Are You Detective Material? Practice Your Visual Intelligence | Amy Herman | Big Think

This is an interesting painting and I want you to just take a look at it for a few seconds before we talk about it.

I've looked at this painting a thousand times. I use it in my classes; I've seen it in art museums when it's been on view, and there are so many subtleties. But one of the assumptions that I made, not as an art historian but just a viewer of art, is that what I was looking at on the plate was a piece of meat, like a piece of ham, with an eye in the center.

When I first showed it at one of my classes, I said, “Okay, who's going to tell me what they see?” Someone raised his hand and said, “That's a big old pancake on the plate.” I would have never considered that it was a pancake. Is it a material distinction? Maybe, maybe not. But he was so sure that it was a pancake and I was so sure that it was a piece of meat.

While it might seem like a really subtle distinction, it's not if you think about something like eyewitness testimony. “Well, he was wearing a red sweater.” “No, he was wearing a blue sweater.” That's a big difference.

One of the things that reminded me of the Magritte painting was a crime scene in Texas. They were speaking to a witness and they said, “What did he look like? What did the suspect look like?” The witness said, “He had a cowboy hat on.” So everyone was looking, and in Texas lots of people wear ten-gallon hats. They were looking for a suspect with a cowboy hat on.

Well, it turns out the suspect was wearing a Dallas Cowboys cap. So the choice of words—it wasn't a cowboy hat; it was a Dallas Cowboys hat. The idea of saying what you see and being sure about what you say—that's how communication lines can get crossed.

Another interesting thing about that Magritte painting that I found fascinating—one of the wonderful things about writing the book is people write to you. They read your book and they send you their own observations. I received an email from a woman who said, “Has anyone ever told you when they look at that painting and describe it to you that the fork to the right of the plate is turned upside down and the tines are facing into the table?” I had never noticed that.

I had looked at the painting a thousand times. And again, material difference? No. Critical? No. Important? Yes. It's one of those details because if someone said to me, “Describe the silverware in the painting,” I would've said, “You have a knife and a fork.”

Sometimes it's those very small details of the tines facing the table that can bring a whole case together or crack a case or be that one detail that brings all the other pieces together...