Impressionism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), 1872, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. This painting became the source of the movement's name, after Louis Leroy's article The Exhibition of the Impressionists satirically implied that the painting was at most, a sketch.

 

Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. 

The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. 

The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music and impressionist literature.

Overview

J. M. W. Turner's atmospheric work was influential on the birth of Impressionism, here The Fighting Temeraire (1839)

 

Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted realistic scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were usually painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting outdoors or en plein air. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary—to achieve an effect of intense colour vibration. 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette), 1876, Musée d'Orsay, one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces.

 

Impressionism emerged in France at the same time that a number of other painters, including the Italian artists known as the Macchiaioli, and Winslow Homer in the United States, were also exploring plein-air painting. The Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it is an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of colour. 

The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than delineating the details of the subject, and by creating a welter of techniques and forms, Impressionism is a precursor of various painting styles, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

Beginnings

In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris and waged war—the Académie des Beaux-Arts dominated French art. The Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued; landscape and still life were not. The Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of precise brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artist's hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish.

The Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of such artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. 

In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille—met while studying under the academic artist Charles Gleyre. They discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. Following a practice that had become increasingly popular by mid-century, they often ventured into the countryside together to paint in the open air, but not for the purpose of making sketches to be developed into carefully finished works in the studio, as was the usual custom. By painting in sunlight directly from nature, and making bold use of the vivid synthetic pigments that had become available since the beginning of the century, they began to develop a lighter and brighter manner of painting that extended further the Realism of Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon school. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were often led by Édouard Manet, whom the younger artists greatly admired. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Armand Guillaumin.

Édouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863

 

During the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) primarily because it depicted a nude woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, they condemned Manet for placing a realistic nude in a contemporary setting. The jury's severely worded rejection of Manet's painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists. 

After Emperor Napoleon III saw the rejected works of 1863, he decreed that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused) was organized. While many viewers came only to laugh, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to the existence of a new tendency in art and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon.

Alfred Sisley, View of the Saint-Martin Canal, Paris, 1870, Musée d'Orsay

 

Artists' petitions requesting a new Salon des Refusés in 1867, and again in 1872, were denied. In December 1873, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and several other artists founded the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs ("Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers") to exhibit their artworks independently. Members of the association were expected to forswear participation in the Salon. The organizers invited a number of other progressive artists to join them in their inaugural exhibition, including the older Eugène Boudin, whose example had first persuaded Monet to adopt plein air painting years before. Another painter who greatly influenced Monet and his friends, Johan Jongkind, declined to participate, as did Édouard Manet. In total, thirty artists participated in their first exhibition, held in April 1874 at the studio of the photographer Nadar. 

Claude Monet, Haystacks, (sunset), 1890–1891, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

The critical response was mixed. Monet and Cézanne received the harshest attacks. Critic and humorist Louis Leroy wrote a scathing review in the newspaper Le Charivari in which, making wordplay with the title of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), he gave the artists the name by which they became known. Derisively titling his article The Exhibition of the Impressionists, Leroy declared that Monet's painting was at most, a sketch, and could hardly be termed a finished work. 

He wrote, in the form of a dialog between viewers,

Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.

Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son (Camille and Jean Monet), 1875, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

The term Impressionist quickly gained favour with the public. It was also accepted by the artists themselves, even though they were a diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion. They exhibited together—albeit with shifting membership—eight times between 1874 and 1886. The Impressionists' style, with its loose, spontaneous brushstrokes, would soon become synonymous with modern life.

Monet, Sisley, Morisot, and Pissarro may be considered the "purest" Impressionists, in their consistent pursuit of an art of spontaneity, sunlight, and colour. Degas rejected much of this, as he believed in the primacy of drawing over colour and belittled the practice of painting outdoors. Renoir turned away from Impressionism for a time during the 1880s, and never entirely regained his commitment to its ideas. Édouard Manet, although regarded by the Impressionists as their leader, never abandoned his liberal use of black as a colour (while Impressionists avoided its use and preferred to obtain darker colours by mixing), and never participated in the Impressionist exhibitions. He continued to submit his works to the Salon, where his painting Spanish Singer had won a 2nd class medal in 1861, and he urged the others to do likewise, arguing that "the Salon is the real field of battle" where a reputation could be made.

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, 1897, the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

 

Among the artists of the core group (minus Bazille, who had died in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870), defections occurred as Cézanne, followed later by Renoir, Sisley, and Monet, abstained from the group exhibitions so they could submit their works to the Salon. Disagreements arose from issues such as Guillaumin's membership in the group, championed by Pissarro and Cézanne against opposition from Monet and Degas, who thought him unworthy. Degas invited Mary Cassatt to display her work in the 1879 exhibition, but also insisted on the inclusion of Jean-François Raffaëlli, Ludovic Lepic, and other realists who did not represent Impressionist practices, causing Monet in 1880 to accuse the Impressionists of "opening doors to first-come daubers". The group divided over invitations to Paul Signac and Georges Seurat to exhibit with them in 1886. Pissarro was the only artist to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions. 

The individual artists achieved few financial rewards from the Impressionist exhibitions, but their art gradually won a degree of public acceptance and support. Their dealer, Durand-Ruel, played a major role in this as he kept their work before the public and arranged shows for them in London and New York. Although Sisley died in poverty in 1899, Renoir had a great Salon success in 1879. Monet became secure financially during the early 1880s and so did Pissarro by the early 1890s. By this time the methods of Impressionist painting, in a diluted form, had become commonplace in Salon art.

Impressionist techniques

Mary Cassatt, Lydia Leaning on Her Arms (in a theatre box), 1879

 

French painters who prepared the way for Impressionism include the Romantic colourist Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the realists Gustave Courbet, and painters of the Barbizon school such as Théodore Rousseau. The Impressionists learned much from the work of Johan Barthold Jongkind, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Eugène Boudin, who painted from nature in a direct and spontaneous style that prefigured Impressionism, and who befriended and advised the younger artists.

A number of identifiable techniques and working habits contributed to the innovative style of the Impressionists. Although these methods had been used by previous artists—and are often conspicuous in the work of artists such as Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner—the Impressionists were the first to use them all together, and with such consistency. These techniques include:

• Short, thick strokes of paint quickly capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details. The paint is often applied impasto.
• Colours are applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible, a technique that exploits the principle of simultaneous contrast to make the colour appear more vivid to the viewer.
• Grays and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. Pure impressionism avoids the use of black paint.
• Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive applications to dry, producing softer edges and intermingling of colour.
• Impressionist paintings do not exploit the transparency of thin paint films (glazes), which earlier artists manipulated carefully to produce effects. The impressionist painting surface is typically opaque.
• The paint is applied to a white or light-coloured ground. Previously, painters often used dark grey or strongly coloured grounds.
• The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection of colours from object to object. Painters often worked in the evening to produce effets de soir—the shadowy effects of evening or twilight.
• In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly painted with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness previously not represented in painting. (Blue shadows on snow inspired the technique.)

New technology played a role in the development of the style. Impressionists took advantage of the mid-century introduction of premixed paints in tin tubes (resembling modern toothpaste tubes), which allowed artists to work more spontaneously, both outdoors and indoors. Previously, painters made their own paints individually, by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil, which were then stored in animal bladders.

Many vivid synthetic pigments became commercially available to artists for the first time during the 19th century. These included cobalt blue, viridian, cadmium yellow, and synthetic ultramarine blue, all of which were in use by the 1840s, before Impressionism. The Impressionists' manner of painting made bold use of these pigments, and of even newer colours such as cerulean blue, which became commercially available to artists in the 1860s.

The Impressionists' progress toward a brighter style of painting was gradual. During the 1860s, Monet and Renoir sometimes painted on canvases prepared with the traditional red-brown or grey ground. By the 1870s, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro usually chose to paint on grounds of a lighter grey or beige colour, which functioned as a middle tone in the finished painting. By the 1880s, some of the Impressionists had come to prefer white or slightly off-white grounds, and no longer allowed the ground colour a significant role in the finished painting.

Content and composition

Camille Pissarro, Hay Harvest at Éragny, 1901, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

 

Prior to the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th-century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had emphasized common subjects, but their methods of composition were traditional. They arranged their compositions so that the main subject commanded the viewer's attention. J. M. W. Turner, while an artist of the Romantic era, anticipated the style of impressionism with his artwork. The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance. Photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography inspired Impressionists to represent momentary action, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people.

Berthe Morisot, Reading, 1873, Cleveland Museum of Art

 

The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which seemed to devalue the artist's skill in reproducing reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably".

In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of creative expression, and rather than compete with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph—by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated". The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exact representations. This allowed artists to depict subjectively what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked: "The Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph".

Claude Monet, Jardin à Sainte-Adresse, 1867, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York., a work showing the influence of Japanese prints

 

Another major influence was Japanese ukiyo-e art prints (Japonism). The art of these prints contributed significantly to the "snapshot" angles and unconventional compositions that became characteristic of Impressionism. An example is Monet's Jardin à Sainte-Adresse, 1867, with its bold blocks of colour and composition on a strong diagonal slant showing the influence of Japanese prints

Edgar Degas was both an avid photographer and a collector of Japanese prints. His The Dance Class (La classe de danse) of 1874 shows both influences in its asymmetrical composition. The dancers are seemingly caught off guard in various awkward poses, leaving an expanse of empty floor space in the lower right quadrant. He also captured his dancers in sculpture, such as the Little Dancer of Fourteen Years.

Women Impressionists

Impressionists, in varying degrees, were looking for ways to depict visual experience and contemporary subjects. Women Impressionists were interested in these same ideals but had many social and career limitations compared to male Impressionists. In particular, they were excluded from the imagery of the bourgeois social sphere of the boulevard, cafe, and dance hall. As well as imagery, women were excluded from the formative discussions that resulted in meetings in those places; that was where male Impressionists were able to form and share ideas about Impressionism. In the academic realm, women were believed to be incapable of handling complex subjects which led teachers to restrict what they taught female students. It was also considered unladylike to excel in art since women's true talents were then believed to center on homemaking and mothering.

Yet several women were able to find success during their lifetime, even though their careers were affected by personal circumstances – Bracquemond, for example, had a husband who was resentful of her work which caused her to give up painting. The four most well known, namely, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond, and Berthe Morisot, are, and were, often referred to as the 'Women Impressionists'. Their participation in the series of eight Impressionist exhibitions that took place in Paris from 1874 to 1886 varied: Morisot participated in seven, Cassatt in four, Bracquemond in three, and Gonzalès did not participate.

The critics of the time lumped these four together without regard to their personal styles, techniques, or subject matter. Critics viewing their works at the exhibitions often attempted to acknowledge the women artists' talents but circumscribed them within a limited notion of femininity. Arguing for the suitability of Impressionist technique to women's manner of perception, Parisian critic S.C. de Soissons wrote:

One can understand that women have no originality of thought, and that literature and music have no feminine character; but surely women know how to observe, and what they see is quite different from that which men see, and the art which they put in their gestures, in their toilet, in the decoration of their environment is sufficient to give is the idea of an instinctive, of a peculiar genius which resides in each one of them. 

While Impressionism legitimized the domestic social life as subject matter, of which women had intimate knowledge, it also tended to limit them to that subject matter. Portrayals of often-identifiable sitters in domestic settings (which could offer commissions) were dominant in the exhibitions. The subjects of the paintings were often women interacting with their environment by either their gaze or movement. Cassatt, in particular, was aware of her placement of subjects: she kept her predominantly female figures from objectification and cliche; when they are not reading, they converse, sew, drink tea, and when they are inactive, they seem lost in thought.

Mary Cassatt, Young Girl at a Window, 1885, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Eva Gonzalès, Une Loge aux Italiens, or, Box at the Italian Opera, ca. 1874, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

 

The women Impressionists, like their male counterparts, were striving for "truth," for new ways of seeing and new painting techniques; each artist had an individual painting style. Women Impressionists (particularly Morisot and Cassatt) were conscious of the balance of power between women and objects in their paintings – the bourgeois women depicted are not defined by decorative objects, but instead, interact with and dominate the things with which they live. There are many similarities in their depictions of women who seem both at ease and subtly confined. Gonzalès' Box at the Italian Opera depicts a woman staring into the distance, at ease in a social sphere but confined by the box and the man standing next to her. Cassatt's painting Young Girl at a Window is brighter in color but remains constrained by the canvas edge as she looks out the window. 

Despite their success in their ability to have a career and Impressionism's demise attributed to its allegedly feminine characteristics (its sensuality, dependence on sensation, physicality, and fluidity) the four women artists (and other, lesser-known women Impressionists) were largely omitted from art historical textbooks covering Impressionist artists until Tamar Garb's Women Impressionists published in 1986. For example, Impressionism by Jean Leymarie, published in 1955 included no information on any women Impressionists.

Main Impressionists

Berthe Morisot, The Harbour at Lorient, 1869, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Claude Monet, Tulip Fields in Holland (Champs de Tulipes en Holland), 1886, Musée d'Orsay

 

The central figures in the development of Impressionism in France, listed alphabetically, were:

• Frédéric Bazille (who only posthumously participated in the Impressionist exhibitions) (1841–1870)
• Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid-1870s) (1848–1894)
• Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions) (1844–1926)
• Paul Cézanne (although he later broke away from the Impressionists) (1839–1906)
• Edgar Degas (who despised the term Impressionist) (1834–1917)
• Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927)
• Édouard Manet (who did not participate in any of the Impressionist exhibitions) (1832–1883)
• Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who embodies their aesthetic most obviously) (1840–1926)
• Berthe Morisot (who participated in all Impressionist exhibitions except in 1879) (1841–1895)
• Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (who participated in Impressionist exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882) (1841–1919)
• Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)

Neuroesthetics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Researchers are looking to neuroscience for answers behind why the human brain finds artistic works like DaVinci's Mona Lisa so alluring.

 

Neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art, music, or any object that can give rise to aesthetic judgments. Neuroesthetics received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. Neuroesthetics uses neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level. The topic attracts scholars from many disciplines including neuroscientists, art historians, artists, and psychologists.

Overview

Neuroaesthetics is a field of experimental science that aims to combine (neuro-)psychological research with aesthetics by investigating the "perception, production, and response to art, as well as interactions with objects and scenes that evoke an intense feeling, often of pleasure.". The recently developed field seeks among other things the neural correlates of aesthetic judgment and creativity. It is argued that visual aesthetics, namely the capacity of assigning different degrees of beauty to certain forms, colors, or movements, is a human trait acquired after the divergence of human and other ape lineages, rendering the experience of beauty a defining characteristic of humankind.

One core question for the field is whether art or aesthetic preferences are guided by a set of scientific laws or principles. Additionally, the evolutionary rationale for the formation and characteristics of these principles are sought. It is believed that identification of the brain circuitry involved in aesthetic judgments (e.g., by using through the use of brain imaging) can help pinpoint the origin of these responses.

Approaches of study

Researchers who have been prominent in the field combine principles from perceptual psychology, evolutionary biology, neurological deficits, and functional brain anatomy in order to address the evolutionary meaning of beauty that may be the essence of art. It is felt that neuroscience is a very promising path for the search for the quantified evaluation of art. With the aim of discovering general rules about aesthetics, one approach is the observation of subjects viewing art and the exploration of the mechanics of vision. It is proposed that pleasing sensations are derived from the repeated activation of neurons due to primitive visual stimuli such as horizontal and vertical lines. In addition to the generation of theories to explain this, such as Ramachandran's set of laws, it is important to use neuroscience to determine and understand the neurological mechanisms involved. 

The link between specific brain areas and artistic activity is of great importance to the field of neuroesthetics. This can be applied both to the ability to create and interpret art. A common approach to uncover the neural mechanisms is through the study of individuals, specifically artists, with neural disorders such as savant syndrome or some form of traumatic injury. The analysis of art created by these patients provides valuable insights to the brain areas responsible for capturing the essence of art. 

The aesthetic enjoyment of individuals can be investigated using brain imaging experiments. When subjects are confronted with images of a particular level of aesthetics, the specific brain areas that are activated can be identified. It is argued that the sense of beauty and aesthetic judgment presupposes a change in the activation of the brain's reward system.

A crucial aspect of research lies in whether aesthetic judgment can be thought of as a bottom-up process driven by neural primitives or as a top-down process with high level cognition. Neurologists have had success researching primitives. However, there is a need to define higher level abstract philosophical concepts objectively with neural correlates. It is suggested that aesthetic experience is a function of the interaction between top-down, intentional orientation of attention and the bottom-up perceptual facilitation of image construction. In other words, because untrained persons automatically apply the object-identification habit to viewing artworks, top-down control to reduce this habit may be necessary to engage aesthetic perception. This suggests that artists would show different levels of activation than non-artists. 

Aesthetic responses to different types of art and techniques has recently been explored. Cubism is the most radical departure from Western forms of art, with the proposed purpose of forcing the viewer to discover less unstable elements of the object to be represented. It eliminates interferences such as lighting and perspective angle to capture objects as they really are. This may be compared to how the brain maintains an object's identity despite varying conditions. Modern, representational, and impressionistic art has also been studied for the purpose of explaining visual processing systems. Yet aesthetic judgments exists in all domains, not just art.

Theories of pioneers

Semir Zeki's laws of the visual brain

Semir Zeki, professor of neuroesthetics at the University College of London, views art as an example of the variability of the brain. Thus a neurological approach to the source of this variability may explain particular subjective experiences as well as the ranges of abilities to create and experience art. Zeki theorizes that artists unconsciously use techniques to create visual art to study the brain. Zeki suggests that

"...the artist is in a sense, a neuroscientist, exploring the potentials and capacities of the brain, though with different tools. How such creations can arouse aesthetic experiences can only be fully understood in neural terms. Such an understanding is now well within our reach."

He proposes two supreme laws of the visual brain:

Constancy

Despite the changes that occur when processing visual stimuli (distance, viewing angle, illumination, etc.), the brain has the unique ability to retain knowledge of constant and essential properties of an object and discard irrelevant dynamic properties. This applies not only to the ability to, for example, always see a banana as the color yellow but also the recognition of faces at varying angles. 

Comparatively, a work of art captures the essence of an object. The creation of art itself may be modeled off of this primitive neural function. The process of painting for example involves distilling an object down to represent it as it really is, which differs from the way the eyes see it. Zeki also tried to represent the Platonic Ideal and the Hegelian Concept through the statement: forms do not have an existence without a brain and the ability for stored memory, referring to how artists such as Monet could paint without knowing what the objects are in order to capture their true form.

Abstraction

This process refers to the hierarchical coordination where a general representation can be applied to many particulars, allowing the brain to efficiently process visual stimuli. The ability to abstract may have evolved as a necessity due to the limitations of memory. In a way, art externalizes the functions of abstraction in the brain. The process of abstraction is unknown to cognitive neurobiology. However, Zeki proposes an interesting question of whether there is a significant difference in the pattern of brain activity when viewing abstract art as opposed to representational art.

Ramachandran's eight laws of artistic experience

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and his fellow researchers including William Hirstein, developed a highly speculative theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. These "laws" combine to develop underlying high order concepts of the human artistic experience. Although not all encompassing as there are undoubtedly many other principles of artistic experience, the theorists claim that they provide a framework for understanding aspects of visual art, aesthetics and design. Although testing of these principles quantitatively may provide future evidence for specific areas of the brain responsible for one kind of aesthetic appeal, the theory faces substantial philosophical and historical objections.

Peak shift principle

This psychological phenomenon is typically known for its application in animal discrimination learning. In the peak shift effect, animals sometimes respond more strongly to exaggerated versions of the training stimuli. For instance, a rat is trained to discriminate a square from a rectangle by being rewarded for recognizing the rectangle. The rat will respond more frequently to the object for which it is being rewarded to the point that a rat will respond to a rectangle that is longer and more narrow with a higher frequency than the original with which it was trained. This is called a supernormal stimulus. The fact that the rat is responding more to a 'super' rectangle implies that it is learning a rule. 

This effect can be applied to human pattern recognition and aesthetic preference. Some artists attempt to capture the very essence of something in order to evoke a direct emotional response. In other words, they try to make a 'super' rectangle to get the viewer to have an enhanced response. To capture the essence of something, an artist amplifies the differences of that object, or what makes it unique, to highlight the essential features and reduce redundant information. This process mimics what the visual areas of the brain have evolved to do and more powerfully activates the same neural mechanisms that were originally activated by the original object.

Some artists deliberately exaggerate creative components such as shading, highlights, and illumination to an extent that would never occur in a real image to produce a caricature. These artists may be unconsciously producing heightened activity in the specific areas of the brain in a manner that is not obvious to the conscious mind. A significant portion of the experience of art is not self-consciously reflected upon by audiences, so it is not clear whether the peak-shift thesis has any special explanatory power in understanding the creation and reception of art.

Isolation

Isolating a single visual cue helps the organism allocate attention to the output of a single module, thereby allowing it to more effectively enjoy the peak shift along the dimensions represented in that module. In other words, there is a need to isolate the desired visual form before that aspect is amplified. This is why an outline drawing or sketch is sometimes more effective as art than an original color photograph. For example, a cartoonist may exaggerate certain facial features which are unique to the character and remove other forms which it shares such as skin tones. This efficiency prevents non-unique features from detracting from the image. This is why one can predict that an outline drawing would be more aesthetically pleasing than a color photograph.

The viewers attention is drawn towards this single area allowing one's attention to be focused on this source of information. Enhancements introduced by the artist more carefully noted resulting in the amplification of limbic system activation and reinforcement.

Grouping

Perceptual grouping to delineate a figure from the background may be enjoyable. The source of the pleasure may have come about because of the evolutionary necessity to give organisms an incentive to uncover objects, such as predators, from noisy environments. For example, when viewing ink blots, the visual system segments the scene to defeat camouflage and link a subset of splotches together. This may be accomplished most effectively if limbic reinforcement is fed back to early vision at every stage of visual processing leading up to the discovery of the object. The key idea is that due to the limited attentional resources, constant feedback facilitates processing of features at earlier stages due to the discovery of a clue which produces limbic activation to draw one's attention to important features. Though not spontaneous, this reinforcement is the source of the pleasant sensation. The discovery of the object itself results in a pleasant 'aha' revelation causing the organism to hold onto the image. 

An artist can make use of this phenomenon by teasing the system. This allows for temporary binding to be communicated by a signal to the limbic system for reinforcement which is a source of the aesthetic experience.

Contrast

Extracting contrast involves eliminating redundant information and focusing attention. Cells in the retina, the lateral geniculate body or relay station in the brain, and in the visual cortex respond predominantly to step changes in luminance rather than homogeneous surface colors. Smooth gradients are much harder for the visual system to detect rather than segmented divisions of shades resulting in easily detectable edges. Contrasts due to the formation of edges may be pleasing to the eye. The importance of the visual neuron's varying responses to the orientation and presence of edges has previously been proven by David H. Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. This may hold evolutionary significance since regions of contrast are information rich requiring reinforcement and the allocation of attention. In contrast to the principle of grouping, contrasting features are typically in close proximity eliminating the need to link distant, but similar features.

Perceptual problem solving

Tied to the detection of contrast and grouping is the concept that discovery of an object after a struggle is more pleasing than one which is instantaneously obvious. The mechanism ensures that the struggle is reinforcing so that the viewer continues to look until the discovery. From a survival point of view, this may be important for the continued search for predators. Ramachandran suggests for the same reason that a model whose hips and breasts are about to be revealed is more provocative than one who is already completely naked. A meaning that is implied is more alluring than one that is explicit.

The generic viewpoint

The visual system dislikes interpretations which rely on a unique vantage point. Rather it accepts the visual interpretation for which there is an infinite set of viewpoints that could produce the class of retinal images. For example, in a landscape image, it will interpret an object in the foreground as obscuring an object in the background, rather than assuming that the background figure has a piece missing. 

In theory, if an artist is trying to please the eye, they should avoid such coincidences. However, in certain applications, the violation of this principle can also produce a pleasing effect.

Visual metaphors

Ramachandran defines a metaphor as a mental tunnel between two concepts that appear grossly dissimilar on the surface, but instead share a deeper connection. Similar to the effects of perceptual problem solving, grasping an analogy is rewarding. It enables the viewer to highlight crucial aspects that the two objects share. Although it is uncertain whether the reason for this mechanism is for effective communication or purely cognitive, the discovery of similarities between superficially dissimilar events leads to activation of the limbic system to create a rewarding process.

Support for this view is highlighted by the symptoms of Capgras delusion, where sufferers experience reduced facial recognition due to impairments in the connections from the inferotemporal cortex to the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions. The result is that a person no longer experiences the warm fuzzy feeling when presented with a familiar face. A person's 'glow' is lost through what is suggested as due to the lack of limbic activation.

Symmetry

The aesthetic appeal of symmetry is easily understandable. Biologically it is important during the detection of a predator, location of prey, and the choosing of a mate as all of these tend to display symmetry in nature. It complements other principles relating to the discovering of information rich objects. Additionally, evolutionary biologists suggest that the predisposition towards symmetry is because biologically, asymmetry is associated with infection and disease, which can lead to poor mate selection. However, departures from symmetry in visual art are also widely considered beautiful, suggesting that while symmetry may explain the judgment that a particular individual's face is beautiful, it cannot explain the judgment that a work of art is beautiful.

Areas of the brain linked to the processing of visual aesthetics

Aesthetic perception relies heavily on the processing by the visual centers in the brain such as the V1 cortex. Signals from V1 are distributed to various specialized areas of the brain. There is no single area where all specialized visual circuitry connect, reducing the chances of determining a single neural center responsible for aesthetics, rather a neural network is more likely. Therefore, the visual brain consists of several parallel multistage processing systems, each specialized in a given task such as color or motion. Functional specializations of the visual brain are already known.

Physiological phenomenon can explain several aspects of art appreciation. Different extrastriate areas of the visual cortex may have evolved to extract correlations of different visual features. The discovery and linking of various visual stimuli is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. Additionally, art may be most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules, restricted by the allocation of attentional resources. In experimentation to determine specific areas, many researchers allow the viewer to decide the aesthetic appeal prior to the use of imaging techniques to account for the varying perceptions of beauty. When individuals contemplate the aesthetic appeal, different neural processes are engaged than when pragmatically viewing an image. However, processes of object identification and aesthetic judgment are involved simultaneously in the overall perception of aesthetics.

Location of the orbito-frontal cortex shown through MRI

Prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex is previously known for its roles in the perception of colored objects, decision making, and memory. Recent studies have also linked it to the conscious aesthetic experience because it is activated during aesthetic tasks such as determining the appeal of a visual stimuli. This may be because a judgment is needed, requiring visiospatial memory. In a study performed by Zeki and Kawabata, it was found that the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) is involved in the judgment of whether a painting is beautiful or not. There is high activation in this region when a person views paintings which they consider beautiful. Surprisingly, when a person views a painting which they consider ugly, no separate structures are activated. Therefore, it is proposed that changes in the intensity of activation in the orbito-frontal cortex correlate with the determination of beauty (higher activation) or ugliness (lower activation). Additionally, the medial OFC has been found to respond aesthetics in terms of the context of which it is presented, such as text or other descriptions about the artwork. The current evidence linking the OFC to attributed hedonistic values across gustatory, olfactory, and visual modalities, suggests that the OFC is a common center for the assessment of a stimulus's value. The perception of aesthetics for these areas must be due to the activation of the brain's reward system with a certain intensity. 

Prefrontal cortex is highlighted in orange. Location of Brodmann's areas indicated by numerical tabs.

 

Additionally, the prefrontal dorsalateral cortex (PDC) is selectively activated only by stimuli considered beautiful whereas prefrontal activity as a whole is activated during the judgment of both pleasing and unpleasing stimuli. The prefrontal cortex may be generally activated for directing the attention of the cognitive and perceptual mechanisms towards aesthetic perception in viewers untrained in visual arts. In other words, related directly to a person viewing art from an aesthetic perception due to the top-down control of their cognition. The lateral prefrontal cortex is shown to be linked to higher order self-referential procession and the evaluation of internally generated information. The left lateral PFC, Brodmann area 10, may be involved in maintaining attention on the execution of internally generated goals associated with approaching art from an aesthetic orientation. As previously mentioned, directing of attention towards aesthetics may have evolutionary significance.

Additional areas

Emotions play a large role in aesthetic processing. Experiments designed specifically to force the subjects to view the artwork subjectively (by inquiring of its aesthetic appeal) rather than simply with the visual systems, revealed a higher activation in the brain's emotional circuitry. Results from these experiments revealed high activation in the bilateral insula which can be attributed to the emotional experience of viewing art. This correlates with other known emotional roles of the insula. However, the correlation between the insula's varying states of activation and positive or negative emotions in this context is unknown. The emotional view of art can be contrasted with perception related to object recognition when pragmatically viewing art. The right fusiform gyrus has been revealed to show activation to visual stimuli such as faces and representational art. This holds importance in the field because as Ramachandran also speculated, object recognition and the search for meaning can evoke a pleasant emotional response. The motor cortex was also shown to be involved in aesthetic perception. However, it displayed opposite trends of activation from the OFC. It may be a common correlate for the perception of emotionally charged stimuli despite its previously known roles. Several other areas of the brain were shown to be slightly activated during certain studies such as the anterior cingulate cortex, previously known for its involvement in the feeling of romance, and the left parietal cortex, whose purpose may be to direct spatial attention.

Different artistic styles may also be processed differently by the brain. In a study between filtered forms of abstract and representation art, the bilateral occipital gyri, left cingulate sulcus, and bilateral fusiform gyrus showed increased activation with increased preference when viewing art. However, activation in the bilateral occipital gyri may be caused by the large processing requirements placed on the visual system when viewing high levels of visual detail in artwork such as representational paintings. Several areas of the brain have been shown to respond particularly to forms representational art perhaps due to the brain's ability to make object associations and other functions relating to attention and memory. This form of stimuli leads to increased activation in the left frontal lobe and bilaterally in the parietal and limbic lobes. Also, the left superior parietal lobule, Brodmann's area 7, has been shown to play a role in active image construction during the viewing of art specifically containing indeterminate forms such as soft edge paintings. Bottom up processes such as edge detection and the exploration of visual stimuli are engaged during this type of aesthetic perception. These roles are consistent with previously known parietal lobe responsibilities in spatial cognition and visual imagery.

Criticism

There are several objections to researchers' attempts to reduce aesthetic experience to a set of physical or neurological laws. It is questionable whether the theories can capture the evocativeness or originality of individual works of art. Experiments performed may not account for these theories directly. Also, current experimentation measures a person's verbal response to how they feel about art which is often selectively filtered. Ramachandran suggests the use of galvanic skin response to quantify the judgment associated viewing aesthetics. Overall, it can be argued that there is lack of proportion between the narrow approach to art taken by researchers versus the grand claims they make for their theories.

Future directions and related fields

Since 2005 the notion of bridging brain science and the visual arts has blossomed into a field of increasing international interest. In his 2008 book, Neuroarthistory: from Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, Professor John Onians of the University of East Anglia considers himself to be at the forefront of the field of neural scientific biased art historical research, although such a 'history' is much shorter than Onians would have us believe. Many historical figures he deals with as precursors for neuroarthistory (Karl Marx, for example) have very little to do with modern neuroscience as it is understood today. Contemporary artists like Mark Stephen Smith (William Campbell Gallery, USA) and others have developed extensive bodies of work mapping the convergence of brain science and painting. Smith's work explores fundamental visual analogies between neural function and self-expression in abstract art. The past decade has also seen a corresponding growth in the aesthetics of music studied from neuroscientific approaches. Psychological and social approaches to art help provide other theories of experience.