This is our one and only Van Gogh, resident at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Undergrowth with Two Figures, painted in 1890. Let me begin by saying, “I love this painting.” I’ve stood, sat, wept, and drooled in front of it many times in my almost 30 years in this city. Mike Helm and I have a print of it over our mantle and it’s sort of a formative piece of art in our relationship. I took photo this yesterday, but I’m sure you can find a better version on the Google should you wish to make a closer examination. For my Cognitive Science class this week we're talking about the intuitive short cuts we take to process information—how we quickly fill in the blanks and perceive a "whole" picture in our minds. Feature Integration Theory (FIT) has been researched and supports the idea that we break what we sense into features for quick pattern recognition and then reassemble a whole picture. There are a few basic features, some of which are curved, straight and slanted lines, seen in letters and shapes. Sounds work in a similar fashion. One of our assignments was to study a favorite piece to see how the artist has used clues to assist us in our perceptions. Often, and unnoticed by us, the artist defies the known laws of physics to assist in the feature recognition process. Impressionist art does this by suggesting form rather than filling in the details.

I can imagine the two figures either walking away from or towards me, depending on my mood, although, up close they do appear to be facing the artist. Using *Cavanaugh’s concept of “found science” I can tell a few things about visual perception. Objects further away, and in the background, look darker and more muted in hue, or less saturated. The closer the object, the brighter and more colorful it appears. Also, things do not need to be their proper colors to be recognizable. I haven’t seen any trees with purplish or pinkish trunks lately. Maybe greenish ones but not seafoam green, you know, more like plant green. My eyes make a leap—as likely do your—transforming yellow and white blobs into flowers. I imagine that it might possibly have rained recently, or maybe the wind is gently moving the flowery undergrowth. In the distance, it seems that there are thicker woods. By using darkened versions of the colors in the forefront trees, it looks like many of them far away. Trees in the background would be harder to distinguish individually lending themselves to a foresty, dark purple mass. The border between the forest and the undergrowth curves down slightly at the right, implying that the forest is closer to us on the right side of the scene. That line draws our eyes up and to the left where there’s a small blob of darker paint. My photo doesn’t show enough detail to confirm or deny and I’m not at home to check the print, but it looks to me like another couple or at least one other woods-walker. Are the Two Figures on a first date? How many other people are around? They look pretty intimate, but I imagine that couples used to walk arm in arm like that in public whether or not they were intimate. The woman's curved posture, up and towards her man-friend, makes her look like she really likes and trusts him. Perception is in the eye of the beholder!

*Patrick Cavanagh is in the Vision Sciences Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. (From "The Artist as Neuroscientist" published in the March 2005: Volume 434, issue of Nature Magazine)