Neurosci + Art

In this week’s lectures, Professor Vesna talked about the relationship of neuroscience and art. This relationship inspired me a lot. In my opinion, neuroscience affected art in many aspects because we use our brain to recognize, to create, and to appreciate art.

As Professor Vesna mentioned in her lecture, artists have figured out ways to create optical illusions based on their knowledge about the brain. They change depth and brightness of their works to make their art pieces more authentic and lively.

Take myself as an example. I went to Getty Center yesterday and found a really special painting. The painting, called Wheat stacks, Snow Effect, Morning, is created by Claude Monet. It features a wheat stacks near a painter’s house, which had been left out over the winter. I felt that the air and light in the painting were varying continually when I was staring at it. Thus, I was wondering why does it look more and more bright to my eyes? Then I did some research and found out that most people have three kinds of cones in the eye's retina: red, blue and green. This arrangement ensures the brain to compare the activities in two or three cones and create an image. Moreover, artists also take advantage of another phenomenon called “luminance”. They utilize special shadow and light patterns to make a painting appear brighter to the brain. Furthermore, when our brains recognize a color contrast but not a light contrast, an effect called "equal luminance" is created, which produces a sort of shimmering quality to the painting. This technique is indeed reflected in Monet’s painting as well.

Neuroscience is a science about our brain. Artists have to take advantage of neuroscience, especially about how the brain creates interprets visual stimuli, because we do not see art merely by our eye but in fact by our brains.

Citations:

Vesna, Victoria, prod. Radio. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EX75xoBJ0>.

Monet, Claude. Wheat stacks, Snow Effect, Morning, 1891. N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. <http://www.zucapaca.com/best-of-monet/claude-monet-1890-wheatstacks-end-of-summer/>.

"Arts and Brain." N.p., n. d. Web. Web. 18 Nov 2013. <http://www.pinterest.com/cathymalchiodi/arts-and-brain-arts-and-neuroscience/>.

Huang, Mengfei. "The Neuroscience of Art." n. page. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.stanford.edu/group/co-sign/Huang.pdf>.

ART + NEUROSCIENCE. N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. <http://www.roomsmagazine.com/index.php/2013/09/laurie-frick/>.