Reductionism in Art and Brain Science

Bridging the Two Cultures
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-231-17962-1
Verlag: Deg Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 652 g

Can science and art find common ground? Are scientific and artistic quests mutually exclusive? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric Kandel, whose interests span the fields of science and art, explores how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable ideas—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. Their common use of reductionist strategies demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work studying the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in the humble sea slug, whose simple brain helps illuminate the complex workings of higher animal minds. He extends these findings to the complexities of human perception, which uses bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions to perceive the world and to appreciate and understand works of art.

At the heart of this book is an elegant elucidation of the pivotal contribution of reductionism to modern art's extraordinary evolution and to its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism was a driving force in the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how the New York School of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin arrived at their particular forms of abstract expressionism in the postwar era, and concludes with Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback, who built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book brings science and art into closer relation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kandel, Eric

Kandel, Eric R.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Neurowissenschaften, Kognitionswissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Biologische Psychologie, Neuropsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Emergence of a Reductionist School of Abstract Art in New YorkPart One: A Reductionist Approach to Brain Science2. The Beginning of a Scientific Approach to Art3. The Biology of the Beholder's Share: Visual Perception and Bottom-Up Processing in Art4. The Biology of Learning and Memory: Top-Down Processing in ArtPart Two: A Reductionist Approach to Art5. Reductionism in the Emergence of Abstract Art6. Mondrian and the Radical Reduction of the Figurative Image7. The New York School of Painters8. How the Brain Processes and Perceives Abstract Images9. From Figuration to Color Abstraction10. Color and the Brain11. A Focus on Light12. A Reductionist Influence on FigurationPart Three: The Emerging Dialogue Between Abstract Art and Science13. Why Is Reductionism Successful in Art?14. A Return to the Two CulturesNotesReferencesIllustration CreditsIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Eric R. Kandel is University Professor and Kavli Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia and codirector of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. In 2000, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He has written extensively on the biology of learning and memory, psychiatry, and art, and is coeditor of the textbook Principles of Neural Science. His recent books include The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present (2012) and In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (2007).