Seeing Art Through The Eyes Of The Artist

Apr. 30 - KGO (KGO) -- We have a new look at some old works of art with an eye on details perhaps previously overlooked. It's not an art expert weighing in, but a renowned ophtalmologist and professor from Stanford with a drive to discover how eye disease impacted two very well known artists.

Michael Marmor, M.D., Stanford professor of ophthalmology: "If you think of Monet, here's a painter whose fame, whose career, whose love of art resided in light and color and he was losing that power both to see it and to be able to paint it or to recognize what he was painting."

It's no secret the father of impressionism suffered from age-related cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that leads to blurred vision and a loss of color perception.

Dr. Mike Marmor, M.D.: "Our eye doesn't work like a camera. We don't have a lot of pixels that send information up to the brain."

Ophthalmologist and Stanford medical school professor Mike Marmor is an expert in retinal function and eye disease who enjoys focusing his expertise on art.

Dr. Mike Marmor: "I do not in any way say that science can explain art. It's a complex cultural enterprise, but what science can give you is facts. This is what Monet was seeing. You can't take that away."

Monet painted these water lilies in 1915, three years after first consulting ophthalmologists regarding his failing vision. His canvas would have appeared blurry, with a yellowish cast to Monet's eye, something Dr. Marmor recreated with Photoshop -- the blue water appears murky green.

Dr. Mike Marmor: "He was losing the ability to see colors. He said they looked dull, reds appeared muddy, he could not tell colors apart."

Dr. Marmor points to one of Monet's favorite scenes -- the Japanese bridge at Giverny for comparison. This work, painted pre-cataract in 1899, is vastly different from those done around 1920. The bright, wild colors in sharp contrast to Monet's typically subdued palette. Dr. Marmor believes this is how Monet viewed the same canvases through his cataracts.

Painter and sculptor Edgar Degas also suffered from well-documented eye disease. He first started complaining of "infirmity of sight" in the mid 1880's.

Dr. Mike Marmor: "We know that he did not have cataracts and that he was able to walk around well, so it was probably in the center of vision, what we call the macula."

Take a look at this trio of bathers, painted over time, from around 1885 to 1910.

Dr. Mike Marmor: "It's very evident that the shading became less precise and the drawing that outlined his figures became less accurate."

Dr. Marmor's computer simulation of how Degas would have seen his own art shows the works actually appear much more alike.

Dr. Mike Marmor: "The progressive blur in his vision smoothed over the imperfections that he was putting into his drawings, and he could not see them the way we do. To him they looked more smooth and more like his earlier work."

As for Monet, cataract surgery in 1923 cleared his vision. Dr. Marmor points out this painting, done post-surgery, shows a return to his earlier style and hues -- changes Dr. Marmor attributes to the eye of the artist, offering a different view of the works of two visionaries.

Dr. Marmor points out Monet destroyed a great many of his later works after his cataract surgery. The curator in charge of European art at San Francisco's Legion of Honor weighed in on this. To read her interview, click here.

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