Ringing endorsement for physicians’ art history book

The London Times rated The Artist’s Eyes: Vision and the History of Art by two ophthalmologists as one of the best art books published in 2009

Many ophthalmologists enjoy hobbies such as golfing, reading or playing musical instruments in their spare time, but James G. Ravin, M.D., Toledo, Ohio, bristles at the word “hobby” to describe his interest in art and art history.
“It has been a long labor of love for us,” Dr. Ravin said explaining his recent book that he co-authored with Michael F. Marmor, M.D., professor, Stanford University School of Medicine, Menlo Park, Calif.
The book, The Artist’s Eyes: Vision and the History of Art, includes chapters that explore how eye diseases affected the artwork of famous artists such as Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keefe and Edgar Degas, to name a few, as well as how artists achieve optical illusions in their works.
“We were trying to tell good stories to interest the public—the projected audience here is a general audience, not really a medical audience—although the medical community can find lots of interesting things in it, too,” Dr. Ravin said.

Researching renowned artists

While at the University of Michigan, Dr. Ravin double-majored in pre-med and art history, and he is particularly drawn to 19th-century French painters. He has had the opportunity to study those artists during his several visits to France.
So he was well aware of Monet’s medical history with cataracts and cataract surgery. And during visits with friends in France, he met people who either personally helped to take care of Monet or had ancestors who helped him.
Dr. Ravin said he also acquired records from the French Ophthalmic Society and got to examine Monet’s glasses with a French ophthalmologist.
Many of the artists’ stories in the book were told from this sort of information that Dr. Ravin was able to gather.
Another example is O’Keefe, who had macular degeneration. He found three ophthalmologists who treated her and obtained her medical records, diagnoses and treatments.
“When the medical records are there, it is great,” Dr. Ravin said. “When they’re not, we read all of the biographic information, try to find the records and put it together solidly and everything that we’ve said (in the book) has held up. There isn’t anyone taking potshots at us and saying ‘These guys are all wrong.’ It has held up well in the medical side and in the historical art side.”
One section of the book, however, attempts to invalidate other researchers’ theories about Vincent Van Gogh.
For example, several researchers have proposed that Van Gogh’s frequent use of yellows in his artwork can be attributed to the effects of his medications, in particular digitalis and santonin. But while Dr. Ravin readily concedes that Van Gogh obviously had psychological problems as proven by the fact that he committed suicide, they could not find any evidence to him having visual impairments that influenced his artwork.
“We’re not saying impressionism was an art school defined by eye abnormalities; that is not the case at all, but a number of these artists did have problems late in life and they did have an influence in the way they worked,” Dr. Ravin said. “And we think there are ways to show that progress over time and document it through their works and biographical information.

Compiling an authorative book

Drs. Marmor and Ravin have worked together before to write on these topics before including several papers published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and a another book, The Eye of the Artist, about 10 years ago that covers some of the same stories, though the newer one comprises about two-thirds new material, he said.
And this effort has garnered interest from the media including articles written by their alma maters, local newspapers and an inclusion in the London Times’ books of the year in a Nov. 29 write-up on the best art history books of 2009.
While Dr. Ravin’s main interest was in the medical aspect and how their visual diseases affected the artists, Dr. Marmor contributed some of this on his own as well, and his interests are more into how the brain and eye systems work together resulting in optical illusions such as why eyes in some paintings seem to follow the viewer.
“They make good stories because these are some of the big names in art; some of their paintings sell for millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars,” Dr. Ravin said. “People want to know about them including how they thought, and in the case of eye disease, how they affected the way they worked.”

Contact Information

Ravin: 1-877-852-8463, jamesravin@bex.net