WEBVTT - Short Stuff: How Eyes In a Painting Follow You 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:06.520 Hey there, Hi, there, ho there, and welcome to the 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.959 short stuff. I'm Josh, there's chalk, and Jerry's here, which 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.280 took up an extra couple of seconds mentioning Jerry. So 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:16.600 let's get to it because we just wasted some time. Yeah. So, 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.319 if you remember about a year ago, dear listener, we 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:21.520 did a podcast, a little shorty on the Mona Lisa 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.040 and we talked kind of briefly about the fact that 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:28.560 Mona Lisa's eyes will follow you if you move about 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.160 the room like a horror movie painting, and that's the thing, 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:35.440 and we said, I think Josh even said, hey, you know, 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:37.519 I want to do a show on that. I like 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:43.120 a regular shorty on that. That was a great Josh impression. Hello, Love, 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:48.640 let's do one on that, right, Jimminy crickets Um, So 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.400 we did. This is what we're doing right now, Chuck. 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:56.040 That's right. The the the reason why which will come 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:59.240 later in the podcast, but the phenomenon of that we've 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:01.200 all seen on school be doing in horror movies of 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.360 moving around a room and the appearance that the eyeballs 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.520 of the painting are following you. Right, So there's actual 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:10.560 like this is actually a thing as anybody who's ever 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.760 seen it in real life knows um, but you may 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.959 not have ever understood why. And it turns out that 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.480 it's one of the easiest things in the world to understand, 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.240 one of the hardest things in the world to explain. 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.360 For some reason, I had a hard time to it 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:29.320 makes no sense whatsoever, because once you understand it, you're like, okay, yeah, 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.800 of course that makes total sense. But like I even 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.119 had to go back and add some to this article 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.520 that bro this is a Josh Clark jam from the 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.480 House Stuff Works staff writer days, and I had to 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.800 go back and and add something from like I think 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.440 some art site and another site about there was like 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:49.880 a forum among painters. There's this one painter's post saying 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.000 like I can't make the eyes look at the viewer. 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:56.560 Helped me and there, you know, some people kind of 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:58.520 swooped in and explained to this one pain or how 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:00.960 to do it. But it's actually very, very hard. But 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:05.800 the whole thing is based on um perspective, and you 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.400 would not have been able to make a painting with 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:14.680 eyes staring at the viewer um before the four century, 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.639 I believe, and thanks to an Italian architect named Philip. 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.240 I'm sorry, Chuck, you want to take this one. It's 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:22.960 about to say. I mean, I know I'm not sitting 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:28.079 in the room with you. But Filippo brunellesco very nice. 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:30.440 And he was an architect in Italy, like I said, 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.480 and he was um in charge of the Baptiste. Sorry, Chuck, 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:42.120 Baptista and Sanelin very nice. So um. He basically accidentally 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.320 figured out perspective. Linear perspective in particular, which is in 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:48.480 a painting where if you're looking at, say like a 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.160 painting of railroad tracks, Um, they vanish in the distance, 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.639 but if you'll notice they come together. The reason that 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:58.320 they seem very far off, and that the tracks closer 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.480 to to the wider part closer to you in the 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.639 tracks closer together further from you is because it's union 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.960 using linear perspective, which is just all lines in a 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.919 painting can trace their origin back to a common single point. 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.360 That's the that's the source of linear perspective. Yeah, and 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.080 it's one of the coolest things in art, the notion 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.680 that you can draw something on a flat canvas and 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:25.760 just have those points kind of come closer to each 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:29.000 other at the top, and it gives the impression of distance. 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.000 It's really really cool. It is very cool. So that's 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.360 one thing that that it's like you said, it gives 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.640 the impression of distance. And before linear perspective came along, 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.960 um artists had height and width and the only way 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:44.200 to make something seem further away is to draw it 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.560 smaller than the other thing. You want to seem closer together, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:50.880 and the whole, the whole jam just seemed very flat. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:55.160 Like if you think of hieroglyphics Egyptian um paintings on 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:59.920 walls of tombs, that's a good example of pre perspective 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:05.200 of art, right, very flat and two dimensional. Yeah, you 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.320 can also do some other things to create the illusion 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:11.240 of depth. Obviously, light and shadow. If you use light, 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:16.240 it will demonstrate something um surfaces closeness to the light 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.880 source and it's going to protrude out and then then 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:21.560 reflect more light. You're going to use that shadow and 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:25.080 the darker areas uh to denote something that's more closed off, 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.680 maybe something further away. You combine those two things and 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.040 you're gonna have another illusion. That illusion of depth basically 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.880 sort of like a third dimension that's really not there exactly, 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.960 but for all intents and purposes. You have just figured 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.920 out how to add that third dimension, and it's like 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.919 you just said, that's really important. It's not actually there 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.360 using linear perspective, using the interplay of light and shadows 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.000 to to suggest depth. It's not their height and with 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.400 they're actually there. Those two dimensions are actually present in 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.760 the painting. But that third dimension of of depth also 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.640 known his length, that is nothing but an optical illusion. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.760 But that optical illusion gives rise to another optical illusion, 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.400 the eyes and a painting following you around the room. 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:13.360 That's right, So we're gonna take a break and talk 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:39.360 how that actually works right after this. All right, So 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:41.440 before we get to how that actually works, we should 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.400 point out that what you mentioned earlier from that painter's 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.120 blog or threat or whatever, uh it is, it is 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.000 a tough thing to do as an artist to paint 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:54.720 eyes um on a human being that look like they're 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.120 looking at the person looking at the painting. It's a 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.120 hard thing to do. Yeah, like you are based to 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:01.960 clear a master of painting if you can do it 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.360 without really having to think about it. But it has 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:09.760 everything for years. Are you do you paint? Okay? I 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.120 can see that being like just something I didn't know that, 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.479 you just kind of did on the side. Um. So 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:17.800 if you ever want to try, apparently chuck from what 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.520 I could tell from this painter forum, we'll call it 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:25.240 paint chan um. They if you have the face looking 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:31.479 dead on like nine degrees from the canvas, um, it's 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:33.760 much easier to paint the eyes looking out that way. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.040 It gets really hard when the head is tilted or 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:42.359 um uh yeah, tilted in one way or another away 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:45.200 from that nine degree axis. That's when it gets hard. 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.680 Now has everything to do with how much of the 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.840 white is shown, um, how much of the iris has 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.240 shown where it sits in the eye. That it's really 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.280 tough to capture unless the painting is looking or that 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.799 the subject is looking straight out of the painting. Yeah. 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.800 So another thing we should understand before we move on 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.279 to how this little trick works with the eyes following 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:11.280 you is if you go, if you move yourself around 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:15.000 a statue, um, a sculpture, or if you move yourself 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.320 around a live human being and just tell them to 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.040 keep their eyes fixed forward and you move around them 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.800 and you keep your eyeballs on theirs, that that trick 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:24.520 is not gonna work. Their eyeballs are not going to 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.080 be following you around the room, nor would it appear 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.840 so from a sculpture, because you are changing your perspective. 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.400 Their perspective is saying the same, and you're actually you know, 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.920 when you round the corner, you go from seeing iris 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.120 to the whites of someone's eyes and then the back 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.840 of their head and then eventually back around again. And 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.160 not only that, you know you're seeing more iris or 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.720 less iris, or more right or less white. And this 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.960 is giving your brain visual cues about this third dimension, um, 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:56.920 but also the interplay of light and shadow on their face, 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.080 on their eyes wherever, also giving your brain que is 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:05.320 two and it's changing. Yes, this the statue your friend 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.679 who's staring straightforward going like why am I doing this again? Um? 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:13.720 Those things exist in the actual three third, three dimensions. Um. 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.240 The painting itself again, that third dimension is nothing but 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.800 tricks of of technique. They don't actually exist in the 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:27.040 three dimensions. So when you paint eyes looking a certain way, 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.440 they're going to look that certain way no matter what 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.720 they're fixed, they're set. Your brain is not going to 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.040 get any more information moving around the room that you're 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:39.560 It's not going You're not going to see more white 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:42.640 or less white of the eyes. The irises aren't going 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:47.560 to um change position. They are fixed no matter where 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.080 you stand in relation to that painting. And as a result, 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.720 that's why the eyes following around, because if they're painted 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:56.600 gazing out of the painting to begin with, they're going 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.439 to seem that way no matter where you stand, they'll 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.240 the eyes will follow you around the room from the painting. 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.920 That's right. If a person on a painting is painted 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:07.960 to where they're looking not looking at you, they're looking 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.280 away from you, it's not going to allow that allusion 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:16.040 to take place. Um and to cap it off, it's 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:20.200 even hard to have that poem have that person meet 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.840 your gaze. Like let's say someone's painted, uh and they're 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.840 looking sort of off to the side. You can't just 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:28.840 walk off to the side to kind of where they 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.920 seem to be looking and lock eyes with them. There 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.400 is just this weird illusion of this sort of forever 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.559 into the distance gaze that happens. Yeah, which really like 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.960 re re researching this and I think admittedly fully understanding 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.400 it for the first time has really given me a 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:51.040 lot of um of more respect for the craft of 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.120 painting portraits than I had to for yeah, because I've 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.680 never been into portraiture that much, so for me to yeah, 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.880 I like a good rembrand. Yeah so, But but I 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.560 mean the idea that it's it's really hard to paint 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:06.760 the eyes a certain way. And then the fact that 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.000 when you are painting eyes one way or the other, 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.960 you're you're locking them in through tricks of perspective, using 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:14.400 shadow and light and all that. That's I mean, hats 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.080 off to all of you painters out there. Yeah. One 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.320 thing I truly did not understand was this experiment in 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.360 two thousand four from a group of researchers to try 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.280 and prove this using a mannequin and math. I read 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.360 this ten times and I have no idea what they mean. 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:32.880 So they didn't use an actual mannequin. They used an 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:36.760 image of a mannequin, so it's in two dimensions, but 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.320 they used they used, um, you know, perspective to to 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.439 make it seem like a three dimensional mannequin's Torso well, 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:45.440 that makes more sense. But then they plotted out the 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.360 different dots, so the dots that should seem further away 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.160 because the mannequin itself, that part of the mannequin was 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:55.280 further away. Um seemed further away no matter where you 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.199 stood in when you were viewing this image of the mannequin. 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.680 And they may just to basically capture this digitally to 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.000 prove once and for all, this isn't The eyes following 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.720 you in a painting aren't a trick like it actually 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.960 is the way that that you're perceiving it, they do 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:13.960 seem to be following you around the room. It's not 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:18.360 like you're going nuts amazing, it really is. So now 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.360 everybody knows the eyes in a painting follow you around, 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.080 because if they're painted looking that way, you're not going 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:26.720 to get any other visual cues suggesting that they're looking 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.200 any other direction than that way. I think we've explained 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:34.800 to Chuck thinks, And since Chuck breathlessly said, I think so, 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:41.000 that means short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.920 is production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works. For more 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.520 podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.440 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.