Why golden ratio pleases the eye: US academic says he knows art secret
Many artists have proportioned work in shapes that facilitate scanning
of images to brain, says professor
* Karen McVeigh <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/karenmcveigh>
* guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/> , Monday 28 December
2009 14.21 GMT
[Athens Acropolis]
The Parthenon in Athens: its facade is said to be circumscribed by
golden rectangles, although some scholars argue this is a coincidence.
Photograph: Katerina Mavrona/EPA
>From Leonardo da Vinci <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/davinci>
to Le Corbusier <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/lecorbusier> ,
the golden ratio is believed to have guided artists and architects over
the centuries.
Leonardo is thought to have used the golden ratio, a geometric
proportion regarded as the key to creating aesthetically pleasing art,
when painting the Mona Lisa. The Dutch painter Mondrian used it in his
abstract compositions, as did Salvador Dali in his masterpiece The
Sacrament of the Last Supper.
Now a US academic believes he has discovered the reason why it pleases
the eye. According to Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering
at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, the human eye is capable
of interpreting an image featuring the golden ratio faster than any
other.
Bejan argues that an animal's world whether you are a human being
in an art gallery or an antelope on the savannah is orientated on
the horizontal. For the antelope scanning the horizon, danger primarily
comes from the sides or from behind, not from below or above, so the
scope of its vision evolved accordingly. As vision developed, he argues,
animals got "smarter" and safer by seeing better and moving faster as a
result.
"It is well known that the eyes take in information more efficiently
when they scan side to side, as opposed to up and down. When you look at
what so many people have been drawing and building, you see these
proportions everywhere."
Many artists since the Renaissance have proportioned their work in
accordance with the golden ratio or "divine proportion", particularly in
the form of the golden rectangle, which has informed Leonardo's work. It
describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and a half times its
width.
Works most usually associated with it are the Mona Lisa and the
Parthenon in Athens, although Swiss architect Le Corbusier relied on it
for his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion and
Dali explicitly used it in The Sacrament of the Last Supper. The
Parthenon's facade is said to be circumscribed by golden rectangles,
though some scholars argue that this is a coincidence.
According to Bejan, these arguments are academic. Whether intentional or
not, the ratio represents the best proportions to transfer to the brain.
"This is the best flowing configuration for images from plane to brain
and it manifests itself frequently in human-made shapes that give the
impression they were 'designed' according to the golden ratio," said
Bejan.
"We really want to get on, we don't want to get headaches while we are
scanning and recording and understanding things," he said. "Shapes that
resemble the golden ratio facilitate the scanning of images and their
transmission through vision organs to the brain. Animals are wired to
feel better and better when they are helped and so they feel pleasure
when they find food or shelter or a mate. When we see the proportions in
the golden ratio, we are helped. We feel pleasure and we call it
beauty."
Bejan, an award-winning engineer who developed a new law of physics
governing the design of matter as it moves through air and water in
1996, believes this "constructal law" governs systems that evolve in
time, from cars in traffic to blood in the circulation, to how vision
develops.
Vision and cognition evolved together, he said. "Cognition is the name
of the constructal evolution of the brain's architecture, every minute
and every moment," Bejan said. "This is the phenomenon of thinking,
knowing, and then thinking again more efficiently. Getting smarter is
the constructal law in action."
Earlier this year, in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental
Biology, Bejan demonstrated how this law was behind his theory of how
elite athletes had got taller, bigger and thus faster in the past 100
years
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/17/bigger-faster-superhuman-at\
hletes> . His latest application of constructal law to explain the
golden ratio is published online in the International Journal of Design
& Nature and Ecodynamics <http://journals.witpress.com/default.asp> .
