the visual image which is part of consciousness, but not explicit. Supplementary data on other layers and in column objects in the way of LWS-R of reference 5?
This visual image is so organised, rather in the way of our painting, as to make it easy to make deductions, in the case that one wonders or that one is asked about this or that feature. Deductions which might persist in consciousness for a short while, before fading away again. But the image is still available for interrogation. While I wonder about the extent to which the brain tidies up the inbound image; removing noise and clarifying, not to say emphasising, boundaries of and between objects.
Maybe what we do get is a feeling of satisfaction when the brain has analysed the inbound image to its satisfaction and projected a suitably modified version into consciousness – a quiet feeling of satisfaction, rather than an enumeration of spatial relationships. They only appear when attention, for whatever reason, is directed to the feature of the image in question. Perhaps because the feature does not compute: so one looks again at the stool with one leg to see what is going on.
Maybe also, when we are absorbed by a painting at a gallery, we are not conscious of much at all, in the sense of nuggets of information about the painting popping into consciousness, and all the real work is being done in the background, by the subconscious. Although we are conscious in the normal sense of the word; we are responsive to unexpected stimuli and would probably reply if spoken to. And, as already suggested, there is probably a positive emotional tone to the experience as a whole.
A notion that I think (the writer) Simenon would have signed up to, as he is always going on about how Maigret doesn’t think about his cases, he just lets them soak in. He just soaks up the people and places which make up his cases – and on a good day, his unconscious propels the right answer into consciousness – and then he can act.
A notion one might argue against by saying that the most successful consumption of a painting results from learning about how to look at it, from learning about the painter and his times. And one gets really successful consumption when one has internalised all this stuff, rather in the way that a golfer gets his best shots when he has internalised what he needs to know, and apart from giving the task at hand his full attention, does not need to think about it.
I close with a reminder that successful consumption and successful possession are different, with the former being the issue of interest here.
References
Reference 1: Peasant Wedding – Pieter the Elder Bruegel – 1567.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasant_Wedding.
Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-speculation-moving-from-one-tooth-to.html.
Reference 4: Brueghel Enterprises – edited by Peter van den Brink – 2001. Breughel’s son was an enterprising chap whose factory made many copies of many of his father’s paintings, feeding the then growing appetite for decorative art.
Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html.
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