The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [109]
Art experts in the thirties discounted the thought that Emmaus was too ugly to be a Vermeer. That would have been the immediate response of any amateur who knew Vermeer only from Girl with a Pearl Earring, but the pros had no such ignorance to safeguard them. “When I studied art history,” recalls Marina Aarts, a specialist in seventeenth-century art, “the first thing they told us was, ‘Look, whether you like it or not isn’t important. Our subject is the painter’s style. If it’s beauty you want, go to the museum on your own time.’ That’s what happened with Emmaus. Nobody asked ‘Do I like it?’ That question wasn’t important. The only question was, ‘Is it a Vermeer?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes, we think it is a Vermeer.’ And that made it beautiful.”
When we look at the world, our beliefs and expectations color what we see.
We’re seldom aware of it—each of us takes for granted that we’re simply describing the reality in front of us—but there is no such thing as a neutral description. When Americans look at the Arabic word for cat, they see only squiggles. Arabs see a furry creature that laps up milk and says meow.
Before Van Meegeren was unmasked, the critics looked at Emmaus and found themselves overwhelmed by its “serenity” and “calm” and “elevation” and “dignity.” Then came the astonishing news that the supposed masterpiece had nothing to do with Vermeer. The critical response turned 180 degrees, immediately. A Dutch art historian named Sandra Weerdenburg demonstrated the flip in irrefutable detail in her doctoral thesis. Weerdenburg found that the old critics didn’t change their minds, or at least didn’t say so. Almost without exception, they simply stole away in silence. But a new cast of critics appeared at once, and many of them singled out for scorn the very elements that had won praise only a few years before. What had been hailed as “serene” was now damned as “static,” what had been “dignified” had grown “lifeless,” what had been “tender” had become “sentimental.”
What had changed? The two camps of critics came to Emmaus bearing different expectations, which primed them to respond to the picture in different ways. Psychologists call this built-in bias “perceptual set”—try as we might to see the world without preconceptions, we each gaze through our own set of lenses. History matters. Researchers have devised a set of homey experiments that hint at just how much.
Consider this little drawing:
A viewer coming to it fresh would probably see a bald man with big glasses.
Now consider the same drawing as the fourth in a series:
For most people, the man has become a mouse. In Van Meegeren’s case, the art connoisseurs approached Emmaus by way of a series of judgments rather than a series of drawings. The first series ran “serene,” “dignified,” “tender,” and ended with an exultant cry of “Vermeer!” The second series, after the truth had come out, ran “static,” “lifeless,” “sentimental,” and ended, almost inevitably, with a judgment of “Worthless!”
IN THE REAL world rather than the psychology class, history matters even more. Not only do experts see what they expect to see—they literally do have their own views—but they sport ideological blinders that make them cling to their own judgments and dismiss all others.
In the 1600s, a few scientists peered through their microscopes and saw tiny human beings curled up inside sperm cells. “Who would have believed that in them was a human body?” one wrote. “But I have seen this thing with my own eyes.”
How was that possible? One modern embryology text delivers a simple answer, which also helps explain the downfall of Bredius and his fellow connoisseurs. “We see what we look for,” the authors warn, “not what we look at.”
47
BLUE MONDAY
In art more than in many fields, connoisseurs face a special challenge—inconsistency