Why Some Shapes Are More Pleasing to the Eye Than Others

The ancient Egyptian pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens, Mona Lisa’s face and the head of George Clooney all have one thing in common. Their attractiveness is said to be based on the “golden ratio”, which is supposed to be the most aesthetically pleasing shape to the human eye.

The golden ratio, also known as the divine proportion, produces a shape similar to a widescreen television or a cinema screen and describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and half times its width. The proportion is said to pervade art, architecture and nature.

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The modernist architect Le Corbusier used the golden ration for conferring harmonius proportions on everything from door handles to high-rise buildings, whereas the surrealist painter Salvadore Dali deliberately incorporated the rule into his painting Sacrament of the Last Supper.

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Now a theoretical mathematician has come up with what he believes is a possible reason why the human eye finds shapes in these proportions so particularly appealing. It comes down to how easy it is for the eye and the brain to scan such an image for important details, based on our evolutionary history.

Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University in North Carolina said that the golden ratio – which was first identified mathematically by Euclid in 3rd Century BC – just happens to be the most efficient shape for visual scanning, which could explain why it is behind so many works of art and architectural wonders.

“When you look at what so many people have been drawing and building, you see these proportions everywhere. It is well known that the eyes take in information more efficiently when they scan side-to-side, as opposed to up and down,” Professor Bejan said.

“Scanning left to right is five times faster than scanning up and down and that is largely due to the left or right eye taking over when the opposite eye gives up. When you scan vertically, it’s like having just one eye. The eyes are also arranged on a horizontal axis, which happens to fit in with the landscape,” he said.

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December 29, 2009