Visual agnosia in an artist.

This report describes a 73 year old left-handed male artist who presented with agnosic symptoms following an occipital cerebral vascular accident. Against a background of a memory disturbance, but otherwise essentially intact linguistic and cognitive capacities, the patient was generally unable to identify single objects on visual presentation, and displayed marked difficulty in interpreting complex objects, depicted scenes, and partially occluded figures. The patient's preserved ability to recognize geometric forms, to perceive optical illusions, and to copy designs, and objects with considerable accuracy suggested the clinical picture of visual agnosia. An examination was undertaken of the effects of this recognition disorder on the artist's capacity to draw. Despite an inability to recognize an object or scene, the patient retained various techniques (perspective, shadowing, designation of texture) which allowed him to copy the display in a veridical fashion. When displays were recognized, or when the patient was given only the name of the object and asked to draw it, he adopted a less slavish approach, characteristic of his pre-morbid artwork. While his post-morbid drawings bore a strong similarity to his earlier works, such features as insufficient differentiation of figure from ground, over-elaboration of detail, and areas of neglect revealed the debilitating effects of the recognition disorder. Moreover, an examination of the patient's strategies revealed numerous compensatory verbal and motor procedures which guided his drawing. Acknowledgments. We wish to acknowledge Dr. Prather Palmer, J.R.'s neurologist, for his cooperation and for making available his very thorough examination notes. Thanks also to Dr. Kent Stevens for providing the stereograms, and to Dr. Frank Benson and Dr. Edgar Zurif for their helpful comments on the manuscript.