This provocative book offers a fascinating account of neuroarthistory, one of the newest and most exciting fields in the human sciences. In recent decades there has been a dramatic increase in our knowledge of the visual brain. Knowledge of phenomena such as neural plasticity and neural mirroring is making it possible to answer with a new level of precision some of the most challenging questions about both the creative process and the response to art.
Exploring the writings of major thinkers (among them Montesquieu, Burke, Kant, Marx and Freud), and leading art historians (including Pliny, Winckelmann, Ruskin, Pater, Gombrich and Baxandall), as well as artists such as Alberti and Leonardo and scientists from Aristotle to Zeki, John Onians shows how an understanding of the neural basis of the mind contributes to an understanding of all human behaviors—including art.
"'A book that changes everything.' David Carrier, Champney Family Professor, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art"
About the Author
John Onians recently retired as director of the World Art Research Programme in the School of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia and is the former director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark Art Institute.
This review is from: Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (Hardcover)
Onians' new book quickly treats the insights of 25 men who wrote on art over the past 2000 years, with an emphasis on the details of perception that these figures noticed in the process of persistent observation of art and viewing. Onians corroborates and explains their insights in the light of the brain science that has emerged in the last two decades. This book is far more likely to instruct the reader in the history of art history than in the history of art. In the end Onians' goal is to foster curiosity and further discovery about the relationship between art and the brain and about human responses to art over the past 30,000 years. In this sweeping story there are cursory discussions of race, biology, genetics, culture, nature, optics, environment, and, obviously, neuroscience. I am not an expert in science or art but I think I will be little interested in the story of art if its history will be largely reduced to rods, cones, and some spastic pizazz at the crossroads between dendrite and axon. Onians does not forsake the humanistic tradition for the scientific but champions a new way forward in the history of art.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (Hardcover)
Visual arts (especially paintings, for they are basicly 2 dimensional the third dimention expressed by perspectival representation) contains two form of evaluation. One being cultural and seasonal that they chance , felt and evaluated differently by different cultures at different times. The other dimension is basical being the reception of the visual image by the brain unclauded by personal and cultural biases. This book gives the history of neurological basis of visual perception. I think it is of enormous value both to the historian
and neuroscientist. It is precise, condensed and focused to visual system.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
