The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Eric Kandel (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 27, 2012

A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind—our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions—and how mind and brain relate to art.
 
At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art. Kandel takes us into the world of Vienna to trace, in rich and rewarding detail, the ideas and advances made then, and their enduring influence today.
 
The Vienna School of Medicine led the way with its realization that truth lies hidden beneath the surface. That principle infused Viennese culture and strongly influenced the other pioneers of Vienna 1900. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with his insights into how our everyday unconscious aggressive and erotic desires are repressed and disguised in symbols, dreams, and behavior. Arthur Schnitzler revealed women’s unconscious sexuality in his novels through his innovative use of the interior monologue. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele created startlingly evocative and honest portraits that expressed unconscious lust, desire, anxiety, and the fear of death.
 
Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers—Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele—inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today’s cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Advance praise for The Age of Insight
 
“Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity.”
—Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind’s Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
 
“In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art—and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.”
—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)

“A fascinating synthesis of art, history, and science that is also accessible to the general reader. A distinctive and important title that is also a pleasure to read”
—Library Journal (STARRED)

“Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history—the book’s color reproductions alone make it a great browse—to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader’s imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see—and feel—the world.”
—Publisher’s Weekly

“A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences.”
—Scientific American

“Eric Kandel’s book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book—all its readers will be amply rewarded.”
—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
 
“Eric Kandel’s training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna.”
—Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
 
“This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the ‘two cultures’—science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called ‘new mysterians,’ had considered impossible.”
—V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale Brain


“Eric Kandel has created a masterpiece, synthesizing brain, mind, and art like no one has before.”
—Joseph LeDoux, NYU, author of The Emotional Brain and Synaptic Self

“[This book] offers not only a stunning organic (in every sense of the word) view of fin de siecle culture but also opens new vistas in bioesthetics. It explores the often shocking neurology of the beautiful. And it shows how artist and scientist interlace in the common quest to discover the innards of reality. ‘I don’t render the visible,’ said Paul Klee, ‘I make visible.’ He echoed Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘Euclid alone looked on beauty bare.’ Eric Kandel is of that company.”
—Frederic Morton

“Nobel laureate Eric Kandel’s path-setting exploration of the connections between neuroscience and the painters Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka establishes a new frontier in the study of this all-important historical period. The shift toward a biological conception of self, which began in Vienna over a hundred years ago, has since decisively shaped our understanding of human nature.”
—Jane Kallir, director, Galerie St. Etienne

“With infectuous enthusiasm and limitless reverence for his multiple subjects, Kandel deftly steers the reader through a vast and inviting territory of science, the creative process, the mind, emotion, eroticism, empathy, feminism, and the unconscious. Years in the making, this highly readable book presents a magisterial study of brain, mind, and art.”
—Alessandra Comini, University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita, Southern Methodist University

About the Author

Eric R. Kandel is University Professor and Kavli Professor at Columbia University and a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Kandel is founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on memory storage in the brain. He is the author of In Search of Memory, a memoir that won a Los Angeles Times Book Award, and co-author of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field. He was born in Vienna and lives in New York with his wife, Denise.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Random House (March 27, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400068711
• ISBN-13: 978-1400068715
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > History
  • #13 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > History
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More About the Author

Eric R. Kandel is Kavli Professor and University Professor at Columbia University and senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000. He lives in New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 150 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Vienna art shines in the brain March 28, 2012

By Lilac

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a splendid book both on the workings of the brain and how it can be exemplified in the art of Vienna 1900. This was after all the place and time that led to modernity making Vienna one of the pre-eminent capitals of the world. One is swept up in the feeling of being privy to the birth of the new understanding in medicine and art as it took place in Vienna 1900 in its most intense unfolding and this description is extended to later work, predominantly at US universities, often by people who derived from the Viennese school of thinking through emigration.
The work follows the tradition of the bridge-builders between the seemingly opposed subjects bringing new insights from brain-science in understanding art. It shows, in academic detail, the brain as a network that finds pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge in either field. It is rather comprehensive and learned at that.

The book is cerebral but very readable; in fact I read it in a Marathon session in preparing for a trip to New York to the Golden Adele, this Mona Lisa of the Fin de Siècle. You don't need the trip though; there are wonderful reproductions in the book of interesting work to be analyzed. You need also not read all the academic detail, there is much to enjoy by taking glimpses or by looking at shorter summaries and graphs.

In the first part we learn, in an especially engrossing section, about the general atmosphere in Vienna during its golden time, its coffee-house and theater culture, its literary, musical and salon life but another forward force was the influence of Europe's premier Medical School of the time in Vienna that established such routines as stethoscope or auscultation. It was the understanding of its research that urged the artists and scientists to look further below the surface. In fact, Klimt's ornaments often come from microscopic cell structures from Medical School. Much loving personal detail is given in this section. Freud is discussed, as are his contemporaries the writers Schnitzler and Hoffmannsthal who have looked to the unconscious. But the focus is on Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele, the Austrian Modernist painters. Their work is analyzed from a Nobel brain scientist's perspective in a tour de force.
In further sections a new and trailblazing sense for artistic analysis based on brain processes is suggested in great detail and you will learn about contemporary brain criteria for appreciating art. This section does not introduce the scientific practitioners with the same loving attention and it reminds you more of a science survey article. It helps if you don't hate terms like oxytocin, as it is the chemical involved in love, and much is made in the text of these brain chemicals. You learn that caricatures work because specific brain cells exist that like to read them. This is why the exagerations of the Austrian expressionists are so effective.

Amongst the broader subject of Vienna 1900, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900Family, Vienna 1900 gives a touching documentary of the Gallias, an art patronage family of which the author is a descendent, and Tassilo's guide to Klimt's Kiss/ Paintings of Vienna's Belvedere an erudite and witty visit with a Jewish teen-girl to the museum where much of the art discussed is displayed. It can serve as an entertaining introductory course so to speak. One of the first to point out the importance of Vienna 1900 as one of the cultural capitals of the world and as a founder of Modernity was Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, perhaps more for the academically minded. None have gone so deep into the brain so far as Kandel to make Vienna shine. Your whole perspective of looking at art will be changed, and you will learn a lot about yourself even if you may now view yourself more as a caricature.
When asked in a comment on flaws of the Kindle edition I came to realize how flawless it is. Footnotes and pictures are fully integrated and pictures are even repeated where the text returns to them.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid May 10, 2012

By Dominic Martello

Format:Hardcover

For me this book was a revelation. I took up photography after brain surgery some four years ago so as someone interested in the neurological changes in my life, AND fascinated with the impact of art in my life, I thought this was a must have. No disappointment on either count. He doesn't talk past nor down to the reader and while that can't be easy he makes it seem so. And the work of Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele are perfect for a study of the huge effect Freud and other turn of the century giants had on the modern aesthetic. My attitude to my own photography has been profoundly changed.

62 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Age of Insight, wonderfully written, exposing these Viennese innovators under today's scientific tools of examination April 2, 2012

By Didaskalex TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

*****
"In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Eric Kandel will discuss the book already praised by Oliver Sacks as 'a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first century understanding of the human mind' in all its richness and diversity."
*

My relation with the Viennese milieu started with my father telling me about the dream city, the reincarnation of late antiquity Alexandria, where I was born after WWII. He took his postgraduate studies in Vienna University before it was annexed by Hitler. Sam, my younger brother was fascinated with Klimt, few of his frescos still hanging on my house walls. But I was a fan of Mozart and Freud, and later I encountered the magical worlds of Dr. Kandell; thanks to the intellectual tours of Charlie Rose.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Vienna, the pride of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire - was considered the cultural capital of Europe, by my dad and many, with its unique atmosphere and sophisticated charm. Vienna embraced a versatile mix of musicians, scientists and artists, who met in cafes and spent the evenings in sparkling salons, or gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held to amuse one another and enjoy fine taste and broaden their knowledge through conversation.

They used liberal discussions, of novel ideas that may have led to inventive conclusions, with influential results in psychology, brain science, and innovation of literature, and art. Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, among many others began exploring a charming new territory: the then mystical unconscious. The School of Medicine in Vienna University paved the way to break through of modernity, once its realization was revealed, that truth lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, which inspired and enhanced a wide spectrum of pioneers allover Europe.

That principle was the motivation behind Sigmund Freud who shocked the world with his revelations of our everyday unconscious erotic desires and aggressive reactions, disguised in symbols, and repressed into dreams. Schnitzler even discussed the taboo of women's desires within their repressed sexuality in his novels. Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele responded by creating, what was startlingly mindful, and honestly portraying that unconscious desire, high anxiety, and animal lust.

In his book The Age of Insight, Nobel Prize laureate, the gifted neuro-psychiatrist Eric Kandel recovers back to memory these crucial times, at the eruption of the Modern age, and a brand new simulation for the human brain, creativity initiated and dramatically realized. The story is dramatized and told by the inspiring Troubadour around the inventive genius of 1900 Vienna. Freud, Klimt, and the whole bunch spear headed by their School of Medicine, and how they, in turn, galvanized the pioneers of Art History into modern historiography?

In "The Age of Insight, wonderfully written by professor Kandel, one of the pioneers of creative scientific thinking, at least in his overlapping domains, exposing these Viennese innovators under today's scientific tools of examination, from Cat scan to ultra sound in an effort to expose and frame the modern era art of Klimt, et al, reflecting on its roots in the thought of Freud and school. He utilizes an enhancement in the leadership of an intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900. Very well researched, and artfully illustrated. This is an extraordinarily amazing work from a celebrated leader in neuroscience whose miracle is creating the time of this encyclical essay.