Give yourself a uniquely uplifting, thought provoking, and inspiring gift today. Click on this link to watch an extra-ordinary artist at work:
An artist that helped recreate concepts like vision, perspective, and light in concert with scientists from Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
A 42 year old blind Turkish painter that outdid the renaissance master Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446), one of the most important architects of the Italian Renaissance, the creator of the concept of perspective, in a test in Florence, Italy, conducted by J. M. Kennedy, Professor of Perception Psychology at the University of Toronto.
Sitting on the steps of the cathedral of Florence and looking at the Baptistery, an octagonal Roman building, just like Brunelleschi did 600 years earlier, Armagan recreated perspective of the building, using only finger touch, no vision.
“ Mr. Armagan is an important figure in the history of picture-making, and in the history of knowledge. His work is remarkable. I was struck by the drawings he has made as much as by his work with paint. He has demonstrated for the first time that a blind person can develop on his or her own pictorial skills the equal of most depiction by the sighted. This has not happened before in the history of picture-making.” said John M. Kennedy, Professor, Perception/Cognition Psychology, University of Toronto at Scarborough, to describe Armagan’s role in revolutionary redefining of picture, not as the sole product of vision, but also a product of touch.
Esref Armagan , born without eyes due to a genetic mutation, in Ankara, Turkey, has taught himself to write and print. He draws and paints better than most sighted people by using his hands and primarily oil paints. He wants to be remembered, not as a blind man who could paint, but as a great artist with unique works of art who happened to be blind. (For his biography, click: )
Until Armagan came along, science has assumed that picture was a product of vision only. After all, how could a person, having never seen light in his life, draw objects in proper colors, place shadows on them, give the correct scale, and show all in perspective? Impossible.
A battery of tests changed all that. First, a team of Harvard neurologists scanned Armagan’s brain while he was drawing, only to be stunned by the results that those areas in a human brain associated with vision that were supposed to be dormant for a blind man were actually lighting up like Christmas trees! That changed all previous assumptions, information, and beliefs.
Then came the mother of all tests: could a blind man, solely relying on the sense of touch, recreate perspective of an object he has never seen or known about, under the watchful eyes of scholars in a meticulously designed test? (And for good measure, don’t tell the blind man that the test is of historic proportions as it recreates the invention of perspective during the Renaissance, pitting him against the Italian master Filippo Brunelleschi, the inventor of perspective in 1413, on the exact same location in Florence and the drawing same object.)
I will not steal the video clip’s thunder on how the test was conducted and what the results were. I took the time to bring it to your attention. Now you should take the time to see the phenomenal video. You’ll be thanking me that you did.
A Turkish artist’s revolutionary and multi-faceted contributions to science and art:
1- Picture is not solely the product of vision, but also of touch.
2- A blind man can beat his visual challenge to become a great artist and a painter.
3- There is really no limit to human achievement!