Neuroarthistory

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.

This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.

All comments & questions are welcome!

Ce livre développe, à partir de Merleau-Ponty, Henry et Sartre, une phénoménologie décrivant la vie perceptive du point de vue du désir d'éprouver qui s'y déploie. L'auteur interroge, selon différents chemins tout à la fois opposés et noués les uns aux autres, le rapport de la vie perceptive à l'imaginaire et à la théâtralité originaire du corps. Il montre comment chaque expérience perceptive est la mise en jeu d'un désir de vivre, comment elle est susceptible d'accroître ou d'affaiblir la capacité des individus à se laisser affecter en profondeur par leur situation, à l'endurer, à y ouvrir du possible.

Contenu : Maurice Merleau-Ponty : La perception comme toucher à distance - La texture imaginaire du réel - Violence et événementialité de la vision - La théâtralité originaire du corps - Michel Henry : La vulnérabilité intrinsèque du pâtir - Affectivité, sensibilité, temporalité - Vie et possibilité - Impression et réalité - La texture imaginaire des impressions - Jean-Paul Sartre : Immanence, affectivité et intentionnalité - L'imaginaire et le retard originaire de la conscience - Émotion et imagination - Liberté et théâtralité.

TOWARD A MORE BEAUTIFUL WORLD (Brno: Barrister & Principal – VUTIUM 2013, 448 pp., 760 ill., an extensive English summary) uses innovative methodology to look at the traditionalist attitude in architecture and in the formation of architectural environment. In the five parts, the book (I) analyzes the professional debate around the history of architecture and the diversity of aesthetic preferences within this debate, (II) clarifies a theory that uses results of
neuroscience to explain the attractiveness of traditional buildings, (III) based on this theory, sums up the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century traditionalist architecture around the world and (IV) in the Czech Lands (the present Czech Republic), and (V) uses two specific examples to illustrate current variations in the relationship between heritage protection, musealization of art and the creation of an aesthetically valuable environment.

The scope of the publication and its comprehensiveness make this book the first of its kind in the field of architectural history. The text is in Czech, nevertheless, international readers find all captions in English and an extensive English summary.

The methodology of this book builds upon the architectural theory of the American scientist Nikos Salingaros, the impulses of world art studies, and the idea that there is a direct relationship between personal preference for a specific artistic morphology and the manner of its (art-historical) interpretation. The findings of brain science help specify the meaning of the words beauty and traditionalism. Even an untrained viewer can feel the contrast between traditional and modern architecture, while neighboring buildings in two different traditional styles (for example a baroque palace and a Gothic church) do not create the same impression of contrast or disharmony. The book explains the difference in aesthetic effect through Salingaros’s term structural order. This concept understands traditional architecture as an architecture designed according to the principles of structural order and modernist architecture as an architecture, where structural order is weak or non-existent. The concept put forward in this book is that architectural traditionalism strives to express structural order, while architectural modernism, which exists simultaneously, does not aim for this kind of order, neither consciously nor intuitively. Art-historical conceptions are also referred to as either traditionalist or modernist, according to which approach to artistic creation they prefer. The struggle toward a more beautiful world is considered a leitmotif of traditionalism – hence the title of the book.

The book’s five parts and fifty chapters address themes such as: the aesthetic theory of empathy as elaborated by Heinrich Wölfflin and Geoffrey Scott; the scientific theory of architecture according to Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros; American renaissance and the City Beautiful movement; city building according to artistic principles in the work of Camillo Sitte, Werner Hegemann and Gustavo Giovannoni; the Heimatschutz movement and Paul Schultze-Naumburg; the destruction and reconstruction of old cities and the Venice Charter; the New Tradition, New Urbanism and the vision of harmonious building according to Prince Charles.

The chapters on the Czech Lands describe architectural works by Friedrich Ohmann, Jan Vejrych, Kamil Hilbert, Ladislav Skřivánek and Dušan Jurkovič and analyze texts by Václav Wagner, Břetislav Štorm, Josef Karel Říha, Ladislav Žák and Jiří Kroha. These chapters also discuss cubism and socialist realism in Czech architecture, new development and heritage conservation during the communist era and after the regime change in 1989, and public interest in the fate of old buildings and in the appearance of towns, villages and landscapes.

The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organization from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and embodiment for practices in organisational life-worlds. Based on an embodied relational approach, the concept of an emergent and responsive “inter-practice’ in organisations will be developed. For showing a possible enactment of this embodied inter-practicing, improvisation is explored. Finally, some practical, political, theoretical and methodological implications and perspectives on embodied responsive and responsible inter-practices in organisations are discussed.

This keynote paper for Workshops on Psychoanalysis & Art History raises questions about the ability of neuroscientific theory to replace older psychoanalytic models. On the one hand, scholars in the arts and humanities have raised important doubts about the ability of brain science to offer real insights into such complex cultural phenomena as the history of art. If neuroscience turns out only to offer very limited theoretical tools, then it is likely we are not going to abandon psychoanalysis any time soon. On the other hand, a growing number of art historians, especially new researchers, find neuroscience more robust and ‘of the moment’ than psychoanalysis and are beginning to apply neuroaesthetic ideas to art-historical problems. Concepts such as ‘mirror neurons’ and ‘neuroplasticity’, for example, suggest new ways of understanding behavioural responses to works of art and the importance to artists of the natural environment. This paper, however, urges caution. It is argued that rather than abandoning psychoanalytic approaches to the history of art we should instead review the method. The greatest value of the current excitement about neuroscientific ‘discoveries’ might be to make us question what actually constitutes a psychoanalytic approach and to update the concepts that we all too habitually employ.

[link to the whole dissertation: https://repositorio.uam.es/handle/10486/672482 (in Spanish)]
In my PhD thesis project I have addressed the topic of the presence and agency of non human animals in contemporary art, as well as the evolution and changes in the attitudes of artists towards those animals, to conclude with a bold and innovative exploration of the possibility that animals do make art, inside and outside the gallery space. The main chronological framework of my dissertation embraces approximately five decades, from the mid-sixties to the present day. Regarding my theoretical backing, my foundings certainly lie in the field of art history. Thanks to my background in biology, I have also turned to some scientific disciplines (ethology, primatology, neuroscience...) in order to enrich my proposal and to become closer to the perception and points of view of other animals. Furthermore, the transversal academic conglomerate that constitutes animal studies has helped me to navigate through the different fields and approaches, maintaining non human animals and their perspectives in the spotlight, and simultaneously enlightening and challenging dichotomies such as animal/human, biology/culture, natural/artificial...

[enlace a la tesis completa: https://repositorio.uam.es/handle/10486/672482 ]
En mi proyecto de tesis doctoral he abordado el tema de la presencia y la agencia de los animales no humanos en el arte contemporáneo, así como la evolución y cambios en las actitudes de los artistas hacia dichos animales, para concluir con una exploración audaz e innovadora de la posibilidad de que los animales hagan arte, dentro y fuera del espacio de la galería. El marco cronológico principal de mi tesis abarca, aproximadamente, cinco décadas: desde mediados de los años sesenta hasta la actualidad. En cuanto a mis apoyos teóricos, sus cimientos sin duda se hallarían en el ámbito de
la historia del arte. Gracias a mi formación en biología, también he recurrido a algunas disciplinas científicas (etología, primatología, neurociencias...) con el objetivo de enriquecer mi propuesta y de acercarme a la percepción y a los puntos de vista de otros animales. Asimismo, el conglomerado académico y transversal que constituyen los estudios animales me ha ayudado a navegar a través de los diferentes campos y enfoques manteniendo a los animales no humanos y a sus perspectivas en el centro de mis esfuerzos, al mismo tiempo que me permitía esclarecer y desafiar dicotomías como animal/humano, biología/cultura, natural/artificial...

The article „Omitted and revolutionary Neuroarthistory” is a  critical review of John Onians’s book „Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki”. The main goal of this review is to recount theoretical base of new perspective – neuroarthistory and its practical consequences. Author writes about the mechanism of neuroarthistory and shows two case studies form Onians: Aloisy Riegel and Jasper Johns. Furthermore the article has many critical remarks, regarding new approach and tendency to cognitivisation of humanistic science. On this bases the author tries to answer such questions as: how can we connect art history (science discipline) and neuroscience, how important is developing transdysciplinary research in interpretation of art and why polish scientist do not try to explore neuroarthistory even on its basic level. This article is a first attempt to introducing neuroarthistory in polish language.

When ancient people entered a temple or other sacred space, how did the art and architecture of the site work upon their senses as mediators of divine presence? This thesis demonstrates that the ancient perception of the deity’s actual presence in visual images created a tension that was intensified by the spatial environment and the theatricality of ritual performance. Visual representations acted in concert with cultic ritual to manipulate the visitor through a revelatory experience and create the phenomenon of epiphany. Epiphany, from the Greek word epiphaneia, is the visible manifestation of the deity. Epiphany in the ancient world could manifest as miracles, signs and natural phenomena; however, my thesis will focus primarily on visual epiphany of deity. My aim is to describe how the elements of the built environment and performative ritual combined to create not only the expectation but the actualization of an epiphanic experience for the beholder. The phenomenon of visual epiphany has been largely overlooked until relatively recently. Scholarly examination of temples and other ritual spaces has focused more on archaeological description, formal analysis, mythic narrative, and social and political structures. There has been very little exploration of the actual ritual and neuro-phenomenological experience of religious participants as it relates to the visual environment. With this work my aim is to contribute to the scholarly knowledge of the ancient viewer’s experience of epiphany as it was shaped by sacred space and mediated by religious ritual in the ancient world.

Six years ago John Onians published the book Neuroarthistory From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki. In 2008, very few people wanted to discuss this new approach in history of art. It was hard to find art historians who wanted to be neuroarthistorians. Today, after famous research made by David Freedberg and Vitorio Gallese, we can observe a fascinating process in art history—a cognitive turn. This idea of new art history is connected with science, particular with neuroscience—and this will be the main subject of my presentation. I will point out all those ideas that can be taken from cognitive science. This methodological research will include interpretations made by art historians and scientists. I will show the evolution of the “cognitive” approach in art history by analyzing the achievements of art historians such as: John Onians, David Freedberg, Raphael Rosenberg. This compilation should show how important the newest knowledge, from neuroscience is in the interpretation of past and modern art. I will also try to confirm the idea that history of art has to change and be more open to empirical methods. I will show basic practical problems of using neuroscience discoveries in the history of art.

Non human animals, as acknowledged by W.J.T. Mitchell, have been for a long time associated with images. Being “man” the “speaking animal“, the image would be the medium of the subhuman, the savage, the child, the woman, the masses, and last but not least, of the “dumb” animal, which lacks language. Besides this widespread tradition, experts in animal behavior such as Temple Grandin have suggested that some animals, though lacking language, may be able to think, but in pictures. In fact in the same way that she does too, and defying with her suggestion and her statement the position of cartesian rationalism.
Though philosopher Thomas Nagel in his seminal paper about consciousness and the mind-body problem denied almost completely the possibility that we, humans, could in any way imagine how would it be to be a bat; to feel like a bat; to hear, see or echollocate like a bat; recently some artists such as Marcus Coates, Rachel Mayeri, Tony Crabb, Nicolas Primat, Sam Easterson or Rosemarie Trockel are trying hard to think otherwise. On one hand they follow the path opened by biologist and philosopher Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), who verbally described and visually illustrated animals’ worlds or Umwelten. On the other hand they explore the above mentioned closeness of animals and the visual, and their perceptions and mental images, through varied sources of knowledge (ethology, folk traditions, psychology, cohabitation, metaphors, visual and verbal representations…). These artists have attempted to translate animals imagining their worlds, to mediate between us and them rendering visual products that derive from what they believe to be the animals’ visual and subjective worlds. A useful approach to the photographs, installations, videos and other works by these artists is analyzing them as meta-pictures. Pictures that have been fabricated, elaborated, framed, with the aspiration to imitate or refer to the elusive and virtual mystery that lies in the minds of the animals, to the images that in some way or another we expect to be contained there.

Historia sztuki wielokrotnie zapożyczała metody badań od innych dyscyplin naukowych. Dotyczyło to takich nauk jak, np: filozofia, socjologia, psychologia, optyka. Bardzo prawdopodobne wydaje się, że następną gałęzią wiedzy wykorzystaną przez historię sztuki będzie neuroestetyka. Niniejszy artykuł pokazuje, w jaki sposób weryfikować można poglądy klasyków metodologii historii sztuki (R. Arnheim) z tezami dotyczącymi doświadczenia estetycznego i percepcji (V.S. Ramachandran i W. Hirstein). Autor tekstu wychodzi z dwóch głównych założeń. Pierwsze dotyczy kwestii (motywowanej technologicznie) ciągłości rozwoju problemów percepcji w sztuce. Drugie polega na przekonaniu o tym, iż Neurologiczna teoria doświadczenia estetycznego jest w stanie uzupełnić istniejącą wiedzę dotyczącą teorii centrum Arnheima. Założenie to nabiera szczególnego znaczenia jeśli zauważymy, że poglądy niemieckiego psychologa często prezentowane są studentom pierwszego roku studiów z historii sztuki w ramach wykładów ze wstępu do dyscypliny. W niniejszym tekście omówione zostaną i zestawione kategorie takie jak: grupowanie, wyolbrzymienie, symetria, uproszczenie itd..

Recent findings from studies of epileptic patients and schizotypes have suggested that disruptions in multi-sensory integration processes may underlie a predisposition to report out-of-body experiences (OBEs: Blanke et al., 2004; Mohr et al., 2006). It has been argued that these disruptions lead to a breakdown in own-body processing and embodiment. Here we present two studies which provide the first investigation of predisposition to OBEs in the normal population as measured primarily by the recently devised Cardiff anomalous perception scale (CAPS; Bell et al., 2006). The Launay-Slade Hallucination scale (LSHS) was also employed to provide a measure of general hallucination proneness. In Study 1, 63 University students participated in the study, 17 of whom (26%) claimed to have experienced at least one OBE in their lifetime. OBEers reported significantly more perceptually anomalies (elevated CAPS scores) but these were primarily associated with specific measures of temporal-lobe instability and body-distortion processing. Study 2 demonstrated that OBEers and those scoring high on measures of temporal-lobe instability/body-distortion processing were significantly impaired, relative to controls, at a task requiring mental own-body transformations (OBTs) (Blanke et al., 2005). These results extend the findings from epileptic patient studies to the psychologically normal population and are consistent with there being a disruption in temporal-lobe and body-based processing underlying OBE-type experiences.

Introducion+Summary
So far, the issue of using the results of neuroaesthetic research for image interpretation and analysis has not been discussed by any Polish art historian. Wondering about this fact, I have decided to answer the question why Polish art historians and culture experts do not undertake such an interesting and current subject. The answer was so complex that I have turned it into a more elaborate argumentation,  aimed  at  initiating  some  dialogue  between  art  historians  and the representatives of natural sciences, especially neuroscientists. Before, however, I determine the very purpose of this book, I shall present  the reasons  why  it  is  worth  dealing  with  applying  the  methods and empirical research results for art interpretation.

Tekst jest zaproszeniem do polemiki nad sensem opisania i wskazania odmienności nowej transdyscypliny – kognitywnej historii sztuki. W artykule zaprezentowany został zarys procedury mogącej przyczynić się do wyłonienia nowej transdyscypliny. Autor krótko przedstawia kontekst metodologiczny powstania nowej „subdyscypliny” historii sztuki, ukazując liczne źródła i przykłady jej wykorzystywania w praktyce badawczej.

Coraz popularniejsza we współczesnej nauce jest praktyka łączenia ze sobą różnych dyscyplin w celu uzyskania pełniejszej wiedzy na dany temat. Tendencja ta obecna jest także w refleksji nad sztuką i przybiera najróżniejsze formy – począwszy od aplikowania wiedzy z zakresu biologii i neurobiologii do analiz dzieł sztuki a skończywszy na badaniach empirycznych. W poniższym tekście krótko omówione zostały trzy eksperymenty realizowane za pomocą urządzeń okulograficznych. We wszystkich przypadkach badaną materią były dzieła sztuki. Tekst prezentuje krytyczną analizę wyników zebranego materiału z perspektywy historyka sztuki.

Although the application of empirical studies in analysis and interpretation regarding works of art is not yet a common practice, their perspective can be observed to develop dynamically. The present article provides a brief introduction to theoretical and practical questions of using a workshop of studies about perception for creating and evaluating museum exposition. In the first place, the author juxtaposes
and analyses neuromuseology and neurohistory of art. Next, the article provides a critical verification of the experiment performed by Piotr Francuz with the use of an occulograph. The second case under discussion is an attempt of creating a new way for documenting works of art, made by the Art & Science Research Foundation om – organisms and machines in culture.

Recent research in neuroaesthetics has simulated the effect of deja-vu by displaying images with similar spatial structures. This research has the potential to change the way iconography is interpreted.

I focus on a case study from seventeenth-century Japan: the newly established prostitution quarter of Yoshiwara in the city of Edo was extensively visualized by the atelier of Hishikawa Moronobu, later hailed as the founder of the genre of ‘images of the floating world’. I argue that Moronobu's images appealed to the visual imagination of their audience through depictions of prostitutes with spatially dynamic poses that created a feeling of familiarity with their physical presence. In other words, the images' iconographic structure had the capacity to simulate the experience of meeting the prostitutes even when that experience had not occurred.

Another recent study has proven that watching scenes which included bended wrists activates the brain's motor centres corresponding to the wrists. For my study case, these results suggest that the accentuated sense of animation in the depictions of courtesans' dances activated memory and motor centres, thereby simulating the experience of visiting and experiencing the quarter with one's own body. This translated into a feeling of immersion on the part of the experiencer, who was momentarily transposed into a liminal state. I show how this immersion into the simulated space of the prostitution quarters was corroborated with allusions to narrative of religious encounters and to their potential of transforming the experiencer's identity.

The article presents the results of eye tracking research conducted in The
District Museum of Toruń (Muzeum Okręgowe w Toruniu), within the exhibition entitled "Polish painting and sculpture from 1945-2010 in the collection of the District Museum of Toruń" ("Malarstwo i rzeźba polska od 1945 do 2010 roku w zbiorach Muzeum Okręgowego w Toruniu") in July 2016. Its aim was to register eyeball movements of eleven people whose task was to enjoy the exhibition without any time limits. The experiment was to provide the answer to the question about the usefulness of eye tracking to museology. The results turned out to be a valuable point of reference for discussion. Despite the fact that the paper constitutes a form of prolegomena to the topic, some noteworthy issues do indeed appear, including: the question of what our strategy of viewing/looking at paintings is, the problem of the viewer’s behaviour in a museum space, the usefulness of eye tracking in preparing expositions, catalogues and guides. The project was financed out of the budget of Toruń (President’s scholarship), conducted in co-operation with The District Museum of Toruń.

In the article, based on the analysis of scientific literature, the question of aesthetic features of the artistic progress of humanity from neuro-aesthetic perception is considered. The evolution of creative inspirations in the context of neuroscientific research, the essence of aesthetic values from the standpoint of the laws of neuroesthetics and neuroart are investigated. The historiography of neuro-art and neuro-aesthetics is represented by a wide range of authors who have researched in many synthetic fields of art and neuroscience. The methodological basis for the study of the neuroart is a comprehensive approach to the research of problems that cover art analysis, due to the relevance of an in-depth review of art as a means of knowing man of the world; cultural analysis of processes and phenomena of human creativity; structural-system method of source analysis; a historical- comparative method of analyzing the peculiarities of styles in the directions along a long evolutionary process of forming the aesthetic foundations of artistic progress; a heuristic method that helps to identify the patterns and symbols that form the basis of the neuroart, which ensures the integrity and systematic evolution of culture and art; hermeneutics of the artistic coding of worldview concepts of human being. The scientific novelty of the research determines the priority of a sophisticated understanding of art during a long historical period of formation and development from the standpoint of achievements of neurophysiology and the structure of artificial intelligence. The idea is substantiated that the results of understanding the essence of neuro-art can serve as an essential component in the study of contemporary
cultural and artistic achievements as well as in determining the value categories of hyper-information society. The work extends the existing source base for further studies of the artistic creation of humankind in different historical periods from the standpoint of the neuroart and the neuroesthetic approach.

What is in the space between art and science? On the activities of the ‘om – organisms and machines in culture’ Art & Science Research Foundation Contemporary art becomes increasingly connected with technology and science. This connection falls beyond the scope of traditional education in the fields of the arts and art history. We talked with Violka Kuś (performer artist, CEO of the om Foundation) and Małgorzata Jankowska, PhD (academic scholar, exhibition curator, Deputy CEO of the om Foundation), about the importance of this relationship and the activities of the “om– organisms and machines in culture” Art & Science Research Foundation. The researchers describe three experiments, in which a drone, an eye tracker, and electroencephalography were used to record the performance. In the interview, they mention cooperation between the representatives of the humanities and science (which is not easy but very effective). At the end, the authors try to answer a question of whether art historians should be more transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary.