The Brain: Where Science Meets Art and Aesthetics

Scientists are discovering more evidence every day that our conscious actions are being controlled by our subconscious. As it turns out, though it's not terribly surprising, our emotional responses we feel toward pieces of art are controlled in much the same way. Long before the technology of brain mapping existed, however, philosophers were puzzling over what makes art Art, and what role beauty played.

The trend in the philosophy of Aesthetics (which is the study of the nature of Art and Beauty and how our senses react and respond to them) has been from a very tight definition of what constitutes art to a very loose one. It has also moved from valuing beauty above all else to all but dismissing it entirely. As the video Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts demonstrates, questions concerning the nature or art reached as far back as the fifth century BCE in Athens, the time and place of Plato. For him, art was deplorable, and only Beauty mattered. An image, he believed, was an imperfect idea of the real thing, and artists were merely aping, unsuccessfully, the Ideal version of the thing. Beauty, on the other hand, can only be contemplated as the real thing, not just a "copy of a copy," as Plato referred to art. In order to appear beautiful, it has to be conveying its own true nature of Beauty.

Aristotle, however, defended art as something that aroused strong emotions, and promoted good citizenship. From there, Neoclassical Aesthetics in the Renaissance developed the concept of "aesthetic disinterestedness," which meant that in order for a work of art to be appreciated as a work of art, it must cease to be seen for its practical use. People, like the Earl of Sharpsburg, spoke of how only those with historical and contextual knowledge and a fine sensibility could appreciate the Aesthetics of art. Kant put forth that humans were attracted to it because it did not bend to natural or social laws, and the judgment of what is art or beautiful is not rule-bound or universal, and that art can only be created by the "Genius artist," not mere skilled craftspeople. In the 19th century, Hegel asserted that art had reached an end--with Romanticism, art had reached its most spiritual and emotional while still imitating nature.

By declaring that art had gone as far as it could in that regard, art became more and more abstract and conceptual, with the Impressionists beginning this trend. Shopenhauer believed music, the most abstract form of art of all, to also be the highest form of art. By the 20th century, philosophers like Weitz were stating that to define art was impossible, for their were "no necessary and sufficient conditions" that could make something art. Instead of trying to determine what is and isn't art, one's time was better spent determining the concepts and meanings behind artwork, which is what the Conceptualists would focus on. Dewey's belief of art as closely tied to societal rather than personal feelings is probably still how many artists work today. No longer is the viewer just an observer, but he or she also informs the work of its meaning.

In CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics, two men of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux and Vilayanur Ramachandran, try to explain art and aesthetics in scientific terms. With the evolution of human beings, art became more refined at the same time that the human brain was getting bigger. There are, in fact, Darwinian reasons behind our appreciation of certain art elements. "Grouping" appeals to us so much, for instance, because it was used as a way of detecting potential predators. The neurological connection to the appeal of the "rules" of art is evident in the mapping of human brains, where the brain is clearly more stimulated and active for art that is, for instance, symmetrical, than art that is not. The evolutionary reason behind this would be that, in nature, symmetrical things would probably either be a potential mate, predator, or prey. Therefore, our brains are jolted into alertness when symmetry is presented. These theories almost feel disheartening. They appear to be proof for the belief that art can be scientifically created by just following certain principles of design, as Dow believed.

As I stated in the chapter two discussion, the philosopher's theory that I believe is currently the most important is Morris Weitz, the 20th century philosopher who believed that when people were asking "what is art?" they were asking the wrong question. A specific theory and definition about art cannot be done. He states in The Role of Theory in Aesthetics that "If we actually look and see what it is that we call 'art,' we will find no common properties" and that "Aesthetic theory is a logically vain attempt to define what cannot be defined...to conceive the concept of art as closed when its very use demands its openness." It is better, according to him, to instead explore the functioning of this open concept of art. Art is not what is dead, as Hegel declared, but the ability to define what can and can't be art is.

Changeux and Ramachandran's lectures were very intriguing. Changeux was admittedly hard to understand, both because of his heavy accent and the scientific vocabulary he was using. Both lecturers explained how different parts of the brain are stimulated by "underlying principles" of Aesthetics, and this is proof of a neurological connection. What I found interesting about Ramachandran's lecture was his explanation of the Peak Shift principle. He explains that people crave art that does not just depict reality, but depicts a hyper-reality--a reality that's more "real" than reality itself. This phenomenon occurs in nature--a baby bird will peck at the red dot on the mother bird's beak in order to be fed. When presented with the option of pecking the mother's beak or a stick that has an even bigger red dot on it, the baby bird will chose the stick instead, even though it does not resemble a beak or bird at all. This is because the abstract version of the beak still has the characteristic that matters most to the bird, only exaggerated. In the bird's mind, it is the mother load of all beaks. This is why people appreciate abstract art--it still retains the qualities of things familiar to us, just minus the superfluous information.

What I found most interesting about Changeux was not his compare-and-contrast brain maps. Instead, it was something he said about how, during the processing of the visual image through the limbic system to the prefrontal cortex (I could be getting this wrong), an "evocation of stored images and emotions" takes place, and this yields a subjective experience. Changeux is admitting that not everything about art can be determined through the instincts our brains have developed over thousands of years. In the end, it is still about the individual's personal experience that determines how they perceive and react to a work of art.

These videos added more of a context to the topics that have been covered in the textbook readings. We have learned about the major themes that can be found in art, and these videos help us understand why those themes are appealing to us.  From the textbook we learned about the tools we need in order to understand the meanings of art--such as form, content, context, and iconography--tools that we utilize consciously. From the videos, on the other hand, we learn about how we react to art subconsciously. By understanding both our conscious and subconscious means of interpreting art, we can better understand why we feel a certain way about a particular piece of art or movement.

I almost wish the first film could have been an assigned reading instead of a video. I would have rather read about the evolving philosophy of Aesthetics, because many names and theories were mentioned very quickly without going into much detail. It was hard to keep up and keep them straight, and fully understand what was meant. Because Aesthetics was not very fully explained in the textbook, however, it was nice to at least of an abbreviated history of the philosophy. The video gave more of a context for the themes and movements we learned about in the book, such as Romanticism. After all, art movements were shaped by the current prevailing opinion on what constitutes art, and vice versa. The second film explained why artworks such as Rathnasambhava, the Transcendent Buddha of the South are so appealing to the eye, through techniques like symmetry. Or how it does not matter that Susan Rothenberg's Maggie's Ponytail is not realistic, because it utilizes the Peak Shift principle and still depicts the essence of a ponytail. In the end, the videos and text explain the simple fact that there are many reasons one comes to make an artwork, and there are many ways of interpreting it. Some of these methods are biological and universal, and some of them are unique to the individual. Hopefully, there will always be at least a little mystery behind what makes a person fall in love with a work of art.