A carbuncle on the face of Istanbul

Istanbul is one of the most wonderful cities in the world. It has an extraordinary history, is rich in fabulous monuments and has a very privileged natural position by the sea - the Bosphorus dividing and uniting it at the same time. It is a delight to be in and I have made a point of visiting it regularly.

One would think that such a treasure is worth treasuring. Yet architects, presumably with the agreement of city planners, have allowed it to be defaced thoughtlessly. One hideous example of this is the huge Ritz Carlton which has been built in such a way as to obscure some of the loveliest views of the Bosphorus on the one hand, and to blight the serenity of a 19th century mosque on the other (see the pictures I took with my mobile 'phone below)

Far from being a delight, like some of the extraordinary constructions of Frank Gehry, the building itself is very undistinguished architecturally. It is a ghetto for the rich which can, regrettably, be seen from land, sea and air. There is no respite from it.

Prince Charles once described the Sainsbury extension to the National Gallery in London as "a carbuncle on the face of an old and well-loved friend". The hideous Ritz Carlton in Istanbul is much worse than that, for at least the Sainsbury wing (which I do not find nearly as objectionable and which, significantly, houses great masterpieces of art and is open to all, rich and poor, for free) cannot be seen from all over London, while the Istanbul Ritz-Carlton cannot be avoided.

What is it that makes those responsible deface their city in this way?

The Daily Mail cartoon, which is the subject of my previous post, may provide a clue.

I presume that the medial orbito-frontal cortex of the brains of architects and planners who allowed this monstrosity to deface the beauty of that well loved city was inactive, or de-activated, during a long period when the building was planned and was under construction.

What could have de-activated the medial orbito-frontal cortex?

Greed comes to mind. Rich tourists, and so on.

Which makes it interesting to ask whether, in the face of greed, the medial orbito-frontal cortex is de-activated, rendering subjects unable to experience beauty.

An insightful Daily Mail cartoon on beauty and brain activity

There was a neurobiologically interesting cartoon that accompanied the Daily Mail article on our most recent brain study on beauty, published in the open access journal PLoS One last week (you can access the paper here). The study shows that activity in a region of the brain’s pleasure and reward centre, the medial orbito-frontal cortex, correlates with the experience of beauty, whether the source of the beauty is musical or visual. A previous study by another group had shown that this same region is also active when subjects view beautiful faces.

The cartoon by Pugh has a man looking at the photograph of an ugly woman (his wife), with the caption saying “My medial orbito-frontal cortex let me down when I married her”.

There may be some truth to the cartoon. A previous study by us on romantic love had shown that when people who are passionately in love view the picture of their loved partner, significant parts of their cortex become de-activated. This may be the reason why we are commonly less judgmental about those we love.

Purely as conjecture, it may be that when the fictitious character in the cartoon was courting his future wife, with whom he may have been passionately in love, there was significant deactivation of much of his cerebral cortex, leading him not to see her ugliness.

As his love wore off, and with it the de-activation, he became more judgmental and saw the ugliness which he had not seen before.

There are of course other interpretations. But this interpretation is what comes immediately to mind when viewing this cartoon.

You see, one can get ideas about experiments from all kinds of sources.

Sorry...but this is not by Michelangelo

An article published in The Independent yesterday describes how a highly respected Italian art scholar and leading world scholar on Michelangelo has concluded that a painting entitled Crucifixion with the Madonna, St John and Two Mourning Angels and until now attributed to Marcello Venusti, is in fact by Michelangelo. The art scholar is reported to have have said, “no one but Michelangelo could have painted such a masterpiece”.

The painting is owned by Campion Hall and is on loan to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

More significantly, the scholar is reported to have said, “You can immediately see the difference between this work and that of Venusti”.

Well, I do not agree. I would put it like this: One can immediately see the difference between this work and the work of Michelangelo. From which I conclude that the work in question is not by Michelangelo.

I hasten to point out that I am not, and do not consider myself to be, an expert on art, or on Michelangelo; I am not an art historian nor an expert in dating works of art. That said, the Venusti work seems to be - by the simplest of tests I know, the vision test - not to be by Michelangelo.

Look at the work carefully, and consider the following. First of all, the body of Christ departs significantly from the vigour that Michelangelo imparted to human figures. The face is even more lacking in vigour, determination and resigned acceptance of fate. The sagging breasts are not the sort of thing that Michelangelo, I think, would have invested a vigorous Christ with.

Next look at the vacuous look on the face of St. John. Could Michelangelo really have done this? Compare that vacuous look with any of the figures he painted for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and note the difference. Much the same can be said of the vacuous look on the angel to the right.

Now look at the clouds above the cross – or is it some kind of halo?. They are symmetrically disposed – almost in total symmetry on both sides. It seems to me very unlikely that Michelangelo (going by his other works) would have done this.

Hence, all told, my brain – by comparing the Venusti with the works of the mighty Michelangelo – has come to the conclusion that this painting is not by Michelanglo at all.

I respect the authority of the scholars in this matter; but in this instance I believe that my brain’s judgment is more reliable – at least to me.

A Telephone Library in an Art Museum – a vast improvement on pebbles

I recently visited the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris for their current, quite wonderful, exhibition of the work of Kees van Dongen. After my visit, I wondered around the museum and came across the installation piece by Christian Boltanski entitled Les Abonnés du téléphone. This is essentially a collection of telephone directories from all over the world (actually not all over the world, since many countries are missing) which the visitor can consult at leisure, since there is a desk and chairs as well as table lamps. It is to all intents and purposes a telephone library. I actually consulted some of the directories, to look for persons I may know. It was engaging and thought provoking. Why were some countries not represented? What had happened to some of the people I knew? The exhibit succeeded in starting a train of thought. Hence, it exercised my brain to some degree – certainly much more than the horror show I last wrote about. For me, it was better, too, than the mandatory Brillo Boxes or soup cans that every museum of modern art must possess.

Moreover, there is no one place I know of in London or New York or Paris, or indeed any of the major cities, where I can consult telephone directories from all over the world, or at least many places in the world. So this collection, imperfect though it is, could serve a purpose, especially as the entrance to the permanent collection of the museum (of which this is part) is free.

But, once the idea of “surfing” telephone directories settles in, I could as well do it from the comfort of my home, by switching on my computer, and the table lamp, and sitting on a comfortable chair and visiting Superpages.com or some such.

Beautiful it is not and does not pretend to be, but….is it art?

By the standard set by Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal, it certainly is.

What do you say?

Outraged at an art gallery

I am a regular visitor to art galleries, and am increasingly appalled by the trash that curators and museum directors stuff into their galleries and pass off as art. But nothing could have prepared me for an exhibition of graduate students at a famous art college in London. The trash exhibited there – and presumably approved of by the teachers of that venerable institution – was shocking beyond all brief description.

Marcel Duchamp sneered at the art world when he sent a urinal as an exhibit at an art show, and then again with his readymades and yet again when he launched his slogan “art without an artist”. Duchamp was a cynic but a highly intelligent man. I wonder what his attitude would have been had he lived long enough to see that he has, with his statements and actions, licensed not only museum directors and curators to purvey their rubbish, but worst of all, to have licensed teachers at art colleges – including professors – to abdicate all responsibility towards their students, from whom they now demand increasingly large sums. What he seems to have provided some sections of the art world is a recipe for suspending thought. For there was nothing in the collection of bric à brac exhibited to suggest that the students exhibiting had had any formal tuition in anything remotely related to art, save the notion that anything can be called art provided it is exhibited in the relevant artistic setting. Nor did any exhibit suggest that there had been thought behind it. There was not a single item in that lamentable exhibition that I wanted to contemplate or look at after the first glance, or to think about, or to delight in. Instead, the usual collection of stones, of cardboards with illegible scribbles, and on and on. Truly shocking.

I argued in my book Inner Vision that one of the many functions of art is the acquisition of knowledge. In fact, I would argue that this is a very important function of art. But what kind of knowledge does one get from this accumulation of trash? None at all as far as I can see.

Perhaps the only value of this disgraceful exhibition is that it may spur some to start questioning whether we have not gone far enough with this license we have given to the art world and its conceits. When the rot really sets in, that is, when artists who are also teachers by trade, abdicate their responsibility towards the students out of whom they make a living, by encouraging thoughtlessness and by encouraging the notion that anything can pass as art, then the time has come to pension them off so that they can live by their art alone and replace them with those who have a more responsible attitude towards what they profess to teach.

It is regrettable that art, being largely in the subjective arena, is not as open to assessment as science or as other subjects in the humanities, such as English or history. Had it been, and had there been assessors (as there are in science), the ratings given to institutions such as the one I visited would be very low and they would soon lose their government subsidies. Perhaps one good outcome of neurobiology is that it may soon give an objective measure of just how much pleasure this kind of trash gives, and force those who live by teaching art to think a little more and perhaps to communicate some of their thinking to students.

So neuroeconomics tells us what I have been arguing for a long time...

There is an interesting article in The Guardian today, which goes some way to support what I have been arguing for a long time on this site -- that we should have many more women in top economic positions than we actually do now, at least in Britain. It is good to know that Iceland called in women to clear the economic mess left by men, and that Norway has slapped a mandatory 40% women on financial boards. As I have stated here before, if I were Prime Minister I would pass legislation to ensure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) should always be a woman.

Neurobiology may yet be listened to by those running our affairs, and may yet come to have a very beneficial effect on society.

A great but empty exhibition at the Uffizi in Florence

Currently, waiting time to enter the Uffizi Museum in Florence is, at a minimum, 2 hours, unless of course you get there first thing in the morning. But right across the main entrance to the Museum is another exhibition, in another wing of the Uffizi, which you can enter without waiting. Once you get inside, it is empty, thus giving you time to contemplate the great works on display at leisure. It is specatcular and contains great drawings by some of the great Italian masters - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raffaelo, Perugino and others. The exhibition was at the British Museum before going to Italy, and contains masterpieces from both museums. Entry to the exhibition is free, while you have to pay 11 € to enter the main gallery.

An authority explained that the emptiness of the exhibition of drawings at the Uffizi can be accounted for by the fact that the entrance is free. Therefore, it could not be worth much, at least in the estimation of the average person.

Some art curators and historians insist on the fact that one must view an art work in its totality - that is, the context, its commercial value, and so on. How right they are, and what an apt joke Marcel Duchamp played on the art world by sending a urinal to an art exhibition as a serious exhibit. The urinal became a work of art, instantly, because it was now in a new context and, significantly, in the context of an art exhibition.

Hence the necessity for separating art from beauty, which neuroesthetics should do.

And hence the necessity for the "reductionism" that many are so vehemently against. For we should isolate perceived beauty and study its neural correlates, just as we should isolate the other factors such as the commercial value and context and study their neural correlates.

Meanwhile, the magnificent exhibition at the Uffizi is a living testament (at least until it closes later this month) to the true, but sad, opinion of many in the art world - that when discussing a work of art one should do so in context, and above all in its commercial and monetary context.