Are lines always a means to more complex forms? Aleksander Rodchenko would not agree

Orientation selective cells of the visual cortex, which respond to lines of specific orientation, were discovered in 1959. They were first encountered in the primary visual cortex of the brain (area V1) – considered by many for much too long to be the only entering place of visual information into the rest of the visual brain.  Such cells have usually been thought of as the initial staging post for the elaboration of more complex forms. Some, indeed most, believe that they are the sole source for the elaboration of more complex forms such as faces, houses and objects. I am becoming increasingly skeptical of this view.

First of all, evidence which is largely ignored or at least marginalized, although it has been available since 1980, shows that V1 is not the only entering place of visual signals into other areas of the visual brain; there are alternative routes which reach them without passing through V1. Secondly, orientation selective cells are found in at least four other visual areas of the visual brain, and these cells survive functionally even when deprived of an input from V1 (i.e. they remain orientation selective cells); they are, very likely, fed by these alternative inputs. Thirdly, visual signals related to form (oriented lines) reach V1 and the other visual areas within the same time frame. And, finally, clinical evidence shows that humans can become agnosic (blind) for line drawings without at the same time becoming agnosic for real objects.

Hence, one must seek for sources besides V1 for elaborating orientation selective cells and complex forms, which is not to say that V1 cells do not contribute significantly to this process. But perhaps one should also consider, at the same time, that oriented lines stand on their own as forms in every sense, without their being mere “building blocks” for elaborating more complex forms.

Neurobiologists are not alone in considering oriented lines a means towards a more complex end. Mondrian, among others, sought for the constant elements in all forms and settled on the straight lines, provided they are vertical and horizontal. He abhorred diagonal lines, breaking off his working relationship with a colleague because “of the high handed way in which you have treated the diagonal line”. Ever the reductionist (though not accused of it, as we commonly are), he believed that “there are also constant truths concerning forms” and it was the function of the artist “to reduce natural forms to the constant elements”.

Many others, including Kazimir Malevich, Ellsworth Kelly and Barnet Newman, among others, have emphasized lines in some of their paintings, for different reasons. But it was perhaps Aleksander Rodchenko, the Russian Constructivist artist, who was most explicit in giving the straight line its autonomy. Influenced by Malevich and Suprematism, he wrote:  “ I introduced and proclaimed the line as an element of construction and as an independent form in painting”. In another context, he also wrote "I reduced painting to its logical conclusion” (although he, too, was not (as far as I know) accused of reductionism). There are, incidentally, very good perceptual reasons for why he should not have been accused of reductionism, but I will leave that to a future post.

The point of all this is simple: that lines are not only a means towards something more complex; they can also stand on their own as a form or forms; that, as the Gestalt psychologists emphasized, “the whole is other than the sum of the parts” and that a complex form, even when constituted from lines, is one that is other than a combination of lines – an important lesson in the physiology of forms; and that there is much more to the construction of forms in and by the brain than a single source which lies in the orientation selective cells of V1.

It seems to me that the physiology of form construction by the brain is still, in spite of all the excellent work that has been done in the field, a field that is rich for exploration but also requires some of the facts mentioned above to be taken into consideration. In that exploration perhaps the products of artists should also play some role, even if only a minor one.

© Semir Zeki

Colour Vision and Mathematics

 

Contributed by Mikhail Filippov and Semir Zeki

That the experience of mathematical beauty, derived from a highly cognitive source, correlates with activity in the same part of the (emotional) brain as the experience of beauty derived from sensory sources makes it interesting to enquire what other common factors mathematics shares with sensory experiences.

We choose colour vision as an example.

One of the primordial functions of the brain is to acquire knowledge and it has to do so in the face of continually changing conditions, often referred to as the Heraclitan doctrine of flux (after Plato). To extract that knowledge, the brain has to somehow stabilize the world, since it is difficult to acquire knowledge in constantly changing and often unpredictable conditions.

With colour vision, a surface or object of any colour can be viewed in different lighting conditions (for example sunlight or indoors in tungsten or fluorescent light), when the composition of the light (in terms of energy and wavelength composition) reflected from it and from its surrounds changes continually.

Yet, by a process  dictated by brain logic (usually referred to as an algorithm), the brain discounts these continual changes to assign a constant colour to the object or surface. This is what is meant by colour constancy.

Without it, the task of acquiring knowledge about objects and surfaces through colour becomes difficult, if not impossible; without it, colour would lose its importance as a biological signaling mechanism.

How it does so, in terms of the neural mechanisms involved, is not entirely clear but it does involve a specialized centre in the brain and the pathways leading to and from it. Through this process the brain stabilizes an ever-fluctuating world and is thus capable of acquiring knowledge about it through the colours of objects in it.

Our Universe, at the other end of the scale, presents an even more complex picture; but, similarly, the only way to acquire knowledge about it is to stabilize it by reducing all its complexity to some fundamental rules, reflected in equations or mathematical formulations.

These formulations are the products of a deductive logical system that belongs to the brain; their end-result is to stabilize the world through simple, all-embracing formulae, and hence acquire knowledge about it.

Thus the knowledge-acquiring system of the brain uses a logical system to acquire knowledge about, on the one hand, a sensory category such as colour, which is continually experienced throughout the day and, on the other, knowledge about the structure of the Universe which is not possible to experience directly. The end-result is to stabilize the world, sensorially in the case of colour vision and cognitively in the case of what determines the structure of the Universe

 

There is another feature that mathematical formulations about  truths governing the Universe share with sensory experiences such as colour vision – in both, there is one route and one route alone and, once established, there is no appeal against its conclusions.

All knowledge that a green leaf is reflecting more red light (as it commonly does at dawn and at dusk) will not enable one to see the leaf as red. The operation that the brain applies to generating constant colours in spite of variations in the wavelength-composition of the light reflected from surfaces and objects under different lighting conditions allows one to see the green leaf as green only (although its hue, or shade, will change under different illuminants).

And all cognitive knowledge acquired through daily experience, that time and space are separate entities, will not invalidate the conclusions postulated by the theory of relativity, which show that time and space are continuous, at least to those who know the language of mathematics. 

There are, of course, conditions, in which two fundamental truths are in apparent contradiction to each other, as in macro- and micro- physics.

Here, too, the brain’s system for acquiring knowledge through the sensory system shows strong similarities with its system for acquiring more abstract knowledge.

We will return to it in the next post.

Tracey Emin's "My Bed, My Bed" sells for £2.5 million.

This may come as a surprise to those who know about my distaste for much that passes for  “contemporary art”. Many would include Tracey Emin’s My Bed My Bed in that category. But Emin’s creation is something that I actually rather like. It is far better than much in contemporary art. I do not think that it is beautiful and would not want to have it in my house.  But it is something that I would seriously consider having in my art gallery, if I had been fortunate enough to have one. It is certainly far better than the creations of a certain gentleman whose works fetch equivalent, if not much higher, prices.

Apparently created when she was in depression, and in the state in which it was when she had not got out of it for several days, lying on the floor next to the bed is a variety of objects – condoms, cigarettes, knickers and so on.

Why would such a creation be of the slightest interest? Why would anyone even want to consider it a work of art?

I argued in my book Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain, that one of the functions of art is to give and gain knowledge. And My Bed My Bed gives, I think, knowledge about thousands, and more likely millions, of beds in bed-sitting rooms in all major cities of the world. It replays a scenario that you will find time and time again if you were to peep into bedrooms or walk into them un-invited.

It gives you knowledge about how many, many millions live like every day and their states of mind.

My Bed My Bed is therefore giving knowledge not only about bedrooms but also about states of mind that keep bedrooms in that state.

All art is abstraction. A portrait painting is great if it succeeds in being an abstraction of a certain kind of character. The actual person portrayed becomes irrelevant, because the portrait gives knowledge about a character, not an individual person.

And so with Tracey Emin’s My Bed. It is far, far more interesting than bisected sharks and cows. These also give knowledge but that knowledge is much better obtained in museums of natural history which are, after all, open to all.

Tracey Emin’s My Bed gives knowledge about something that is normally hidden from view.

So, I am not at all surprised that My Bed My Bed should have been sold at auction this month in London for £2.5 million. It is much better than many other works of art that fetch equivalent prices. It is one of the much better examples of contemporary art.

Art and science meet up, sort of...

Some time ago, I wrote about an empty canvas by Bob Law, entitled Nothing to be Afraid Of, which was to be auctioned for an estimated £60, 000. Law was described by the head of the contemporary art department at the auction house as the "most underestimated and overlooked minimalist artist in Britain...who didn't get the recognition that he deserved". In his painting he had apparently "... applied the seductive idea of nothing to a canvas, and asks the viewer to reflect”.

A somewhat puzzled David Hockney was reported as saying "It seems to me that if you make pictures there should be something on the canvas".

In the end, the empty canvas was never sold, at least not at that auction.

Now, I have just read in Real Clear Science about the shortest paper ever published.

It is entitled "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writer's Block" by one Dennis Upper.
The paper is an empty page. The referee's comments are reproduced below the empty page and read as follows:

"I have studied this manuscript very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays and have not detected a single flaw in either design or writing style. I suggest it be published without revision. Clearly it is the most concise manuscript I have ever seen-yet it contains sufficient detail to allow other investigators to replicate Dr. Upper's failure. In comparison with the other manuscripts I get from you containing all that complicated detail, this one was a pleasure to examine. Surely we can find a place for this paper in the Journal-perhaps on the edge of a blank page."

There is nothing on the page -- and yet "it contains sufficient detail to allow other investigators to replicate..."

Bob Law asked the viewer to reflect by applying "the seductive idea of nothing to a canvas"

Both scientists and artists can now, in the absence of all detail, create their own details.

So science and art do meet, sort of, don't they? After all, who can deny the similarity here?

Maybe someone should ask the auction house to sell a copy of the paper (preferrably signed by Dennis Upper) alongside Bob Law's empty canvas.

That will be a true meeting of art and science - united under money.

The question is: which one will fetch the higher price?

Wonderful, transient, art in the snow

 

The British artist, Simon, Beck has created some memorable art over snow at a ski resort in France, some of which can be seen here. The pictures are attractive to look at but they must be more exciting to see for real.

With every new snowfall, the creations will gradually change and then disappear altogether. The art is therefore, of necessity, transient and has, therefore, transience as an added element. I wonder whether these creations, and their transience, will not be even more appealing to those of a Japanese culture, which emphasizes transience (wabi) as a feature of beauty.

Perhaps some contemporary art gallery should buy good quality photographs of these creations, to exhibit permanently what is only transient.

Just a thought!

The great Stephen Hawking

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At a recent event to launch the exhibition on the Large Hadron Collider at the Science Museum in London, the great Stephen Hawking made what must seem to many an unusual declaration. He said, “Physics would be far more interesting if [the Higgs boson] had not been found”. Physicists would then have to re-think many of their fundamental ideas about particles and the forces that bind or repel them.

By saying so, Hawking was displaying both the qualities and perhaps the failings of scientists. Scientists, or at least the great ones like him, love the process of solving great and difficult problems. The solution may be quite marvelous and exciting to think about; it may even be very moving. But, once solved, it ceases to be a problem, which the enquiring mind needs.

So, what Hawking was saying, it seems to me, is that if the Higgs boson had not been found, the problem would have persisted and exercised and concentrated minds, which is what scientists like so much.

This of course is very distant from those who wish that a problem should never be solved, because they fear the results. Some have written of their fear of work on the neurobiology of love, because it will “de-mystify” it; others have written, of neuroesthetics, that they would find it unwelcome to learn what happens in their brains when they view a work of art or listen to music. Hawking wants to learn; they don’t. If Hawking prefers that the Higgs boson had not been found, it is simply that he relishes the process of discovery. He is not fearful of the results; they are.

Why, then, should this also be a failing. I think it is because lesser scientists (and let us not under-estimate the degree to which scientific progress also depends upon lesser scientists) can easily be distracted from trying to solve great problems into solving relatively minor ones, precisely because they love the process of solving problems! I have seen it happen many times.

But there are of course many problems that remain in physics and astronomy. And Hawking is hoping that physicists will move on to solving even grander problems about the nature of our universe.

Hawking is not afraid of de-mystification.  Not at all. The mark of a real intellect.

The paradox of Shunga

The quite wonderful exhibition, Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art  at the British Museum in London, carries with it a surprising paradox or contradiction, which no one has so far been able to explain to me adequately.

Japanese culture in general emphasizes the unstated and the understated, leaving much to the imagination. Yet Shunga art, which is basically erotic art, is the exact opposite. Here, almost nothing to do with the genitals is left to the imagination; instead they are given prominence, the size of the organs more often than not exaggerated beyond reasonable dimensions. 

Yet, in spite of this prominence, most of the rest of the body is covered up in many, if not most, depictions of sexual encounters; in many it is the genitalia alone that are exposed. There is of course, also something of the artificial in these works; couples make love with their clothes on; the hair is usually immaculately coiffed, in some a lady is having her hair combed while having intercourse while in others there are spectators, including children, witnessing the scene.

Why would a culture that has traditionally emphasized the understated produce work that is anything but under-stated? Some Japanese friends have told me that Shunga is nothing but pornography. I do not believe it. In spite of the fact that they may have been used as stimulants or as props for sexual pleasure, these are works of art as well. It is the brilliant depiction of interiors, the wonderful colour combinations, and the immaculate detail with which clothes are represented that turns them into visually pleasurable works. Indeed, it may be said that the genitalia are in fact often a distraction from the rest of the work, especially the depiction of the graceful women in the Shunga work of Kitigawa Utamaro. If  “art is fantasy”, as a quote at the exhibition proclaims, then it is those graceful figures that invite the viewer into a world of fantasy, not the prominently exposed genitalia. A critic once wrote that the sexual figure in Boticcelli’s Birth of Venus is not the naked lady but her richly dressed companion to the right, presumably meaning that it is the latter who draws the viewer into a world of fantasy. Maybe the great masters of Shunga art were trying to balance the explicitness of their images with depictions that allow a world of fantasy and imagination to come into play, all in one.

Shunga was apparently not legal in Japan for very long periods, though tolerated throughout and popular with all levels of society. It is, I gather, still frowned on in Japan. Indeed, I am told that, in modern-day Japan, adult movies in hotels often blur the genitalia – in striking contradiction to Shunga art of earlier times. And there is the contradiction: explicit pornographic films that blur the genitalia on the one hand (perhaps in keeping with the understated in Japanese culture), and great art that is implicit in everything but the genitalia (quite unlike the understated characteristic of Japanese culture).

The shocks of Francis Bacon

 

Francis Bacon claimed that he wanted to give “a visual shock”, and his paintings over the decades never seem to have departed from that aim. One of his first exhibitions, in New York, was described as a “chamber of horrors” and Margaret Thatcher, perhaps echoing the views of many outside the art world, once described him as “that man who paints those horrible pictures”. As I understand it, most people (even those who admire his painterly style) would prefer not to have his paintings hanging in their living rooms.

Last week, his three-panelled painting, entitled Three Studies of Lucian Freud, produced another shock – a financial one. It fetched a record price in New York, being sold for the sum of $142.4 millions. What is it that attracted buyers to spend so much (the bidding started at $80 million)?

I believe that Bacon subverted the brain’s normal representation of faces and bodies, which is what turned his pictures into shocking displays. The brain, it seems, cannot easily adapt to departures from what constitutes a normal face; it cannot adapt easily to the disfigured faces and bodies that Bacon specialized in, as a means of making images of the violent reality which, according to him, was so prevalent in the world. Hence the enduring shock effect that he produced.

Most of the discussions I heard and articles I read on this sale revolved around the topic of money. It is not that buyers were only speculating. Rather “deep-pocketed” buyers were also ready, it seems, to splash out considerable sums to buy paintings for their national museums or their homes. I am inclined to the view that when it comes to spending such vast sums, the long-term value is naturally important but cannot be the only or even dominant factor. So what, beyond the prestige of Bacon, drove prices so high? How could paintings reviled through the use of phrases like “horrors” or “mutilated corpses” or “extremely repellent”, which so many (including one on the radio last week) declared they would rather not see hanging in their living rooms, be so much sought after.

Perhaps we have a very deep-seated fascination with horror, especially when it is so evocatively depicted. Perhaps those who yearn to view such paintings are an infinitely more sophisticated and refined, indeed artistic, version of those who jam the roads on their way to see a crashed plane. There are, of course, huge artistic qualities to Bacon’s work – they are formally masterful works, with a quite spectacular, and often unusual, combination of colours. But the fact remains that they also depict mutilated and savaged faces and bodies – viewing of which almost certainly stimulates strongly sub-cortical centres such as the amygdala and the insula, which seemingly respond to fear and horror. And let us not forget that Bacon once said that he was not appealing to the intellect: “I make paintings that the intellect cannot make” he once said, which also implies that he was appealing to something more primitive in his work. In his quite wonderful book on Francis Bacon, Michael Peppiat says that Bacon’s aim was to deliver a visual shock before things got spelled out in the brain (or words to that effect). Perhaps, combining the aesthetically pleasing colours with the mutilation that he so consistently depicted makes the latter more palatable – and even pleasing. The more so if one knows that such a combination is a good place to park one’s money.

Silence at Götterdämerung

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This has been quite a Wagner week at the Proms in London, the first time that the complete Ring cycle was performed there, to celebrate the bi-centenary of Wagner’s birth.

I am sure that many much more qualified than me will write about this historic occasion. All I need to say is that I enjoyed it tremendously, in spite of the oppressive heat in the hall. As one critic wrote somewhere, “it can’t get much better than this”.

My purpose here is really only to record one extraordinary moment where nothing happened…at the end of Götterdämmerung. Maestro Daniel Barenboim held his baton up for a good 18 seconds after the last note, and everyone held their breath, leaving the gigantic hall, filled to capacity, completely hushed. There was a great deal left to the imagination in those few moments, much longer imaginatively than the real time of 18 seconds suggests. 

You can listen to the silence here at 1:21:13 onwards (for the next six days only).

I say nothing happened, but of course a great deal must have gone through the minds of the thousands attending the performance and the millions listening at home.

This was a perfect ending, for there was nothing left to say but much to think about silently in those few moments.

Indeed, one of the more remarkable features about this Ring cycle was the complete silence from the audience at those silent or subdued moments during the performance, a fact that Barenboim commented on, and thanked the audience for, in his speech at the end of the performance of Götterdämmerung.

I have written many times here about the value of the unstated in art and the silence in music. Yesterday, Daniel Barenboim demonstrated it to powerful effect.

Neurophobes and their neurophobia

 

I describe briefly a new and hitherto undocumented phobia, which I shall name neurophobia and those who display it as neurophobes. It is a somewhat new phobia, perhaps no more than 15 years old but it shares characteristics with other phobias. It is to be distinguished from the neurophobia that medical students apparently suffer from when studying neurology.

Neurophobia can be defined as a profound dislike, with various degrees of severity, for cognitive neurobiology and especially for neuroesthetics and for what these disciplines promise to show us.

Neurophobes are a motley crowd and, as with so many other phobias, they include people from different backgrounds and walks of life – philosophers of different degrees of eminence, humanists, religionists and even (surprisingly) some neurobiologists. This is not to say that all philosophers and humanists are neurophobes, far from it; many are interested and excited by the discoveries that neurobiology and neuroesthetics have to offer, but neurophobes are more vocal. Nor are all religionists neurophobes: I have had some very interesting discussions with some religionists, who have shown themselves to be hospitable to new ideas. Interestingly, I have not encountered neurophobia among artists (yet), which again does not mean that there aren’t neurophobes among them. Hence, neurophobia, like other phobias, cannot be associated with any particular grouping, either socio-economic, cultural or otherwise.

Among the characteristics of neurophobia, one may list the following:

1. An irrational fear: they invest neuroesthetics in particular with imaginary powers; these include weapons of mass destruction (WMD), for how else to interpret a statement that neuroesthetics “… will flatten all the complexity of culture, and the beauty of it as well”? and other similar statements.

2. A desire to find a place for the mind outside the brain, not perhaps realizing that cognitive neurobiology and neuroesthetics study neural mechanisms and hence the brain, and that their conclusions are to be seen in that context.

3. The use of emotionally charged and pejorative terms to dismiss neuroesthetics, terms such as “trash”, “buncombe”, “rubbish” and others like them, which have no place, or should have no place, in scholarly (and especially scientific) discourse. Hence neurophobia shares a similarity with other phobias in that it is not easy to rationalize it cognitively, an appeal to emotional and pejorative language being the only way out.

4. The pursuit of ignorance: As with so many other phobias, this amounts to the wish not to know. Hence, neurophobes don’t want any scientific ‘de-mystification’, which they would regard as a “desecration” (note again the emotive language) and prefer to live in ignorance. This is of course similar to other prejudices, where ignorance is the preferred course.

5. This arrogance displays itself in their protecting themselves against the facts. As I have said before, once they relegate our discipline to the status of “trash”, they need not bother with it. And there is, in their writings, good evidence that they have not read what we have written.

6. Arrogance of ignorance: neurophobes always assume that they know better, and hence lecture us on what they suppose we are not aware of. They never cease to tell us that art and beauty are not the same, as if we are not aware of that and have not written about it. They never cease to emphasize the importance of culture and learning in aesthetic appreciation, as if this is a new insight that we are not aware of.

7. Attack the methods: where all else fails, there is always recourse to attacking our methodology – principally the imaging techniques. They fault these for their spatial and temporal resolution (sometimes using emotive language) as if we are not aware of these shortcomings and do not take account of them in our interpretations. (I will have more to say about this in a future post.) I imagine most are scared of new technologies that will have greater powers of resolution.

This collection of characteristics is very descriptive of neurophobia, and they are interlinked. Hence if one detects one of these characteristics in an individual, one must suspect him/her of being a neurophobe and  display the other characteristics on gentle probing. Here I would advise caution; it is best to probe a little further before classifying someone as a neurophobe.

Of course, many of them preface their pejorative remarks with feint praise, such as "Neurology has made important advances" (rather like, some of my best friends are neurologists).

And finally…what one neurophobe says or writes is remarkably similar to what another one says or writes, reminding me of the famous line of President Reagan, “There you go again”. Indeed, so similar are their articles that it becomes reminiscent of another one of Reagan’s famous lines (about redwood trees): “Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”.

Explaining art through perception

 

The Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, London, is a delight and, quite rightly, oversubscribed. The number entering at any one time is strictly controlled, allowing viewers the space to appreciate the exhibits – quite unlike the disgraceful “cram them in” policy at the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery last year. Some of the exhibits, like the Chromosaturation of Carlos Cruz-Diez, or the Model for a Timeless Garden of Olafur Eliasson or Conrad Shawcross’ Show Arc Inside a Cube IV (a bit of an unnecessary mouthful this one) are ones to enjoy sensorially and to reflect about as much as one would about any work of art.

The weakness of the Hayward exhibition is that it pretends to combine science with art, or rather give a scientific explanation of the artistic exhibits, when it should really be seen as an art show and a delight to the senses, or should have appended to the exhibits something that is scientifically valid. As it is, the show was spoiled somewhat for me by the explanations appended. At the entrance, the viewer reads that “Vision is the least reliable of the senses”. What is the basis for this? Many, probably most, neurobiologists would argue exactly the opposite; it is the most reliable of the senses, perhaps reflected in the fact that so much of our brain is devoted to vision.

We are then told that “What we see, or think we see, is not always how things are”. This is a profound misunderstanding of the workings of the brain – for what we see and experience is dictated by the organization of our brains, and is precisely how things are in perceptual reality, however that reality may depart from the “objective” reality. That is why, at my own exhibition at the Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan (Bianco su bianco: oltre Malevich), the visitor was welcomed with the following statement: “The only reality we experience is brain reality”.

When one looks at the Hering Illusion, the two straight lines, which are parallel, appear perceptually to be somewhat curved. The perceptual reality dominates even when one knows that the two lines are straight and strictly parallel. Or consider the rapid motion in the rings in Isia Leviant’s Enigma; to those who see the movement, there is no doubting its reality, even if there is no actual movement in the rings.

It never ceases to surprise me that we downgrade our true perceptual reality in favour of the “objective reality”; the former is always what it does not seem, while the latter is always true. This gives to the reality we experience a subservient place when in fact the only truths that we are able to experience are brain truths.

I am not saying anything particularly new here. Immanuel Kant said it long ago – that our knowledge of this world is a compound of the objective reality and the operations of the mind; we can therefore never know the thing as it is (Das ding an sich) because our only knowledge of the world is through the operations of the mind (brain). In discussing the philosophical importance of colour vision, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote of  its importance for understanding the “Kantian doctrine of the likewise subjective, intellectual forms of all knowledge” – in other words that all knowledge is mediated through the operations of the brain.

This exhibition pretends to explain the visual sensory process through art. Thus, the exciting Chromosaturation of Carlos Cruz-Diez has appended to it the following: “since the retina perceives a wide range of colours simultaneously, experiencing these monochromatic situations causes visual disturbances”.

Almost everything in that statement is incorrect. There are no monochromatic lights in the exhibit (all the lights are broadband although there may be some dominance of one waveband over the others in some), the retina does not “perceive” colours, and there is no “visual disturbance” but only visual sensory excitement, leaving one wondering where the “misty” environment induced comes from. The exhibit would have been better without these incorrect explanations. Why not call it an unusual visual experience instead?

Perhaps artists do not read about advances in science – why should they after all? Perhaps we do not explain our findings properly. Whatever the real reasons, here is a good example of artists and curators trying to explain perceptual processes through artistic achievements and doing so very badly and, worse, inaccurately. It is exactly the reverse of what neuroesthetics has been falsely accused of doing, namely explain works of art through neuroscience, even though that is not its aim (see this post and this post).

Hence, my advice is – go to this delightful exhibition and enjoy the exhibits as creative works of art. Many might want to do more than that; they might wonder what these exhibits tell us about the brain’s perceptual mechanism. But, please ignore the explanations appended to the exhibits – they say nothing about the visual process, or about the sensory brain or about perception, which is not to say that viewing these works does not raise questions about sensory processes.

Here, then, is an exhibition which inspires thinking about the operations of the brain. It is not what it pretends to be, namely an explanations of overall sensory processes. It is a good illustration of how works of art can inspire neuroesthetic studies.

Good money for bad art

This is getting better and better!

A really shabby and botched restoration of a minor work in a small church in Zaragoza, Spain, by an unknown artist (?)/ restorer (?), Cecilia Gimenez, was hailed by many as a real contribution to contemporary art, although it is only fair to add that many others laughed at it. I believe that a description of it as "an intelligent reflection of the political and social conditions of our times" is not far off the mark (lots of laughs here).

After attracting so much attention, it has of course become a celebrity - and celebrity status ultimately leads in only one direction -- money, lots of it.

And according to today's Guardian, this is exactly what is happening.

Now, after the church started to rake in the cash by charging the multitudes who came to view this bizarre restoration, which makes Jesus look like a hairy monkey, the restorer herself wants a cut of the cake. After all, at 4 euros per admission, this is not an insignificant sum. Hilarious.

See, I told you, if a curator of contemporary art had been wise and bought the work outright (when it would have presumably been sold for a song), all this money would now be flowing in a different direction.

New prospects in contemporary art

You just couldn’t make this up.

A new line has opened up in contemporary art…

Maybe it deserves a name, like The Power of Disfigured Art,

and a brief description, like the social relevance of the new contemporary art.

The disfigured fresco which I wrote about two days ago has now acquired an iconic status. According to reports, hundreds of visitors have been crowding into the little church to view it and express their admiration, forcing the little church to display it behind a security cordon. 

But, wisely, the little church has also set up a collection box, to swell its revenue from donations.

A petition has been signed by no less than 19,000 in less than two days, asking the authorities not to allow a group of experts to undo the “damage” that Cecilia Gimenez did to it in trying to restore it herself, which resulted in Christ looking like a monkey.

The story has gone viral on the internet. Many have tried to do similar “virtual” restorations on other iconic works of art.

The petition says that the Cecilia Gimenez’s restorative work has made of the painting “an intelligent reflection of the political and social conditions of our times” – a description that can hardly be bettered by the erudite descriptions that some in the art world attach to obscure pebbles and filing cabinets.

They see in the painting a “subtle critique of the creationist theories of the Church” and compare it in style to …wait for it… the works of Goya, Munch and Modigliani.

Well, a director of a contemporary art museum could not have asked for more.

As I said, a museum of contemporary art should acquire it now, while it is still (relatively) affordable, before it goes under the hammer at one of the world’s “prestige” auction houses (like the one which tried to sell (unsuccessfully) an empty canvas, describing it as one in which the painter “had applied the seductive idea of nothing to a canvas, [which] asks the viewer to reflect” and its creator as “the most underestimated and overlooked minimal artist in Britain …[who] didn’t get the recognition that he deserved”.

Do such descriptions differ very much from the descriptions in the petition quoted above?

The great Cecilia Gimenez has surely convulsed the art world, and may yet find herself among the celebrated artists of our time.

This story may, just, be a wake-up call in the art world!

But I rather doubt it.

New item for a contemporary art museum

An interesting story hit the headlines this week - the attempt by a Spanish pensioner to restore a 19th century Spanish fresco depicting Christ.

The result was a disaster and, according to one newspaper, made Christ look like a monkey. Another commentator thought that he looked like he has just come out of a stag party.

The fresco is apparently not very valuable in money terms. That must be an opinion about its financial status before the disfigurment was revealed.

It has now become a great celebrity.

What to do with it? Leave it as it is or try to restore it again?

Well, I have an idea.

Take it as it now is to a museum of contemporary art and exhibit it along with all those filing cabinets, beach pebbles, etc, whose aim, we are patronisingly told, is to make us think about our relationship to the work of art exhibited.

What better to make one think in these terms than this disfigured fresco?

What is more, given its new celebrity, it is probably worth a lot more than many of the filing cabinets and beach pebbles exhibited at some art galleries.

If I were the director of one of these art galleries, I would snap up this "restored" fresco at once! It would probably be more effective in fulfilling the mission of (as some custodians of art think) of making us think, it will draw large crowds (rather larger than the ones who come to see new filing cabinets in the art gallery) and it will increase the financial status of the gallery.

Well, how about it?

Anatole France and reductionism

The glib and shallow criticism of much in cognitive neuroscience, and especially in neuroesthetics, as “reductionist” is a facile rallying point for many who have a hatred for our subject because they seem to fear it so much.

But those who use this criticism so commonly should be more consistent, and extend their pejorative use of the term to the arts and the humanities as well. Yet I have not heard anyone denounce Mondrian because of his reductionist approach, nor have I heard any criticism of Clive Bell’s insightful question about what is common to all art on the grounds of reductionism.

Here, I want to offer those who hate neuroesthetics so much the chance to get their adjectives to work to denounce a literary work which is perhaps the ultimate in reductionism – Anatole France’s fable of a Persian king. It occurs in Chapter XVI of Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard, under the title of “L’Histoire”. I read it years ago and was much taken by it, perhaps because I am a reductionist. I reduce it further here, since I summarize what is already a short story.

On acceding to the throne of Persia, a young king assembled all the academicians of his realm and charged them with writing a detailed history of mankind, that he may learn from it to become a wise ruler.

The wise men deliberated and returned after twenty years with twelve camels, each carrying five hundred volumes. But the king could not find the time to read so many volumes, and tasked them with reducing the number of volumes “to the brevity of human existence”.

The academicians worked for another twenty years and returned with fifteen hundred volumes. But the king said, “I am getting old and cannot read all these volumes”.

The academicians returned after ten years with five hundred volumes but the king asked them to shorten it further so that he could learn, before dying, human history.

After five years, a lone academician carrying a single volume arrived at the palace. “Hurry up” an officer told him, “the king is dying”. The king looked at the academician and said, “So I shall die without knowing human history”.

“Sir”, replied the academician, “I can summarize it for you in three words: – they are born, they suffer, they die.”

 Interestingly, Joseph Conrad, in the Notes to his novel Chance, wrote the following: “The history of men on this earth since the beginning of ages may be resumed in one phrase of infinite poignancy: They were born, they suffered, they died.... Yet it is a great tale!”

But Conrad also added, “But in the infinitely minute stories about men and women it is my lot on earth to narrate I am not capable of such detachment.”

Do I hear them shouting “Literary trash”?  Do I hear them screaming, “Reductionists”?

Or do they reserve this only for neuroesthetics?

A reductionist exhibition

Last week I visited the much praised Courtauld Art Gallery exhibition on the parallel work of Ben Nicholson and Piet Mondrian. It was a very inspiring visit, not only for the quality of the works shown but also for the questions behind the work. All the praise lavished on it is deserved.

One critic summarized Mondrian’s work nicely, by writing of Mondrian’s ability “to cut to what is central and essential in form”.

Of course, “to cut to what is central and essential in form” – for Mondrian, the straight line – meant eliminating almost all details and all naturalistic representation of form. In the Courtauld exhibition, even colours are more de-emphasized than in many other canvases by Mondrian that I have seen – they are banished to the edge of the canvas, leaving the entire canvas as a set of vertical and horizontal lines whose intersections against a white background constitute rectangles – “the plurality of straight lines in rectangular opposition” as Mondrian himself once put it.

In the process, this art also becomes reductionist art! After all, if you try to reduce all forms to universal elements, what else are you but a reductionist?

And Mondrian said so himself: “To create pure reality plastically, it is necessary to reduce natural forms to their constant elements”.

The straight line also gained a prominent place in physiology with the discovery that there are many cells in the visual brain that respond specifically to straight lines. Such “orientation selective” cells, as they are commonly known, are considered to be the physiological building blocks for the construction of forms by the brain.

I suppose that is a somewhat reductionist approach too.

Inspiring and exciting though Mondrian’s works are, his researches did not lead to any convincing insights into how the straight lines are brought together to construct complex everyday forms.

And, since the discovery of orientation selective cells in the visual brain, neurobiologists have not quite figured out how such cells interact in the brain to construct more elaborate forms.

Of the other artist, a critic wrote that, “Nicholson’s adventure was to strip out all reference to the observed world”. This is not unlike Kazimir Malevich, the Russian Suprematist painter, who once wrote, “The artist has no further need for the objective world as such”.

Like Kazimir Malevich, Ben Nicholson emphasizes squares and, unlike Mondrian, he also has circles. The lines are there, but produced by shadows. I suppose that by concentrating on simple geometric forms alone and stripping away all reference to the observed world, both he and Malevich, as well as many others, were also being reductionist.

As far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong or reprehensible with reductionism in art. But it pleases me to note that neurobiologists – sometimes accused of being reductionists - have such good and worthy companions, as this wonderful exhibition shows..

As an aside, I was a little surprised to learn from this exhibition that Mondrian and Nicholson were quite so friendly. I say this only because of the use of circles in Nicholson's work. Mondrian never used circles or curved lines in his compositions. He even abhorred the diagonal line. He actually stopped collaborating with a fellow artist (Theo van Doesburg), writing to him, “Because of the high handed way in which you have treated the diagonal line, no further collaboration between us is possible”.