The Lustre of the Masters

Researchers in the Netherlands have found a means to quantify a phenomenon that art-lovers have been aware of for centuries: original works of art are more engaging than copies and posters. A recent article in the Guardian reports that by fitting viewers with a helmet equipped with eye-tracking technology and MRI scans to record brain activity, these scientists were able to determine that genuine artworks generated a response ten times stronger than did reproductions.

It seems likely that these scientists fudged the numbers to come up with such a tidy ten-to-one ratio. But little matter. The difference between original and reproduced is real. But everyone knows that. Two important questions remain unasked: Why is the original more stimulating? Des such an effect necessarily mean that the piece is a better work of art?

In 1935 Walter Benjamin wrote an influential essay on this question in which he suggested that the difference lies in the unique physical presence of the original, which he referred to as its authenticity and also, strangely, as its "aura." This argument doesn't take us very far. A better answer might be that an original work of art—and especially an original painting—distinguishes itself by its luster. (An equivalent argument in the realm of music would make reference to the richer timber of instruments used in live performances.)

Luster produces a variety of effects that cannot be reproduced by offset or digital printing. For example, the red cloak in a Modigliani recently acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts bristles with an energy that derives entirely by the sheen it gives off. A more subtle example of the same phenomenon might be the Pissarro landscape they own in which the mid-afternoon heat and the dust in the air can be seen, and felt, in the chalky luster on the building facade.

We spent a few hours at the National Gallery in London recently and I came away with a variety of impressions regarding those classic works we see again and again in books. The marriage scene by Van Eck was deeply engaging. The Holbeins seemed less attractive, less complex that I'd remembered them. A few of the Veroneses almost measured up to the best of the Titians. And it struck me that some of the late portraits by Van Dyke were top-flight. Who knew?

To my eye, the composition of Mantagna's six-panel Triumph of Caesar offered a new and astounding way to fill a large canvas. And there were individual faces in several of the works that conveyed great depth of character.

Over all, I came away from these galleries with a renewed appreciation of the human face. The modern galleries, in contrast, were dominated by color, often depicting landscapes clothed in pleasing but entirely artificial harmonies. But in the modern rooms of the National Gallery, I felt that I was just looking at surfaces. The Cezannes, in particular, struck me as flat, dry, harsh, generic ... uninteresting.

On the other hand, most of the artworks—prints, posters, photographs—that are hanging on the walls of our house are landscapes and domestic scenes, most of them dating from the twentieth century. I've long been a fan of the Fauves, and we have framed posters or book illustrations by Matisse, Miro, Dufy, and Braque hanging here and there, and even a N. C. Wyeth book poster of Kidnapped.

You can be moved by the shadowy penetration of a Rembrandt self-portrait in a museum without feeling the need to have such a face bearing down on you enigmatically day after day. To judge from the artworks we pass by on our movement around the house, you might wonder if we had been inspired by the remark of Henri Matisse:

What I dream of is an art of balance, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter…..a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair that provides relaxation from physical fatigue.