Art and the brain
Art and the brain
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DOI：
10.4324/9781351305204-3
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发表时间：
1998
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
S. Zeki
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
S. Zeki
ion. Abstraction has been used to describe many differ ent schools and movements; I use it here in its broadest sense, to signify works in which neither the work itself nor its constituent parts represent any recognizable objects in the visual world (noniconic abstraction). It is obvious that in this context, ab stract art differs radically from representational art. The ques tion is whether there is a significant difference in the pattern of brain activity when subjects look at abstract as opposed to representational art? A hint that there may be substantial differences can be found in recent imaging experiments from this laboratory, which have been inspired in part by the fauvist dream of liberating colors to This content downloaded from 207.46.13.51 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 05:46:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Art and the Brain 91 give them more expressive power. But from what can color be "liberated"? It is not easy to liberate it from form for good physiological reasons. The fauvists therefore settled on a differ ent solution, which was to invest objects with colors that are not usually associated with them, as Andr? Derain's View of Charing Cross Bridge and other fauvist paintings testify. Unknown to them, and only uncovered in our imaging experiments, they were exploiting different neurological pathways in the visual brain than the ones used in representational art, where objects are vested in the "correct" colors. Color is a biological signaling mechanism that exemplifies very well the brain's quest for knowledge under continually changing conditions. It is common knowledge that the basis of color vision is found in light?which itself has no color, being electromagnetic radiation?having many different wavelengths, stretching from red (long wave) at one end to blue (short wave) at the other, and the fact that different surfaces have different efficiencies for reflecting light of different wavelengths. What the brain seemingly does is to compare the efficiency of different surfaces for reflecting light of the same wavebands and thus make itself independent of the actual amount of light of any given waveband reflected from a single surface, since the latter changes continually depending upon the illuminant in which the surface is viewed. If the brain assigned a color to a surface as a function of the wavelength composition of the light reflected from it?characterizing it as green when it reflects more green (middle-wave) light and blue when it reflects more blue (short wave) light, with the dominant wavelength constituting a sort of code that the brain has to decipher?then the brain would be at the mercy of any and every change in wavelength composition reflected from the surface. Instead the brain has evolved an ingenious mechanism, whose neural implementation remains obscure, to take the ratio of light of a given wavelength reflected from the center and the surround. While the precise amount of light of a given wavelength reflected from a surface changes, the ratio of light of that same waveband reflected from the surface and from surrounding surfaces always remains the same. Color is therefore a construction of the brain, an interpretation that it gives to the reflective efficiency of different surfaces for the This content downloaded from 207.46.13.51 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 05:46:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
