Inner Vision: an Exploration of Art and the Brain, by Semir Zeki

The relations between art and life is explored throughout Martin McDonagh’s play, The Pillowman and Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent. They explore these relations through discussing the stylistic features of their characters and how these characters are perceived in real life. Both authors explore how the preconceived ideas of what a character should be is dismantled and the line which distinguishes between art and life is becoming less clear. Another way in which these authors explore the link between art and life is through the act of storytelling. This suggests that life is a form of art. Both texts deal with the argument of whether it is life that influences art or art that influences life. Some literary critics such as Henry James

Like everything else, there is a romanticized idea of art. A balcony overlooking Los Angeles/ New York/ Italy/ France/ Greece. A misunderstood starving artist conveying their emotions by painting on a canvas. The underlying aspect is emotion. Art is a way to express emotions if you look at the work of Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso what you will see is subconscious emotions on a canvas. Art making is hypothesized to involve bilateral stimulation, engaging the integrating and planning functions of the prefrontal cortex to sequence narratives using left brain functions. Slowly evolving to being used by psychoanalysts and art therapy becoming a profession. This essay will show how art plays an important factor in psychological

It has been a common assumption that “seeing” comes from the ability of one’s eye to

For as long as humankind has been around, humans have created and been engrossed with artwork. Art, whether in the form of music, paintings, movies, etc., can have multiple functions, including telling a story, providing a moral lesson, engaging our emotions, or just being entertainment. In a world as diverse and imperfect as ours is, an artist’s intentions and morals can be controversial and viewed negatively depending on the place and time in which his or her artwork is viewed. While all art has a place in society, not all art is equal in quality and morality, but those are not interchangeable terms; morality corrupt art can be beautiful and morally upstanding art can be of lesser quality. In this paper, I argue that a work of art can be both beautiful and evil at the same time, and that a piece of evil art can be just as important to society as a piece of wholesome art.

In this paper I will be describe how I interpret never before seen art pictures. I will discuss how they make me feel, what I think of them, and what region of the brain makes me feel this way, and lastly how this process helped me. First I will pick an artist I have not viewed before, I’ll look at the picture for two minutes observing everything I can. Then I will discuss how I perceive the painting.

In beginning was the image. Before each of us learned to speak and speak on a topic, we started see and perceive the world through images. We tried to analyze what the world has to pass us. The same is true now, when as adults we choose, for example, to an art gallery. Looking at the work of art, at first glance, we can very quickly determine if that something we like or not, whether evokes in us an emotion. The model can also be in terms face or frontally, in profile or three-quarters, as shown in the image of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Head of the Virgin.

Focus Question: To what extent was the Italian Baroque art, specifically Bernini, a support for the Catholic-Counter Reformation compared to The Neoclassical era, not even a century later? A comparison of Bernini’s “The Throne of Saint Peter” and “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”; and Antonio Canova’s “Amor and Psyche”.

Images of art enhances how one views the world around him. Infinite meanings behind an image expands one’s vision to see much more, to think much more, and to believe much more. “Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are(Berger 106)”.

In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, One Art, it displays the acceptance Bishop has for losing things. Each stanza the losses get more significant, until she finally displays the one thing she can’t accept losing. Elizabeth Bishop uses techniques such as verse form and repetition to display her feelings toward those losses.

In episode three of The Secret of Drawing “All in the Mind” Andrew Graham journeys around to see how art and the mind are linked together, in wonder if they are linked unconsciously or consciously. Andrew first takes us to the British Museum to talk to an artist about their work. They thought that work was self-revealing and is a way to portray self through art with the usage of light, line and our own thoughts to make art. As young children, we use to draw things that were inhibited and were used to get a sense of the world, such as mommy, daddy, familial pet and so on. The one thing that we all had in common was that the first thing we learned to draw was the human shape. The drawings were not necessarily how we adults would draw them as they were abstract and playful with no concept of how they were actually supposed to look. We are taken to an example of trying to find our inner child again through a live-model art class. In the class students could draw what they felt, how they felt, not controlled by any one style. Artists can call upon their inner selves, thoughts, feelings and etc. when drawing, when doing this they are essentially freeing themselves. These drawings could be purely artistic or full of intellectual thought. For the untrained eye, we focus on many different parts at once instead of light and shading.

Creativity has been an inherent part of human experience since remote times when visual forms helped our ancestors to communicate leaving us with many recorded moments of their history. In a creative process multiple aspects bind together, things come out the intellect but also there are other states of consciousness and unconsciousness phenomena involved. A similar thing occurs in the contemplation of a piece, where we can have different interpretations, various sensations and opinions, but in one way or another through art humans develop common connections in between individual experiences. Art cultivates sensitivity and it can be used to explore the world in new forms that perhaps otherwise might not have been considered, allowing

This is especially critical in today’s society, seeing as a large percentage of the world’s population is susceptible to falling into depression. According to the World Health Organization, “Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease,” with more than 300 million people of all ages suffering from it. If art has the ability to alter the way a person perceives things, then using our knowledge regarding the way art connects to the mechanisms of the brain involved in perception, we can use it to ameliorate the mental health of mankind as a whole. Connotations in art obtained from perception place emphasis on visual expression, and style represents “an interpretation,

When we appreciate others’ creativity, or better yet, actively bring creativity to bear in our own experiences, such participation shapes our sense of self and can render physical and emotional experiences. Through creative expression and engagement with the visual arts, individuals are able to discover, share, express, and feel aspects of the human experience. The meaning and interpretation behind works of visual art can be quite complex as the artist attempts to convey his or her reflections of the human condition to an individual or audience. The complexity of the aesthetic judgment begets an infinite number of interpretations for any given piece of art, any one of which may be considered valid to an individual. Although, when a piece

For centuries the human race has struggled and grappled with the definition of the word beautiful. After all, what constitutes as being beautiful? In the simplest of forms, beauty could be defined as an existence that is aesthetically pleasing to the mind and the senses. However, some consider beauty to be more complex than just an object that is pleasing. This conversation is made more complicated when one considers the existence of unconventional beauty, or things that would not normally be considered beautiful. The reality is, that due to the fact that each person may regard beauty different depending on their taste in art, film and music, the definition is subject to change, on a case by case basis. Art that invokes feelings of contentment or glee is not resolutely the only things that can be seen as pleasurable. There is also perceived beauty in art that arouses feelings of melancholy, misery and desolation.

The most important trait in defining art is its beauty. As complex as the term “art” can be, the term “beauty” is nearly just as complicated. In order to understand art more clearly it is important to understand beauty. “We label an object beautiful because it promotes an internal harmony or ‘free play’ of our mental faculties; we call something ‘beautiful’ when it elicits this pleasure.” (Freeland 8). As defined above, beauty is not a direct message. It is something that subconsciously allows man to feel good and pleasurable. There is “an internal harmony” when we observe something beautiful that allows us to take away a deeper understanding of a work of art regardless of it being “nice looking” or “ugly”.