Read an interesting review of Jonah Lehrer’s book Proust was a Neuroscientist by Greta Munger of the blog Cognitive Daily (which in my opinion is one of the best ScienceBlogs.com blogs).
In her review, Greta mentions that in her classes “[students] have to write a few paragraphs to earn ‘culture points.’ They must consider how psychology connects to art…” In response her assignment, some of her students offer unique perspectives; however, most students tend not to get far beyond the visual aspects of the work: “I get a lot of discussion of the Gestalt grouping principles with paintings.”
As I’ve been going back to school for psychology myself, this intersection between psychology and art is fascinating for me. There are some interesting books, papers, and discussions out there on the topic, but often I find that psychologists often fall into the same trap as Greta Munger’s students do. Ramachandran may have some fascinating things to say about the Cognitive Science of Art but he too fails to get past the surface visual nature of the art.
This sorta thing happens a lot with people lacking knowledge of the arts. I’m speaking mostly of those whose only experience of art is the art history museum where contemporary art means having a couple pop art paintings. If they were introduced to a wider expanse of art — especially some of the rich history of performance art — they would realize that symbols, language, meaning, ritual, emotions, relationships, human nature, communication, sociology, politics, and fun are all part of the artistic palette.
I find the easiest way to break people out of their tired purely formalist perspective is to tell them to approach art like a it’s a form of communication. Often the artist is attempting to communicate something to the viewer; sometimes they are selective with the type of viewer and sometimes they are just talking to themselves (as most of the abstract expressionists were in my opinion). Alternately, they may not be communicating themselves but rather creating a space or moment to engender communication or connection between members of the audience.
The palette that the artist uses — color, shape, size, movement, position, symbols, emotion, words, beauty, shock, humor — are all tools for creating a communication that falls outside of what we typically recognize as language. All of which is ripe for discovery and criticism from a psychological perspective and it is in these intersections where my fascination dilates my pupils.
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I am interested and somewhat dissapointed to learn that psychological analysis of art is at such a primitive state. To me, it is obvious that art isabout so many different things, just as you state. But then, this is an understanding that took me years to develop, so I suppose “non-specialists” can be forgiven.
I concur that art is most fundamentally a form of communication, and a non-linguistic one at that. It is concerned with the entire human experience, not all of which there is currently language for; in many ways, art creates language. I will also say that it also seems to me to be deeply tied with emotion.
Has anyone done fMRI studies of people experiencing art? A cross-medium study which controls for “art/not art” might be very revealing. That is, exhibit music, film, literature, and other art forms to the subject, and also audio, visual, and lingustic stimuli that are not art (test patterns? random words? nueroscience papers?) In principle, one could identify brain regions that are active across all arts, but only arts, and may thus be involved in the experience of art.
Of course, inference from fMRI results is iffy at best, it’s probably more complex than that anyway.
Having checked up on Ramachandran’s work, I think the primary thing that is missing is comparison with the process by which artists actually create art. Eg,
> A nude wearing baroque (antique) gold jewellery (and nothing else) is aesthetically much more pleasing than a completely nude woman or one wearing both jewellery and clothes, presumably because the homogeneity and smoothness of the naked skin contrasts sharply with the ornateness and rich texture of the jewellery.
True, there is a visual element here, but he completely misses the complex symbolism of nudity, jewelry, sexuality, etc. Having photographed near-nudes with various props I can catagorically state that there is much more to it than mere visual effect. As any photographer knows. Ramachandran’s analyses may apply best to abstract work.
I think his analysis of symmetry starting from “most biological forms are symmetric” also perhaps misses something: symmetric forms are more easily abstractable. They are very strong patterns, and the non-stop pattern recognition that the brain appears to do on all levels is essentially about abstraction / information reduction. We don’t need to invoke evolved hunting behaviour to explain the fovoring of symmetry recognition; the reduction in processing cost is enough.
Yet art is not so much about symmetry as carefully controlelled symmetry breaking. As many theorists have noted, there is a balance between recognizability and novelty. Too much familiarity and the art fades into the background. Too much novelty and it’s simply noise. Consider, perhaps, how your favorite pieces of music seem both new and obvious at the same time, or the verse-chorus-verse structure, or artistic “forms” in general. It seems to me there is an optimal “bandwidth” for artistic communcation, a rate of information delivery which stresses but does not overload the brain’s processing systems. Note that the processing required depends on what has been seen and understood before which. One could use this fact to explain both the generation and use of symbols: a symbol is a previously recognized pattern, a constructed abstraction.
This is all wanking; it is fitting a story to the observable facts, which is different from finding truth. I don’t immediately see how to produce a testable hypothesis from this model. However, it is at least representative of (small parts of ) my internal artistic process — I am constantly asking, “has the audience seen this before? Is it too obscure? Too new? Too obvious?”
Blah. Much else could be said here. Fascinating work, in any case, thanks for the link. Despite its shortcomings in many ways I like Ramachandran’s approach much better than academic treatises on aesthetics (which are also often written by non-artisits.)
Very interesting subject, one in which both areas of study would benefit a lot by a scientific approach to art, the psyche, and communication.
Wonder how the students would approach the assignment after experiencing work such as Olafur Eliasson, now at SFMOMA.
-Sorry Colin, was thinking of giving you all call but it was all very last minute. Enjoyed the show ‘tho.
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