The rift between the arts and the sciences is possibly one of the most divisive in modern academia, and only the arts folk seem interested in doing anything about it. Unfortunately the average Dickens scholar don’t know diddly about molecular biology. In a possible attempt to bridge the divide West London's Louise T. Blouin Institute is currently showing an exhibition of works by Richard Meier, a real polymath who is an architect by trade, but who has also designed watches, couches, candlesticks, and cutlery, and who also makes small paintings and collages in his free time.
Now, if there is any obvious point of crossover between the arts and the sciences, then perhaps architecture is it. It must combine design with functionality and physics with aesthetics. In recognition of this, the Louise T. Blouin Institute has organised a series of lectures by people who, in one way or another, have bridged the gap between arts and science. So, they're hosting the likes of Samir Zeki, Baroness Greenfield, Tim Harford, and Colin Blakemore. This is a potentially fascinating programme of events to accompany a beautifully laid-out and informative exhibition of Meier's often mesmerizingly elegant work.
On the 19th February, John Onians of UEA, came to speak about his latest book, entitled rather intriguingly Neuroarthistory. His argument is fairly simple: drawing on work by neurologists like Zeki, Onians outlines the role of the 'mirror neuron', a component of the brain that, in effect, allows one to learn how to carry out a function simply by observing it in others. He explains how the act of doing a particular task has much the same effect on the brain as the act of watching somebody else do it. He explains how the more one sees a particular action repeated the more one might want to copy it, particularly if one in some way admires/respects/envies the person carrying out the action. Onians continues by suggesting how art might have originated from primitive man's attempt to copy the actions of bears that scratched on the walls of caves with their claws.
The lecture then takes us on a whistle-stop tour of things throughout the history of art that Onians finds interesting, and he has lots of intriguing ideas. Why did the English suddenly become interested in painting clouds in the 1800s when they had obviously been around in the sky for some time beforehand? Due to the sudden interest in all the smoke and steam of the industrial revolution, he suggests. Why did Renaissance painters characteristically stand holding their brush in the right hand and an ornate palette in the left? In part, perhaps, to imitate the manliness of the medieval knight. And, less convincingly, why did Chinese artists drag their ink across paper surfaces sitting down? In imitation of the workers in rice-paddies apparently. Is it coincidental, he asks, that the Chinese character for painting is very similar to the one for a field? Err, probably.
The problem with Onians is that he has lots of interesting things to say, but his attempts to put them into a coherent theory are problematic. He conflates the neurological development of an individual with the evolutionary advancements of a species. He turns anecdote into history and speculation into evidence. Most of the points he makes really have little to do with 'mirror neurons' or any other types of neuron on a biological level: his basic argument is no more complex than saying pretty much that people paint what they see.
Onians' lecture is also riddled with inconsistencies. He quotes Jasper Johns and another unnamed artist talking about their influences in order to prove one of his points about memory. But he later declares that, "what artists say about their art is valueless". He talks at length about the impossibility of suppressing the unconscious, but then lays into Freud as just some kind of sex-obsessive (there's way more to Freud, but we have Dalí's ignorance to blame for that assumption).
The worst thing is that Onians is an engaging, self-deprecating speaker and a very interesting man with some cracking anecdotes (the one about a dinner party in New York with Jasper Johns is great). And he makes some salient points: the current obsession with video art in part stems from the time we all spend watching DVDs and playing computer games. And there is an interesting suggestion that if one were only ever exposed to vertical lines, the horizontal would cease to make sense to the brain, although this isn't really supported with much evidence. It's really just that his theories don't stand up to intellectual scrutiny, something he almost seems aware of himself: in his introduction he states that he is only looking at specific artists and not universal truths, but towards the conclusion he confesses that his is simply an approach to trends and cannot account for art's wonderful diversity.
This lecture could have been so much more. Onians doesn't even touch on the second of his two subtitles, 'How art moves the viewer'. It might have been interesting to learn exactly what the brain does when one looks at a piece of art, whether it is any different to looking at a sunset or a friend or a packet of crisps or oneself. It might perhaps be worth asking how people with mild brain damage approach the experience of art. But we don’t hear anything on these subjects. Maybe there just wasn't time, but one gets the impression that 'Neuroarthistory' is still very much a work in progress. This makes it potentially exciting, but, at present, it is still too shallow and poorly formed to provide much of an insight.
It's easy to see why scientists aren't much interested in reaching out to the arts. If all they see of arts dons is woolly thinking, half-formed theorising, and inconsistent levels of understanding, they're hardly a worthy recipient of science's vast monetary budgets. In the conflict of the faculties, at this rate at least, there's only going to be one winner. Science 1: Art 0.
John Onians, ‘Neuroarthistory: How the eye moves the artist's hand. How art moves the viewer’ was presented at the Louise T Blouin Institute, 19th February 2008.
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