Mindgasms: Art is not subjective

Throughout history, art has enjoyed a special place in almost all human cultures and often seen as an ‘out of the world’, imaginative and an increasingly subjective endeavor. Whether its lore, mythology, visual art, music or literature, it has been seen as employing some deeper or ‘higher’ forms of conscious reach. But as we put the scientific goggles to stare at the world and the humans living in that world, we might want to shrug our shoulders and say Hmm! What if something else going on?

So, what does the seemingly conclusive heading above actually mean? When I say, art is not subjective, do I mean that everyone has to like the same art and art forms. It would be cool if each person on the planet would listen to the same songs, or read the same books, but that is not what I mean. Then, does it mean that art in human societies serves specific evolutionary functions which in popular thought, is deemed as a way “to attract mates and pass on genes”. That is not quite true, nevertheless, that is not what I mean either.

When I talk about art, I am basically talking about aesthetics and beauty, principles of which are not so subjective or beyond this world, as previously thought to be. There are predictable patterns which manifests themselves across human cultures and even across species, and they can be studied in a scientific way. There are some cognitive and emotional modules, shaped by evolution which explains why some arts find their way in museums, buildings and even worshiped as gods in temples while others don’t quite make it. In a particular cultural tradition, some aesthetic forms continue to get replicated over and over across generations and across geography which can be traced historically such as deliberately enhanced features of iconography in Hindu art.

The all-time creative world of art is subject to cognitive and cerebral laws formulated by billions of years of evolution. What those laws are which invoke awe and ahas in us have remained the domain of artists and craftsmen, who had learned to capitalize on them through trial and experimentation. In other words, they take advantage of our perception and emotional processing systems to charm ‘magic’ on us.

So, how do we know this? Well, the findings arose from completely unrelated areas of science. Mainly perception and neuroscience. We don’t see how we think we see. There are some ‘perception shortcuts’ which evolution had wired in us during millennia of our struggle with environment. The evidence comes from visual and cognitive illusions which easily trick our brains, even if we know that we are being deceived. But, more important insights come from ethology, the study of animals. Jewel beetles, which are found in Australia were noted to go extinct because they were seen having sex with beer bottles. Well, Jewel beetles are brown and glossy and so are the beer bottles, which humans have the habit of throwing around in the environment. The beetles saw “anything that is brown and glossy, that is our hotie”.

Nikolaas Tinbergen, a Nobel prize winner ethologist, did an experiment with seagulls, whose beaks have a red dot, which they use to feed their infants. Tinbergen took an isolated beak, with no seagull attached and swayed it in front of the infants who showed the exact same response when they were about to get food even though there was no seagull. Then, Tinbergen, took a wooden stick and painted it with red dot, much brighter and bigger than that of a seagull’s beak. And, the infants pecked even vigorously and grew crazy for food. Vilayanur Ramachandran had remarked on this “If those seagulls were to build a museum and pay millions of dollars for an artifact, then that would most probably be the painted wooden stick”.

This new way of looking at art through the lens of neuroscience was coined by Semir Zeki according to whom art is governed by the laws of the brain which just means that you cannot ignore biology while doing culture. For many years, humanities and the social sciences have shown contempt on 'biologizing' of social and cultural phenomenon which according to them are complex, and cannot be underpinned. 'Reductionist' is the favorite and probably the most common word in the humanities and social sciences which is equivalent to being a baby-eater.

Nevertheless, findings from different areas continue to shake us and make us re-evaluate our standings. Margaret Livingstone, had pointed to several perceptual tricks which artists and impressionists use to make us clap by manipulating our visual systems. Art reveals how we see, at the back end in processing of our brains. That makes scientists the theorists, and artists the experimentalists. In her documentary video, The Neuroscience of Art, she explains the use of contrast and detail in several paintings. She also shows drawings made by people with brain damages and perception impairments who have difficulty locating distance and spatial network as shown below.

All of this tells us an important story about our own selves and how we see. Cultures, throughout history, have tried to figure out ways in which we perceive and absorb reality, whether it is auditory systems in sounds and music or visual organization in pictorial or illustrative art forms which enchant us and make us coming for more.