Do babies like Van Gogh?!

Hello everyone. Welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where we'll discuss some of the weird, strange, and downright odd things that have been happened, and have happened, Oh my god.

Have happened in the art and history fields. I'm your host and personal curator and personal dingbat, Amara Andrew. This week, we're talking about some old, empty tombs that were found during cathedral construction, an ancient arrowhead made from meteorite, a hidden portrait in a Magritte painting, and are babies and humans the same, Oh my god.

Are babies and humans

And do babies and adults like the same art? We have all that and more. Holy shit, coming up on this episode of By Amara, let's just get to it.

For the record, I do think babies are humans, sort of. So, I guess. Ai.

This has been a very stressful week just because Jeff and I, my boyfriend and I, we've been working on a lot of different things for my business, MAVEN, which he is also part of. So we're just

Kind of been everywhere. We are last minute for a few different things, very exciting things. I can't really say what it is yet, but we're working on a couple different things, and we have some plans in place.

So, anywho, I am just a little frazzled still. So, I'm so sorry if this episode isn't up to par with the rest of them, which I guess the rest of them aren't amazing either. But, I digress.

So yes, for the record, babies are humans, but I meant, "Do babies and adults like the same art?"

Besides just being frazzled and coming up with this these plans for these various different things, I don't really have any life updates. It's just work, and I'm sure you would be fucking thrilled to hear about all of that. Work for my business, that is.

So, that's fine. I guess I will get into updates for stories that we've talked about in the past. I still don't have any vase auction updates.

This was a few episodes ago, where I talked about this little, just really cool vase that was by a famous ceramicist. It was found at a UK thrift store, but

It was supposed to go to auction a couple weeks ago, and I still can't find anything about it right now, which is really bizarre. So, hopefully, I'll have an update soon. Also, there may not be an episode next week, which you'll find out why later.

But, and maybe not the following week. I don't know. I need to figure it out.

But if there isn't an episode next week, it'll be a little bit different, but that's totally fine. We just we roll with the punches here, especially since humans are not babies. So, it's just like that campaign where people, I guess, not campaign, but when people are just like, "Birds aren't real," but I guess, "Babies aren't real."

Anyway, if you don't think babies are real, you are in the correct place. Ai. Okay, let's just get straight into the show.

Centuries old tombs have been found under a very old cathedral. Work on Exeter Cathedral in Exeter, England started earlier this year, and they found basically almost like every level of history within this building so far. So, we're going to talk about the two different excavation findings that have happened.

But first, a little bit of history, because what the fuck is the Exeter Cathedral? This cathedral was founded in 1050. So 1050, 1050 year.

That is when it's been founded. I'm so sorry. This is going to be I don't blame you if you don't want to listen to the rest of this, because this might just be a shitshow.

So, building was founded in 1050, and most of the existing building, though, was developed sometime between the 12th and 14th centuries. So, the cathedral is interesting for a variety of reasons, which we'll talk about in a second, in addition to the excavation findings.

But something interesting about this cathedral is that it's actually sustained catastrophic damage throughout its lifetime in two very different time spans. There's the English Civil War in the 1600s, it was 1642 to 1651 about, and then the Second World War, 1939 to 1945. So, the cathedral itself was damaged during the Baedeker Blitz in 1942.

So, there was just extensive damage. Obviously, it's been repaired, blah, so all is well that ends well. So, like the main cool things about this cathedral, though, are that they have the earliest complete set of misericords, which we'll talk about what those are in just a sec, an astronomical clock, which is so cool,

I have photos up so you can see what the hell I'm even talking about, and then also the longest, uninterrupted, medieval, stone-vaulted ceiling in the world. This ceiling is beyond beautiful. I love Gothic architecture.

I love cathedral architecture specifically. Like, I am so far from a religious person, I am not religious at all. I find any sort of religion's architecture fascinating.

It is so beautiful, because there's so much attention to detail and so much crafting and like, I don't know, I just find it really interesting and all the symbolism and everything. This building, the ceiling, though,

Is beautiful. You can see all the ribs and everything. Just go check it out if you're listening to this.

It is really pretty. Anyway, so I teased what misericords are. They are this little shelf that was on the back of like a seat or something or like, I think, sometimes on a wall, also.

I'm not a medieval historian, so I'm not too fond, no, too familiar with that. But it's like a tiny, little shelf, and it's super decorative and everything, which we'll talk about some more of that. But essentially, it was to help people who are standing for long periods of prayer if they needed to lean back on something without actually sitting down.

So, it's kind of like a little like booster seat without fully sitting, so there it's really interesting. We should bring those back.

So, these misericords are beautiful and super detailed. I'm looking at a couple right now on my laptop, which is why I'm looking down. So, in the cathedral, there are 50 of them, and they date between two different time periods.

So, the first time period where they're like prolific is 1220 to 1230, and then the second installment was like 1250 to 1260. What's even cooler about this, though, in here, which we'll get to the excavations in just a sec. But what's even cooler about the misericord in Exeter Cathedral is that they have the earliest known wooden representation of an elephant in the UK in one of these.

Fucking sweet. The clock also that I teased, it's really fun, very beautiful. It was installed between the 14th and 18th centuries, so it just it literally spans this entire time period.

I think the earliest part of the clock dates from 1484, and it's the lower dial within the clock face. The upper dial, which was kind of like the last thing that was added, allegedly, according to what I read, was added in 1760. So, just big 300 year time span almost.

Anywho, back to the excavations and the current work that is being done on the cathedral. Work on the cathedral started earlier this year, so earlier 2023, in February, March kind of this past year,

The remains of an early Roman street and timber buildings were found, as well as the wall of an ancient Roman townhouse. The street and the early timber buildings date from circa 50 to 75 BCE, and then the townhouse is probably between the 3rd and 4th centuries, which is really fucking cool, because you have all of this ancient history everywhere, and you just don't know it.

I don't know, I thought that was really neat. So, all of this to get to the current discovery, which is the point of this story. I'm sorry, I just got so in the weeds, because I just, like I said, I find cathedral architecture just so interesting.

Just any religious building is interesting. Anyway, the latest discovery that they found on this site were the foundations for the cathedral's original high altar from the early 12th century.

They also, too, found tombs in a crypt, but these were empty. Is it immaculate rising? No.

So, within the cathedral, in there are a lot of different tombs and crypts and things like that, and it's a lot of bishops, obviously, who are buried there. So, these specific tombs were thought to be of Bishops Robert Warelwast and William Brewer from the 12th and 13th centuries, and then their bodies were actually moved in 1320, so it makes sense.

Things add up. It wasn't like a immaculate whatever, what the hell is that? Rapture, or whatever.

So, or maybe it was, I don't know. So, anyway, that was basically it for the story. They're revamping the cathedral to make like a walkway between two of the buildings, like a covered walkway,

And then it was also to install a new shop, a heating system, and bathrooms. So, that's like the larger portion of this project. So, currently, archaeologists are digging beneath the floor, and then that's where they've found all these wonderful, fun things.

So, that's basically it for this story, so on to the next one.

A mysterious arrowhead that was found in Switzerland in the 19th century might actually be made of meteorite. This is really fucking cool, and the research was just done on it recently, too, so it's just it's super neat. So, this arrowhead itself weighs 2.9 grams, which is very, very light.

Metallic iron was available to early humans in the form of rare meteoritic iron. Sorry, that's It's a hard word, because there are a lot of I's. Meteoritic iron, before the smelting of the metal from oxide ores started.

The use of meteoritic iron has actually been found in many Eurasian and North African countries. As a material, it's renowned for its strength.

Modern day findings, though, in Central and Western Europe are pretty rare, and they're currently restricted to two sites in Poland. So, there have been different items that have been found at these two different sites. So, there are the two Czechtowas, Kraków, apologies for mispronunciation.

These two bracelets were found at one site, and then the Woskowice axe was found at another site. In total, across Eurasia and North Africa, only 54 individual objects have been found that have been made of meteoritic iron. There are also findings, though, in other parts of the world, like North America and Greenland.

I think specifically Canada, in North America. So, a little north. As I teased, this arrowhead was found in the 19th century, but it's just now being tested.

Researchers tested this arrowhead against two different meteorites,

So there's the Twannberg meteorite, and then the Kaalijarv meteorite from Estonia, and apologies for mispronunciation. The Twannberg, upon impact, it split into multiple pieces, so then it was in multiple different areas across the globe. The researchers ran a wide array of tests, because they assumed that this meteoritic iron came from this Twannberg meteorite.

Well, so the researchers, after they did a wide array of tests, they came to the conclusion that the arrowhead itself was from the Bronze Age, however, it wasn't from the Twannberg meteorites, because those might not have been available during the Bronze Age. So, this arrowhead made from IAB meteoritic iron, which I guess is like a grading system for it, if I'm not if I'm wrong, let me know in the comments below.

So, it's believed now that this arrowhead might be from actually another meteorite, which is the Kaalijarv meteorite that I mentioned before. This meteorite made impact circa 1500 BCE, so that's actually it's closer to the correct date for the creation of this object. But it's still totally inconclusive.

The researchers do want to test this arrowhead in relation to various other meteoritic iron objects, like chisels that were found in King Tut's tomb, amongst a wide variety of other objects that have been found. Researchers also want to look for more items that share common similar properties between this arrowhead and the other items, just to see, you know, was trade more expansive than we thought, and a little bit earlier than we thought?

Hopefully, there'll be an update, because that's really freaking interesting, both for the meteorite and then also for trade,

Like that would that would definitely provide a lot more context. So, on to our next story.

So, if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know that I love a fucking hidden image in a painting. It is like my favorite thing. I love learning about artists reusing their canvas and how the first iteration is buried underneath the archaeological paint, I don't know.

I could write a whole fucking poem about how much I love hidden images in paintings, it is insane. I am obsessed with it. So, today we're actually going to talk about a painting by René Magritte, who's one of my absolute favor- favorite artists.

He was a Belgian surrealist painter, and I just am obsessed with his work. I actually have a sticker in my Etsy shop that is based on one of his most famous paintings, so blah, love Magritte.

Anyway, today we're going to talk about specifically, though, a female portrait that was just found under the surface of a Magritte painting. This is really neat, and you can actually see it, too, which is even cooler. So, the painting in question is, apologize for mispronunciation.

The painting is La Cinquième Saison, which means the Fifth Season, and it measures roughly 24 by 18, so this is a horizontal piece. This canvas depicts two men walking toward each other, and like, they're about, they're almost about to intersect. So, they're like facing each other, but they're not actually looking at each other.

Well, it's difficult to tell, because they don't have faces. They're very abstracted, but you can tell it's two figures, two guys in suits with bowler hats, they have their little suits on, and they're both carrying a painting under their arm as they're about to pass each other, and the men in suits with bowler hats is a very common motif in Magritte's artwork.

So is also the idea of having a picture within a picture, because if you look at these paintings within the painting, within the larger painting, you can see that there is like an image to it, so that's yet again another common Magritte motif. The background itself of this image appears to be kind of non-Descript, but you can tell it's like some sort of city, like European city or something like that, and all of it is pretty abstract.

You can still tell that these are figures, but it's not, it looks more impressionistic, if anything. Like I said, though, a female figure is beneath the paint. She was revealed recently using infrared reflectography.

It's currently unknown who this female is, but it's largely believed now to be Magritte's wife and muse, Georgette, and researchers also state that this portrait underneath this other painting was definitely painted by Magritte.

Researchers know that there's a pale, yellow underlayer in the section corresponding to the hair of the hidden woman, indicating that she was a blonde. But, Georgette herself was actually a brunette, so this is a little weird. But, the figure has an oval face, nose, and hairstyle that are consistent with Georgette, so that's why they thought, "Oh, okay, this is going to be her, and maybe he just did different hair color, because why not?

Creative license." Now, I teased that you can actually see this underneath the painting. You can see her bright red lipstick. Like I said, the image is 24 by 18, but it was actually, the portrait as it was painted was 18 by 24.

So, if you look in the middle, you can see her red lipstick is still apparent in this image of the two guys walking toward each other. Now, if you look, if you're listening to this,

You have to look it up on your own, but if you're watching this, I have it highlighted up here. You can see between where the two guys, their paintings are just about to meet in the middle, you can see this little touch of red, and that's where her lips were. Isn't that fun?

I don't know, I love being able to see that, and it feels very purposeful, too, in a way. Or Magritte was just like, "Eh, good enough." I just find it very interesting. Another way that the researchers were able to prove that this is a Magritte painting underneath is that the portrait itself is stylistically similar to portraits that Magritte painted a year later, where they have this like realistically rendered face, but then they kind of have this like swirling, stark sort of background behind them.

Additionally, it's also just unclear why Magritte ended up, I mean, he didn't like write it on the back of the painting,

But it's unclear as of now as to why Magritte specifically painted over this portrait, and chose to do a very different image on top of it. It could just be, you know, he didn't have a lot of money, so he wanted to save money and just paint over a canvas. Maybe that portrait was just a test for him, and he was just trying to see, "Oh, okay, if I handle the figure this way," I don't know, it could be anything.

But this research was done e- as part of a larger project, and it was a partnership with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Belgium and the University of Liège in Belgium. They looked at a series of 50 works dated between 1921 and 1967, and all of their findings will be published later this year, so I am very excited to see what this entire publication holds.

If they've already found this, I'm very curious, and I hope, hope, hope that there are even more hidden paintings, because I love it.

Okay, on to our last and final story. So, we are going to talk about humans versus babies. No, we're talking about adults and

Babies. I almost just said it the reverse again. I give up.

Anywho, an attraction to art might actually be uncontrollable. It might be part of your primal, who you are, specifically to the work of Van Gogh. I got so much fucking shit on basically every platform when I talked about Van Gogh in a couple other episodes, like a couple episodes ago, just because I didn't want to have to say "Van Gogh" the whole time.

Do you know, do you hear how gross that is? No, I'm not saying that. I'm American.

I'm just going to fucking say it how it makes more sense for me, because lyrically, that is how I talk, and it's easier for me versus if I have to stop and think, "Oh wait, now I have to say Van Gogh."

So, I'm not doing it. I'm saying Van Gogh. I'm sorry if you hate it, but go fuck yourself.

Anywho, today we are talking about a new study that was published in the Journal of Vision. The title of it is Chromatic and spatial image statistics predict infants' visual preferences and adults' aesthetic preferences for art. TLDR: Do babies and adults like art the same way?

Do they look at the same things? Do they like what they see? Blah.

So, basically the entire gist behind this whole study is to investigate the basic visual stimuli and aesthetic preferences between babies and adults, and see if there's actually a match. So, this is kind of like a nature versus nurture debate, to see if there's kind of like this biological

Way that we look at art, and that we respond to art, and that we actually like, that we find like a pleasantness to art, and specifically talking about it at various life stages. So, like does it change from birth? Do infants like something specific?

Do adults like something totally different, because of life experiences and stuff like that? The researchers in this study note that there were previous studies that have been done before, on how young infants look at different things specifically, so like how they respond to visual stimuli. However, there are many different factors that can influence the way that they look at things, such as visibility, complexity, novelty, familiarity, and potential for learning.

The researchers do also note, too, in the intro to their study, that there's still some evidence that some aesthetic responses in adults can be traced back to a visual,

A primal visual preference, also noted in infants. So, one of the examples that they provide is the preference for attractive faces versus unattractive faces. So, adults and babies both have a preference for attractive faces versus unattractive ones.

The same can also be said of colors. The more saturated the color, the more that babies and adults will look at them, and the more that an adult will kind of be enamored with it. So, how did this study work, and where does Van Gogh come from?

In the study, they had 24 infants between 18 and 40 weeks participate, and then, obviously, with their caregiver, because they can't really hold an iPad, or they could, but I digress. The babies had no family history of color vision deficiency and no known neurological or visual conditions.

There were also 20 adult participants, because again, like I said, you need to have the test subjects, between, so the adults were between 18 and 34 years old. The adults were allegedly art naive, and were tested for normal color vision so they could actually participate realistically within the study. So, all of the participants were given 40 high resolution images of landscape oil painting paintings by Van Gogh, and these were chosen as the visual stimuli.

These were all landscapes, so no human figures, they were completely saturated with color, and each painting itself was cropped to a square, and then the square was put against a gray background. The images were then presented in pairs, and they were changed for each participant, I think just to remove the bias of like left-right preference and things like that, and then they also switched the order

For different participants. So, you might see these two paintings, but then Sally Bob might see two other paintings first, so they just did that just to make sure that there wasn't like, "Oh okay, I prefer this one first just because it's first for everybody and it's on the left, because I love the left," or whatever. You're probably like, "How the fuck were infants doing this?" So, the adults did this in person.

Infants, though, were seated in their caregiver's lap within their home, and then they were sat 30 cm in front of an iPad, which it was the same distance I think for the adults as well, and then for the babies who were remote, the researcher, they were on a Zoom call, the researcher then would control the display. So, for the babies specifically, I believe, I don't think this was done for the adults, if it was it would be very funny,

Before showing them the images, each infant was calibrated with a series of images beforehand to be able to code decode what they ended up looking at, because obviously these infants can't communicate the same way that we do as adults. So, they wanted to trace kind of where their eyes went and what they sort of fixated on.

So, how long did they stare at this specific color, this specific hue, this specific luminance, like all these various different things, what did they gravitate more toward, because then later researchers could use that to be able to decipher the findings when they looked at the paintings. So now, let's talk about the results.

The researchers, obviously, this is science, so they took an average for the babies and the adults, and then cross referenced it. They found that infants looked longer at the paintings that adults

Also preferred. Quote, this is a quote from the study, quote, "The amount of variation in the luminance and saturation of the art's pixels contributed to both infants' visual preferences and adults' aesthetic preferences, potentially identifying two quote, perceptual primitives of aesthetics that can be traced back to early sensory biases in infancy." Now, there were some similarities and some differences, but some of the similarities, like both adults and children preferred art with few straight lines, so instead of having very harsh sort of just like right angles and things like that, both babies and adults tended to prefer the artwork that had more curving lines, which I can't think of a fucking Van Gogh painting that has a straight line, honestly.

But,

I digress. So, they preferred curving edges, so more kind of like organic forms is how you could think about it. Hue was also super important, but that actually still varied between the two groups.

So, like they both had a preference for paintings that had stronger hues and stronger colors and things like that, but allegedly adults preferred green and yellow, but babies only preferred chartreuse, which I pretty sure chartreuse is like a greenish-yellow, but I don't know, it's not my research. But like I said, there were also some differences.

So, there was a specific preference for fractal size, apparently adults seemingly were more fixated on fractal size. Again, I didn't This was a very heady sort of study to read, so I was like, "I don't know what most of these words mean." You can only Google so much. Apparently adults had a larger preference for fractal size.

Infants didn't prefer complexity in the artwork, which obviously makes sense. Adults, though, seemingly preferred more complex artwork, which could be attributed to, you know, a 14-month-old baby or whatever versus a an 18-year-old, a 30-year-old, like very different life stages that you're in, so you've had different experiences up until that point, which can then dictate sort of what you prefer.

Overall, though, at the end of the study, the researchers did say that there was a significant relationship between infant looking and adult looking. So, there is some sort of primalness in us where we are like drawn to certain things. So, like I mentioned, it's the stronger saturation of color, so like the bolder colors, the better, I guess.

Also luminance in the art, so like the brightness of it. Is it brighter, is it darker?

And then, like I mentioned also, the rounded, more curved lines versus sharp lines. The researchers do, just at the end of their study, they do note that there might be additional differences between various different art types and genres and things like that, but I think that's that's a study for a different time in the future, so I just thought that was really neat.

So, apparently we do all have this in us where it's just like, "No, like I like this." And I think that's also interesting to note, too, because then it's like, "Okay, well I like this. Well, why do you like it?" I mean, I don't know, but that's the benefit, too, of art history. If you're really into art is being able to kind of develop that language for yourself.

I mean, I had the same exact thing where it was like, "Well, I don't know why I like this, I just like it."

Anyway, I just think it's really interesting, so we will I guess use that information for something, I don't know. So, that'll do it for this episode of By Amara. What do you think?

Are babies adults? Are babies human? Fuck.

Even when I'm trying to make a joke, I fuck it up. Anyway, are babies human? Let me know in the comments below.

If you liked this episode, please be sure to like it. It helps me, and if you have any creators that you also like their stuff, please make sure to like it just to help them rise through rankings and support them, and all that fun, wonderful bullshit. This is the society we live in.

If you like the show or you like me, subscribe. If you don't, I'm sorry, and you should have a good day. Okay.

Anyway, I'm Amara Andrew. Never stop creating.

I can't fucking believe I said, "Are babies human?" I mean, I don't think so, but whatever.