Bees prefer Van Gogh to other artists
Lance
By Martin Hickman
Published: 15 August 2005
With his swirling, expressive style of painting and his troubled
psyche, Vincent van Gogh has for decades been an inspiration for art
students, bohemians and romantics intrigued by tormented artists.
Now another, more colourful group of admirers can be added to his fans:
bumblebees.
According to a scientific study, a selection of bumblebees alighted on
the Dutch master's Sunflowers at the expense of other equally vivid
pictures.
Second place in the great apian art test went to the only other floral
picture shown, Gauguin's A Vase of Flowers.
But the scientists have an answer to the observation that the bees were
merely alighting on pictures of nectar-rich plants. The bumblebees were
not working from memory: they were laboratory specimens that had never
seen a real flower.
A team of "behavioural ecologists" from Queen Mary College, London
University, conducted the series of unusual tests in an attempt to
explore the relationship between art and biology. Four reproductions of
paintings were laid out on the bees' flight path - the Van Gogh, the
Gauguin and two more modern works: Still Life With A Beer Mug by the
French Cubist Fernand Leger, and Pottery by Patrick Caulfield, the
English pop-artist.
Researchers recorded how many times the bumblebees approached and
landed on each picture.
Sunflowers, one of the series Van Gogh painted in 1888 while renting
the Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France, fared the best. The
bees approached the yellow and orange painting the most, 146 times,
landing on it 15 times.
They approached Gauguin's painting from Tahiti in 1896 almost half as
often (81 times). But they buzzed on to it an impressive 11 times.
Perhaps aping contemporary taste, the bees were less enamoured of
20th-century artists, although they took a good look.
They flew near Caulfield's picture of interlocking jugs 138 times and
Leger's geometric work 117 times, but they landed on each just four
times.
Parts of the pictures, though, were of particular interest to the bees,
especially the blue areas, which researchers thought might be linked to
blue's association with high-nectar flowers.
The industrious bees were drawn to Van Gogh's blue signature, the blue
blooms in the Gauguin, and to a light blue square in Still Life With A
Beer Mug.
Professor Lars Chittka, of Queen Mary's School of Biological and
Chemical Sciences, suggested that the findings indicated that bees had
an innate attraction to flowers - and that the Van Gogh and Gauguin
captured the essence of flowers, despite being highly expressive and
emotive artists.
"The results show that the flower paintings have captured the essence
of floral features from a bee's point of view, and that these features
are recognised by bees that have never been exposed to flowers before,"
Professor Chittka, a specialist in bee navigation, said. "Flowers
contain all the goods that a bee needs to thrive - pollen and nectar -
and selection has therefore favoured bees with 'aesthetic preferences'
for those flowers which offer the best bonanzas."
Professor Chittka believed that humans, too, may have sound
evolutionary reasons for liking flowers, even though we cannot eat
them, which could explain their prominent place in the history of art.
Professor Chittka suggested that flowers may have acted as colourful
signposts, pointing the way to food sources.
He said: "Flowers point to important resources, for example the
presence of water, and future availability of fruits, nuts and honey."
The findings of the bumblebee study appear in the journal Optics and
Laser Technology.
Peter H.M. Brooks
> Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' are the bee's knees in the insect world
>
> landed on each picture.
> Sunflowers, one of the series Van Gogh painted in 1888 while renting
> the Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France, fared the best. The
> bees approached the yellow and orange painting the most, 146 times,
> landing on it 15 times.
>
series - the various sunflower paintings are quite different - as that
would control for style.
--
When we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must
all turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my
honour has lain bleeding this half hour--I stop it, by pulling off one
of my yellow slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the
opposite side of my room, with a declaration at the heel of it-- -
Tristam Shandy Chapter 4.LXXXIV.Laurence Sterne
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kames.smiths
"Lance" <lache...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote in message
news:1124366834.9...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I would find it surprising if bees perceived pictures of flowers as
flowers. Surely simpler explanations should be eliminated, such as
response to colour and perhaps shape?
Dave Smith