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UNIVERSALS
IN ART AND THEIR BIOLOGICAL
ROOTS
Charles
M. Butter In Chapter 1 I point out
that several aspects of art, like art itself, are universal in the
sense that they are present in the art of cultures around the world,
from prehistoric to modern times. In subsequent chapters these features
of art – compositional balance, ornamentation, expressiveness,
symbolism and coherence – are described and illustrated with art from
various cultures. Each chapter then presents in non-technical terms
the brain system responsible for viewers’
perception of one of these features of art. In the final section of
each chapter, I show that this brain system evolved because it supports
certain survival skills. In a separate chapter I
make the case that visual imagery (visualization) plays a role in the
creation of art; imagery, along with its underlying brain system,
evolved because it facilitates many skills. The dependence of these
aspects of art on adaptive brain systems offers new insights into their
universality and suggests new answers to old puzzles. Why is balance
around the center pleasing and its absence disturbing? How do viewers
‘see’ emotions and intentions in art? Why is variety in unity a
universal principle in ornamental art? How do artists ‘project’ their
visual ideas on an external medium? A
biological approach to art does not imply that culture plays no role.
All human traits, including the making of art, are the result of the
interacting forces of nurture and nature, which I describe in
non-technical terms. Chapter 1 ends with a brief description of
beneficial interchanges between science and art. Chapter 2 first
describes how artists in different cultures (Mesoamerican, traditional
Chinese, 19th and 20th century European) created
pictorial spaces in which they present visual ideas. I then describe
how balance around the center (lateral balance) is achieved in these
and other works of art. Because lateral balance in art is universal, it
must be based upon “the makeup of the nervous system we all have in
common” (Rudolf Arnheim). Research shows the validity of this view:
Lateral balance depends upon a brain system that constructs a
representation of space in which we can search for and locate things.
After it is damaged, lateral balance in art can no longer be perceived
or created. I illustrate these changes in
space perception by describing a patient whom I tested after a stroke
damaged her brain. She ignored the left side of surrounding space or of
pictures and failed to orient (look to) to the left side of space. Her space perception also was biased: She
misplaced the center of pictures to the right side. She drew only the
right side of an object and placed it on right side of a sheet of
paper. After a stroke, the German artist Anton Raederscheidt painted a
remarkable series of self-portraits that depicted similar distortions
in the perception of pictorial space. He painted only the right side of
his face and placed it on the far right side of the canvas, where his
perceptual center had shifted. As he recovered, lateral balance in his
self-portraits returned. The paintings of other artists,
including Otto Dix, showed similar distortions of space following
stroke.
The brain’s system for spatial perception, which underlies
lateral balance in art, evolved because it permitted our primitive
vertebrate ancestors to orient in space and locate things to approach
and avoid. Lateral balance influences our preferences for mates as well
as art: Symmetric faces are more attractive than asymmetric ones.
Bodily and facial symmetry are perceived as signs of healthy potential
mates, illustrating Nature’s principle that we value things crucial for
our reproductive success. Balance, like beauty, is more than skin deep;
it is a spin-off of brain evolution with multiple
meanings, including tools, financial accounts, emotions, and judgments.
Chapter 3 discusses art
depicting human action and facial expressions. Human actions conveying
feelings and intentions are shown across cultures by figures frozen in
motion, illustrated with art from the San people (Africa), ancient We intuitively recognize
facial expressions of feelings and intentions in art from various
cultures, illustrated with African sculpture, the art of Breugal,
Daumier, and a 3-yr. old Japanese boy. Smiles depicted
in art of different cultures convey a variety of social emotions,
including pride or servility (illustrated here). Our interpretation of
these expressions sometimes requires cultural knowledge. Artists from different
use markers such as rings around eyes enhance to enhance expressiveness
(illustrated with Papuan New Guinean and Sumerian sculpture, the art of
Miró and a child’s painting). Exaggeration of eye size and
vertical elongation also enhances expressiveness (illustrated in art
from various cultures and in children’s art). We readily attribute
mental states to people represented in art (or literature) because
evolution endowed us with social intelligence, a set of ‘mind reading’
skills that evolved for communicating and getting along with others.
Social intelligence is a product of the socioemotional (SE) brain
system. This system is activated when subjects perform mind reading
tests. Damage to the SE system disrupts normal social behavior; it
impairs performance on tests of social intelligence and recognition of
emotional expressions in pictures. When the SE system fails to develop
normally, as in autism, social behavior is deficient, as illustrated in
the autobiography of In Chapter 4 I point out
that the “urge to ornament” (Adolph Loos) is universal and has left its
marks on the human body, clothing, utensils and buildings from
prehistoric times to the present, illustrated here and in other
chapters. Ornamentation across cultures shows variety in unity –
diversity of forms and colors organized in patterns (illustrated with
designs from As Ernst Gombrich
observed, a balance of variety and unity avoids the boredom induced by
excessive unity and the confusion resulting from excessive variety. The preference for this
balance depends upon the brain’s arousal system, which awakens us in
the morning and keeps us alert during the day. Underarousal leads to
boredom and sluggish mental activity; overarousal due to intense
anxiety or stress results in confused thinking and disorganized
behavior. Moderate arousal is associated with alertness and efficient
mental activity. We feel more comfortable when arousal is moderate than
when it is very high or very low. Arousal also affects
aesthetic preferences. Gerda Smets reported that patterns with both
variety and unity, which subjects preferred to patterns with excessive
variety or unity, elicit a moderate degree of arousal (recorded with
scalp electrodes). The less pleasing patterns (those with excessive
variety or unity) elicited very high or very low arousal, respectively.
Smets also found that subjects with high resting levels of arousal
preferred patterns that were more unified (and had less variety) than
those preferred by subjects with lower resting levels of arousal. Stimulation (or lack of
it) provided by the cultural environment influences how much variety
and unity we prefer in decorative art. The variety of colors
and forms in Tibetan wall hangings raise arousal from the low levels
induced by a repetitious lifestyle in monastic surroundings. In
contrast, the modern society’s increased pace of life may have driven
our arousal too high, inducing a preference for simple surroundings
where decorative variety is muted. The simple functional design of
contemporary furnishings may be a response to the same biological
imperative responsible for the current attraction of minimalist art and
music. In Chapter 5 I first present
examples of symbolic art and then contrast coherent meaning in symbolic
art (Holbein’s Henry the VIII) with ambiguity (Vermeer’s The
Art of Painting and certain Surrealist art). Traditional visual
symbols often reflect religious values (illustrated with Egyptian,
Hebrew and Buddhist icons and medieval European art). Examples of
symbols that cross cultural borders (the egg and apple) and symbols
that do not are presented. Symbolic art referring
to three themes – beauty and erotic love, fertility and nurturance, and
kinship and origins – is found in many cultures. Symbols of erotic desire
appear in carvings from The power of images to
convey religious ideas is facilitated by a natural correspondence
between image and idea; examples are provided by religious icons such
as the lotus, whose form corresponds to the Buddhist idea of harmony.
Similarly, allegorical art conveys themes by expressing them with
appropriate postures and expressions, illustrated in Romanesque French
frescoes and Ingres’ La Source. I use
this painting, and its theme of fertility, to describe how mental
links between images, feelings and ideas create visual metaphors and
give coherent meaning to symbolic art. An image becomes a
visual metaphor when it is linked with feelings and ideas in a coherent
mental network. Mental networks are
products of neural networks consisting of neural ensembles that encode
images, ideas and feelings and activate one another.
Neural networks evolved because they are adaptive and
flexible, as shown by studies in which subjects perform mental tasks
while brain activity is recorded. Neural networks and their mental
counterparts contribute to various mental skills including planning,
carrying on a conversation and problem solving.
Chapter 6 is concerned with visual imagery, from
which artists over the centuries, quoted here, have claimed that they
derive their visual ideas. It is likely that artists also use visual
imagery when they plan to paint a scene in the studio and to
reconstruct outdoor scenes. What we see and what we
imagine share many properties; consequently, artists can transform
their internal images into external images others can see.
Introspection shows that images of real things resemble our perception
of these things; images are confused with dimly illuminated real things
in laboratory settings. Cognitive psychology shows that images and
perceived objects are inspected, scanned and transformed similarly.
Imagery and visual perception also share the same brain machinery.
Visual images that are generated from memories stored in the brain’s
visual system, are displayed and inspected on the same visual map where
real objects are displayed. Visual imagery depends upon visual
experience: Imagery is absent or impoverished in people blind from
birth. Images are transformed with imaginary movements (e.g., imagining
one is rotating an object) by the same brain machinery that controls
real movements. The words of artists (quoted here) suggest that in
creating art, they generate images from visual memories, and then
inspect and transform them before projecting them externally. Imagery
evolved because it facilitates mental skills such as reasoning and
calculation and activities such as route finding, designing tools, and
technological and scientific discoveries. The last chapter deals
with the coherence of individual features in art so that unity is
achieved. I describe three kinds of
coherence in art: Coherence in forms and patterns, in scenes, and in
pictorial ideas and themes, illustrated here and in previous chapters
with art from various cultures. Each of these aspects of coherence
depends upon coherence in neural activity. The brain constructs forms
in neural ensembles that consist of interconnected neurons, each of
which codes a part of a form’s border. Form-encoding ensembles follow
rules of “good form” described by Gestalt psychology. The perceptual
coherence of forms depends upon coherent activity of neurons in these
ensembles, which is achieved by their synchronous firing. Coherence in
the art of indoor or landscape scenes is achieved when individual forms
fit together in a natural or familiar way (e.g., trees and roads, or
groupings of indoor furnishings). Coherence in scenes affects the
identification of objects: Subjects identify objects out of place (such
as a fire hydrant in a kitchen) in briefly-exposed scenes less
accurately than ‘fitting’ objects. Scenes are constructed in a brain
structure that assembles objects encoded elsewhere in the brain. This
brain structure is activated by pictures of coherent (but not
incoherent) scenes; when it is damaged, perception of scenes, but not
individual objects, is impaired. Pictorial ideas are illustrated here
and in earlier chapters with art from several cultures. This art
acquires coherence when ideas are integrated with visual features such
as forms, color and action. Coherence in
pictorial art (including symbolic art) is achieved when ideas and
visual features are integrated coherently in mental networks in which
they can activate one another (Chapt 5). Mental networks arise from
coherent neural networks in which neural ensembles show synchronous
activity. Coherent neural networks are activated when subjects examine
art. This book differs from
others on art and the brain (Semir Zeki's Inner Vision, Richard
Wohlheim’s Painting as an Art and Ellen Dissanayake’s What
Is Art For?) in that it describes particular aspects of art that
are universal because they depend upon the evolution of adaptive brain
mechanisms. The text is 200 pages in length, excluding end notes. The
book includes 62 illustrations, 55 in black/white and 7 in color.
The intended audiences for this book are art lovers, art
collectors, educators, students, curators, critics and dealers. It is
written in non-technical language. The author is a retired professor of
psychology and neuroscience and an art collector. He taught and
performed research on brain, behavior and mental processes at the
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