Innovation and Visualization: Trajectories, Strategies, and Myths (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 1)

Innovation and Visualization

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General Editor:

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Editorial Board:

Anna Bonshek, John Danvers, William S. Haney II, Amy Ione, Arthur Versluis, Christopher Webster

Innovation and Visualization Trajectories, Strategies, and Myths AMY IONE

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005

Cover photograph: “Ai’s Studio”, Amy Ione, 2004. Cover Design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1675-2 ISSN: 1573-2193 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in the Netherlands

Table of Contents Preface? ......................................................................................... 7 1.

Introduction: Two Cultures ........................................................ 11

2.

Prelude ......................................................................................... 23

3.

Art and Consciousness: Methodologies..................................... 37

4.

Polyphonic Chords, Chromatic Painting and Synesthesia........ 55

5.

Books, Rhetoric and Visual Art ................................................. 75

6.

Theory: Innovation: Practice ..................................................... 87

7.

The Nineteenth Century: Painting, Photography and Vision Science ........................................................................... 109

8.

The Nineteenth Century: Inside Out and Upside Down ......... 131

9.

Working Space Revisited: Painting ......................................... 155

10. Working Space Revisited: New Genres................................... 175 11. Perception, Visual Art and the Brain ....................................... 197 12. Viewing the Past: Conservation and Restoration Studies....... 217 13. Conclusion: Entering the Twenty-first century ....................... 229 Notes on Chapter Title Quotes ................................................. 233 Bibliography .............................................................................. 235 Index .......................................................................................... 265

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Preface Writing a preface is a strange task. It is the first thing a reader finds within a book but is, ironically, often the last thing the author writes. Perhaps it is inevitable to find that, upon giving the book form, many details still cry out for inclusion. In this case, the downside is that I am constantly reminded that the challenge of giving voice to ideas is not a task to take for granted. Repeatedly a paragraph or two marks an idea that might be the basis for an entire book. If nothing else, this book makes it clear that there is much to say about art, science, technology and consciousness. Already my mind is conceiving an outline for one or two follow-up publications. On several occasions, I faced the daunting task of reaching to say something in words without finding language that matched the thought (or the visual) precisely, despite my best efforts to elucidate my thoughts. All who write know this dilemma well. Alas, try as we might, such is the nature of the practice. A further example of “what I found missing” in this book, I am pleased to say, can be found in an earlier publication, Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning. While not actively conceived as a set, it is intriguing to see that Innovation and Strategies is precisely the right sequel to Nature Exposed. Indeed as a pair they illustrate how our research interests develop in tandem with the paths we travel. My research interests reflect my life as a professional artist as well as the circumstances that brought me to academic themes related to art and consciousness. Although many people, ideas and situations have informed who I am, it was discovering an essay by the late classical scholar E.R. Dodds, “On Misunderstanding Oedipus Rex,” that I understood how important is the communication and clarification of ones cherished ideas. Some time before the essay surfaced in an anthology that I was reading, I had disagreed with a scholar (who specialized in subjects related to art and consciousness) on how we might interpret this famous play by Sophocles. I read Oedipus’ actions as motivated by shame, with no sense of the inner guilt that imbues the Judeo-Christian traditions, which was so dominant in the scholar’s interpretation. Our points of divergence were pronounced. Of greater concern to me personally was his inability to conceptualize that my point of view had any validity in the scheme of things. This exchange

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stayed in my mind even after the conversation ended. Was he right? Could I deliberately be so wrong and so stubborn in my refusal to recognize Oedipus had sinned? To my surprise, Dodds’ essay showed me that I read the play more from a Greek perspective and that even those educated in classics often had trouble seeing the Greek perspective because of the Christian interpretation that had been mapped onto Greek thought through translation and cultural interpretations. “On Misunderstanding Oedipus Rex” was written in response to answers to an exam question that Dodds posed to his Oxford students, thinking it was a gift at the time. He was surprised (and dismayed) to find that all of these young people, supposedly trained in classical literature, completely missed the point of this great and moving play. Dodds explains in this essay that their answers fell into three categories. The largest group held that the play justified the gods by showing (usually they wrote “proving”) that we get what we deserve. A second group, also quite large, saw Oedipus Rex as a tragedy of destiny. These students concluded that the play “proved” that man has no free will. Rather he is a puppet in the hands of gods who pull the strings that make him dance. The third group characterized Sophocles as a “pure artist,” admired the way Sophocles developed this exciting play and saw the gods as simply a part of the machinery of the plot. Dodds described these as his more thoughtful students and relates that: [A]ll of the views I have summarized are in fact demonstrably false (though some of them and some ways of stating them, are more crudely and vulgarly false than others). It is true that each of them has been defended by some scholars in the past, but I had hoped that all of them were by now dead and buried . . . Yet their unquiet ghosts still haunt the examination-room of universities . . . Surely that means we have somehow failed in our duty as teachers? [sic] (Dodds 1983: 177-78)

My point here is not that Dodds argued, as did I, that Sophocles is a play about human greatness and that what makes Oedipus great was the inner strength he brought to his desire to pursue what I will call truth (for lack of a better term) even at great personal cost. Rather I was astonished to find in Dodds’ essay that my argument had a place within classical research. I wondered why it was that people who proposed alternative paradigms within a spiritually-grounded framework, as this art and consciousness scholar had in our discussion, seemed, at least to me, more effective in presenting

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tautological arguments. Was it possible that further research would open a space for invigorating insight? Nature Exposed was an effort to sort through some of the boilerplate information that informs Consciousness Studies. It served as both a cross-cultural analysis and a dissection of some of the theories that juxtapose Eastern and Western thought. The book examined how we create our cultural assumptions about individual identity, culture and nature; while showing that overarching frameworks (such as East/West) miss the heart of cultural richness. My thrust in that book mirrored some thoughts of William James (1842-1910), presented in one of his last books, The Pluralistic Universe: The particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own thought so long in a vise was . . . the impossibility of understanding how ‘your’ experience and ‘mine,’ which ‘as such’ are defined as not conscious of each other, can nevertheless at the same time be members of a world experience defined expressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. The definitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be united . . . Things are ‘with’ one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word ‘and’ trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. ‘Ever not quite’ has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. . . However much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. (James 1987: 729, 777)

My overriding concern in Nature Exposed was the spiritual tensions ingrained in views of consciousness. That book first showed that research has only begun to extensively explore how humans developed and created new perceptions of reality in various historical periods and geographic areas. The second area of exposition, the paralleling of the East and the West, established that various and often contradictory belief systems and philosophies were defined within cultures and across cultures. As I explained there, all of the responses were born of an urgency to more effectively define human living in relation to the environment and the various answers became the foundation of the major religious traditions even into the twenty-first century. Of greater importance within the earlier study was the way a culture's assumptions of particular Truths was so effectively integrated within each culture’s framework. Basic assumptions were often held to have “always been there” although we can effectively ferret out

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their entry into the framework. As that book explains, I examined the Chinese and Indian traditions only because these are so often paired with the West. Yet, even within this narrow framework, it was possible to show that the premises of each of the Eastern cultures varied as significantly from one another as they do from assumptions found in the West. Of course, we can also find similarities among all of these traditions. Ironically, my interest in art and consciousness had brought me to do the research behind Nature Exposed and yet art was a subject hardly mentioned within that book. Stranger still, it was the research of that book that allowed me to turn my eye to art and return to a question that had wedged itself in my mind long before I discussed Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex with the art and consciousness scholar: why was it that reading about art seemed so far removed from artmaking? The pages that follow offer some perspective on this, albeit in terms of Western culture. As stressed by William James, more could be said and more could be written. In the future, to be sure, I hope to further integrate the Western orientation to art, science, technology and consciousness with the general cross-cultural comparisons of cultural and consciousness development framed in Nature Exposed. Amy Ione Santa Rosa, California, 2004

Chapter 1 Introduction: Two Cultures? What we conventionally call an “event” in history is simply a segment of the endless web of experience that we have torn out of context for purposes of clearer understanding. H. Stuart Hughes, History as an Art and Science

1. Comparing Views of Historical and Contemporary Art William M. Ivins, Jr., the Curator of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1916-1930 notes in his book Prints and Visual Communication that “[i]t is amusing to think how few of the great weavers of aesthetic theory had any familiar first-hand acquaintance with works of art and how many of them either . . . knew the art they talked about only through engravings, or else sieved their ideas out of the empty air”1 (Ivins 1978: 174). Indeed earlier historians of art as well as writers on aesthetic theory often built their expertise upon a limited knowledge base personally and were aided in their studies by textual sources that were likely to rest on less exposure to the actual works than many of the globe-trotting public of today. Similarly, before the nineteenth century academic education about visual art was likely to rely on textual description more than actual engagement with the objects studied, although in some cases casts or a print depicting an original painting might be available to someone who could not travel. Ivins sums up the predicament well, writing: Whenever we read a book, especially about art, archaeology, or aesthetic theory, written prior to about the beginning of the first world war, it is well to ask ourselves to what extent the writer had both a dependable memory and a first-hand acquaintance with the objects he referred to, to what extent he knew them through

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This is accentuated when we consider that visual information circulated less historically than our sense of it in our visually saturated culture. Ivins estimates that the number of printed pictures produced between 1800 and 1901 was probably considerably greater than the total number of printed pictures that has been produced before 1801 (Ivins 1978).

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The extent to which our thinking about visual art has been shaped by the predominantly textual analysis we find historically, however expert, serves to emphasize that things are not always what they seem in studies of visual art, aesthetics and visual communication.2 For example, we know that in antiquity, descriptions of works of art became a highly developed literary exercise, a talent many continue to develop today. We also know that it is often said that communication possibilities increased with the advent of printing and that the standardization of book production aided education.3 Yet, as noted, circumstances particular to visual art limited familiarity with many of the achievements, a phenomena accentuated by a descriptive literature that neutralized much of the visual power integral to the objects in real time and space. Indeed, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (18721945) claimed that one impetus behind his book The Waning of the Middle Ages, (a classic study of art, life and thought in France and the Netherlands during the 14th and 15th centuries) was to correct the record. Writing in 1924, roughly seventy-five years after the invention of photography, he explained that our perceptions of historical times are now more visual due to who we are. Many of us have now seen monuments of other cultures and reproductions depicting life in other times. Learning from these artifacts, rather than textual accounts of distant places and eras, has transformed our understanding of peoples and events (Huizinga 1999). Recent technologies that would astound Huizinga allow us to see far beyond what was available to him early in the twentieth century. 2

W.J. T. Mitchell, in his book Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, offers an interesting parallel to this. His attempt to excavate the ideological foundation of the nature of images, particularly in relation to words, found that the resulting book, “which began with the intention of producing a valid theory of images became a book about the fear of images” (Mitchell 1986: 3). 3 The earliest dated printed book known is the “Diamond Sutra,” printed in China in 868 CE, although it is suspected that book printing may have occurred long before this date. We also know that in 1041, movable clay type was first invented in China. Generally it is said that the advent of printing in the West needed to wait for the development of a proper paper. The first known woodcuts printed on paper were playing cards, produced in Germany early in the fifteenth century. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable wooden or metal letters in 1436 (completed by 1440). This press, with its wooden and later metal movable type, printing brought down the price of printed materials and has remained the standard until the 20th century.

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Within an art conservation laboratory of the early twenty-first century, for example, trained practitioners preserve artifacts that might range from paintings and woodcuts to photographs and projects constructed using pixels or video. Efforts to maintain these products, our human heritage, rely on tools that remind us of historical innovations and include many technologies of recent origin. Apparatus ranging from microscopes and infrared cameras that allow us to look beneath the surface appearance of these objects to mortars, pestles and ground pigments highlight the tantalizing ways in which the technologies of old now meet those of today. Spending time in one of these labs an artist might be fascinated by an examination of an X-ray that brings to light what lies beneath a painted surface, exposing the underdrawings that masters used to plan and prepare their paintings. Studying their markings would allow her to establish where an historical painter changed his or her mind and how a virtuoso used layers of pigment to contrive striking effects. Art historians looking at the same data might notice that some X-ray discoveries document errors in long established iconographic narratives. Equally thought provoking are the scientific experiments exposing pigments on an artist’s work that actually post-date that artist’s life. Discrepancies of this kind raise questions about authenticity and urge us to ask whether cultural fashions and tastes led to object alterations after a painter died, for example, or point to outright forgery. Contemporary communication options like the World Wide Web might then take us outside the laboratory and into distant collections, allowing us to further acquaint ourselves with related works found throughout the world. Although a “click of a mouse” visual does not reveal the aura of the actual work, a pictorial representation is more likely to acquaint us with the impact of a work as a whole than a linear sequence of descriptive words. Comparing the text with the image also gives us insight into proposed theories, often pointing out that the (often contradictory) definitions of art have fluctuated over time. 2. What is art? This brief tour, however, would hardly convey the complex tapestry of art history and how it intersects with science, technology and consciousness. Nor do these examples suggest the difficulty in isolating particular trends related to the theme of this book — which broadly examines art (with an emphasis on visual art), science, technology and human consciousness. Needless to say, with so many

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threads touching each possible topic, constructing a design for this project proved to be a daunting task. From the offset, the topic raised a plethora of questions in my mind as I found myself sifting through non-linear trajectories, opposing strategies and an assortment of cultural myths. Even the questions seemed to both surround the subject and to pull it in multiple, often contradictory, directions. For example: Should a probe of art focus on the product the artist produces or the process used in constructing the work? What does it mean to say that some art elevates our consciousness? Is there a difference between art that stimulates subjective consciousness and works that urge social consciousness, pushing us toward action within the cultural environment? Should we read visual art as a text and seek a handle through which we can interpret the levels of “meaning” embedded within a project? Then, again, perhaps an interpretation based on ferreting out meaning compromises key elements that might be optically-centered or intended to emotionally-charge our experience? Is it the visceral quality of a visual work that makes it art? Is art that viscerally excites us comparable to that which we need to deconstruct for full understanding? How do we best balance the consciousness of image consumers with that of producers? Is there a need to distinguish image manipulation from mimetic representation? How should we evaluate imagery that misleads or entertains us? Can we properly characterize misleading or entertaining imagery as art? Should we distinguish misleading images that are presented as representative of reality from those intended to aid us in reconceptualizing social concerns or subjective ways of being? How should historical ideas about art and communication be integrated with the visual saturation we take for granted today? How do we best integrate theories about art and imagery within the larger field of visual culture when visual studies touch upon everything from aesthetics and phenomenology to pop culture, advertising, Marxism, structuralism, feminism and postmodernism? Is visual culture about the social construction of vision? Should we distinguish art from craft or treat them as complementary? Answers to these questions are rarely definitive. Too often the complex problems intertwined within the various trajectories lead thinkers to extract certain issues, focus in on them like a laser and to ignore the thorny details that complicate the larger picture. No doubt an efficient approach and one greatly encouraged within the academy, I would argue that the narrowly constructed conclusions that result all too often highlight current fashions, ignore historical strategies outside the scope of the study and complicate the equation further. This is

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particularly evident in the various cross-disciplinary environments popular today. Consciousness Studies and our electronic environment in particular subsume discrete characterizations with alarming frequency, or they reduce historical details to a “two cultures” soundbite. 3. “Two Cultures”: Historical Background How these kinds of misplaced and blurry assumptions impact discourse on visual art is a second concern of this book. The “two cultures” phrase is one I admittedly find particularly unsettling. Easily dated to a title C.P. Snow used for his 1959 Rede Lecture and the books he later published of these lectures (Snow 1959, 1964), Snow adopted this phrase to contrast literary intellectuals and natural scientists, whom he claimed distrusted one another. In the lectures, Snow voiced his apprehension about the impact of their attitude on British education as well as the future of the world. Indeed, these talks were intended to ask how curricula in Britain could better serve both branches of knowledge in a global society. Since presented the phrase has taken on a life far from Snow’s concerns. More often than not, those who use the term as an historical point of reference seem to project an inaccurate history onto it. They also fail to acknowledge that Snow’s intention was to highlight a widening gap he saw forming between rich and poor countries as well as a gap between the trained and untrained technologically. Snow’s contrast of the literary intellectual and the natural scientist is primarily rooted in events we can place within nineteenth century British intellectual history.4 Briefly, throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance the interpretation of nature was generally regarded as but one element in the all-embracing enterprise of “philosophy.” Only in the seventeenth century, in the course of what historians were much later to dub “the scientific revolution,” did achievements in the study of the natural world come to be widely regarded as setting new standards for what could count as genuine knowledge. Thereafter the methods employed by the “natural philosophers” (as they were still termed) enjoyed a special cultural authority. One outcome evident during the eighteenth century was the aspiration to be “the Newton of the moral sciences,” a goal that testifies to the prestige of “the experimental method” generally associated with Newtonian science. 4

Stefan Collini’s recent introduction to the Canto edition of Snow’s book offers an excellent summary of this relationship (Collini 1993; Snow 1959, 1964).

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Essentially, it is from the Romantic period, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, that we can begin to see the beginning of a fissure in types of knowledge. During this time many in the arts began to reject the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization and rationality that typified classicism. Instead they emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the emotional and the transcendent. This reaction to aspects of the Enlightenment and rationalism coincided with events that showed cultural trends were elevating scientific methodology and separating the empirical from the “philosophical.” The British debate that was a culmination of these various transitions was initiated after the Cambridge professor William Whewell (1794-1866)5 suggested; “We need a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist. Thus we might say, that as an artist is a musician, painter, or poet, a scientist is a mathematician, physicist, or naturalist”6 (Whewell 1840: cxii). In other words, despite the general assumption that the word scientist has a classical origin, we can categorically place it in the early nineteenth century, when many felt there was an increasing need to replace the term natural philosopher with one that would acknowledge the emerging distinction between the lofty goals of philosophy and the experimental method of the natural sciences.7 The question often raised is why do people assume the term scientist has a longer history. Much of the confusion about this history can be teased out. One identifiable factor is that the adjective “scientific” does have a long history. It can be traced to Aristotle and at some point entered the Romance languages. In English the term appears to date to about 1600. At this point it was synonymous with knowledge and referred to demonstrable knowledge (as compared 5

William Whewell spent most of his career at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied, tutored and served as Professor of Mineralogy (1828–32), a Professor of Moral Philosophy (1838–55) and College Master (1841–66). He was also vice chancellor of the university (1842). 6 A concise summary of this episode is detailed by Sydney Ross, in his short essay “Scientist: The Story of a Word” (1991). Included in Ross' survey are many quotes from primary sources associated with the debates. Richard Yeo’s Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain ( 2003) is another useful reference. Also, it is interesting to note that Whewell chose to use upper case for Artist, Musician, Painter, etc. 7 This turn is documented in the Oxford English Dictionary, where the nineteenth century compilers recognized that no example of science in the narrow sense of just physical or natural science as we use it today was evident before the 1860s (Collini 1993).

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with intuitive knowledge), which was aligned with natural philosophy. We can additionally relate the English term to the 1620 publication of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, which ushered in a shifting of the philosophical point of view from deductive logic to Bacon’s belief in inductive logic and the urge to move toward the experimental method. The latter made it possible to discover and understand new facts about the world. Bacon’s view is best summed up in Novum Organum. Aphorism 1.95, which reads: Those who have written about the sciences are either empiricists or dogmatists. Empiricists are like ants, who only collect things and make use of them. Rationalists are like spiders, who weave webs out of their own bodies. But the bee has a middle policy: it extracts material from the flowers of the gardens and meadows and digests and transforms it by its own powers. The genuine task of philosophy is much the same: it does not depend only or mainly on the powers of the mind; nor does it deposit the raw materials supplied by natural history and mechanical observations in the memory just as they are, but as they have been worked over and transformed by the understanding. Therefore there is much to be hoped for from a closer marriage (which has not yet taken place) between these faculties, namely the experiential and the rational. (Bacon 1965)

Ultimately, however, the success of Whewell’s proposition is seen in the tremendous impact it first had in Europe, later the United States and now globally. As a result, those who previously saw more value in the larger purview of the natural philosophers (which included morals, ethics and a list of concerns not amenable to empirical analysis) eventually took a back seat. This reversal is apparent in the easy way the word scientist rolls off the tongue today and in the accolades now given to proposals offered by “scientific men.” Reviewing the larger dynamics that led to the entry of the word into our lexicon, nonetheless, exposes how varied opinions were initially. Thomas Huxley, for example, wrote (in 1894) that he thought the word “scientist” was about as pleasing as the word “electrocution.” (Huxley 1894). Today, despite the well-documented early resistance to the word, few reject it. To the contrary, the community (including the scientific community) has become quite comfortable with the esteem associated with the title. The idea of the “scientist” as an analogy to the “artist” is a bit more confusing, to say the least.8 On the one hand, we can identify 8

To say that the history of art theory is complex is an understatement, to say the least. Changing fashions and fluid definitions of what “art” and “artist” mean plague

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areas of overlap that are worthy of in-depth consideration. Francis Ames-Lewis, for example, writes that she was mistaken (at the beginning of her career) to argue that early Renaissance painters and sculptors were essentially artisans with few ideas. She now recognizes that they engaged with intellectual activities as well. Early on in my academic career I tended to encourage in my students the view that early Renaissance painters and sculptors were essentially artisans in outlook. Painters were appreciated, I suggested and experienced in the craft practices commended by Cennino Cennini in his Craftsman’s Handbook. They had little time or inclination to engage with ideas that circulated in the world beyond the confines of their workshops . . . I argued (I think now mistakenly), painters and sculptors continued throughout the fifteenth century to aspire to be no more than high quality craftsmen . . . . During the course of the fifteenth century artists also engaged increasingly in the intellectual activities . . . As a result, they encouraged a wider recognition among their public of the validity of claims that painting and sculpture should be seen as liberal arts. (Ames-Lewis 2000: ix)

Pamela H. Smith, on the other hand does not negate their minds were involved with ideas. Instead she ably details the artisan tradition simultaneously was active within this context, explaining that craft was never put aside once art gained entry into the “liberal arts.” As she explains: A distinction has often been drawn between the theoretical knowledge of scholars or scientists, which draws knowledge into a system and practical craft knowledge, which is usually seen to be composed of a collection of recipes or rules that are followed more or less mindlessly. Although there is a useful distinction to be made between theory and practice, investigation into the workshop practices of artisans belies such a view of craft knowledge. Instead, the expertise of craftspeople still astounds museum conservators as well as the art historians who have efforts to clarify the range of history related to theory. A concise and thorough study on this topic is Art Theory: An Historical Introduction by Robert Williams (Williams 2004). My discussion throughout this book frequently draws on his work, although I disagree with his underlying premise. He argues that art history and he writes primarily from a visual arts perspective, should be approached theoretically or philosophically and thus the study of theory should also be approached historically. From this he concludes that a comprehensive history of art that is based in the study of theory has the most to offer. I share his view that the history of theory is important, but reach a quite different conclusion. I would argue that the philosophical and theoretical emphasis has had a negative impact on our understanding of the embodied cognition of visual artists.

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recently begun a more intensive examination of workshop practices. (Smith 2004: 6-7)

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when experimental methodology was becoming an attractive option, many natural philosophers (scientists) sought out artists. Those turning to experimental analysis were attracted to the artist’s intimate, hands-on knowledge of natural materials and the ways they had learned to manipulate them over time (Smith 2004). As I discuss below, the active process of experimentation used in developing their artwork is (and was) likely to be subsumed in abstract theories. As I also discuss below, our increasing knowledge of brain processes now allows us to evaluate earlier hypotheses with more data. We can distinguish the specialist from the novice and, in doing so, separate expert and abnormal deviations from one another as well as from the norm. All of these factors allow us to see beyond the “two culture” mindset, bring more sensitivity toward historical prejudices and provide an opportunity to re-assess art, science, technology and consciousness. 4. Balancing Trajectories, Strategies and Myths Finally, when appraising the trajectories, strategies and myths presented below I would urge the reader to balance five thoughts, each of which will be touched upon repeatedly throughout this book. First, influenced by shortcomings he perceived within the oral educational system, Plato (427-347 BCE) was among the first to directly tackle some of the limitations inscribed within its framework. Plato’s legacy, however, is filled with contradictions. To be sure, this philosopher questioned the value of teaching people to automatically perform behaviors they learned through the verse of his oral culture. This verse, he believed, played on their emotions rather than encouraging them to seek for true knowledge. More significantly, the spectacular strategy of rational questioning he ultimately advocated has had an evident impact on the Western mind and culture. For example, according to A.N. Whitehead, “. . . the safest general characterization of European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” (Whitehead 1929/1979: 39). Many of these footnotes endeavor to reconcile Platonic paradoxes. To oversimplify, we still debate Plato’s definition of knowledge, his views on art and how (if) our lives relate to the eternal (which he defined as a timeless domain separate from the world of change that holds our lives). Thinkers have offered complex proposals that

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intellectually reconcile theoretical inconsistencies and are never fully resolved when he attempts to mesh life’s vitality with the eternal. Varied, as these hypotheses are, the responses, too, have been woven into Western culture. As a whole, when the responders speak of the Western tendency to assume that we owe our visual orientation to the Greeks — because the Greeks glorified sight above all other senses, they are referencing Plato’s thought. Similarly when they ponder whether there is an eternal truth, outside of the world of change, the world we see; they are once again tuning into this thinker’s legacy. The tension between the world we see and how the Western mind integrates visual art is the part of Plato’s legacy that speaks to my second point; the degree to which Platonic ideas have dramatically influenced the discourse surrounding views of visual art and visual communication. E.H. Gombrich, the late doyen of art history concisely states the problem: The well-known dictum by the philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead, that the whole history of Western philosophy is but a series of footnotes to the writings of Plato, applies with special force to the philosophy of the arts . . . Plato . . . [believed] art can only flatter and deceive the senses and seduce the mind to feed on phantoms. (Gombrich 2001: 11)

Third, when Plato committed himself to writing, he moved the Greeks into a literate framework in which ideas were written and thus stabilized in an enduring fashion. Although he wrote in The Phaedrus and The Seventh Letter (if he did in fact write this work) that writing never clearly states the vision within the mind, because what is important in philosophy cannot be put into written words (Plato 1989), he wrote nonetheless. More thought provoking is the degree to which his way with words conveys a vision of Truth as intoxicating as those presented by the poets he criticized. Even though Plato believed his views were rationally constructed, they have an emotional quality and a temper that has touched people to the present era. Fourth, when writers today celebrate the emotive, subjective and spiritual aspects of art they often adopt a stance at odds with Plato’s views of art, his fears of mimesis, his concerns about the emotional impact of poetry and his words warning of rhetoric’s persuasive power. In addition, when “citing” his ideas today, theorists are likely to adopt the Neo-Platonic point of view attributed more correctly to Plotinus, who lived in the third century CE, seven centuries after Plato. Plotinus’ Enneads (Plotinus 1991; Armstrong 1953) presents a picture of the universe in which art is no longer described in terms of

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imitation along the lines both Plato and Aristotle accepted. Instead, artistic creation is portrayed as a re-enactment of creation. As a result the product, the work of art, becomes a symbol of divine creation. For Plotinus the finished product is less important than the idea in the artist’s mind. This view, so interwoven with ideas about mysticism and spirituality, often confuses issues specific to art, as I discuss in detail in Nature Exposed to Our Method of Questioning (Ione 2002). Suffice to say, many of the seeds of our views today are linked to the way Platonic ideas influenced later thought. Plato disliked art because of how it was used to educate the community and mold emotions. He also was instrumental in a process that was developing the capacity to abstractly envision other possibilities. By the time of Plotinus (205-270 CE), art was seen as a modality that had the capacity to supply something that was lacking. Plotinus sums up this idea, actually an innovation at that time, when he says, “[i]f one attempted to belittle the arts by saying that, in creating, they imitate nature, the answer should be that . . . the arts create many things by themselves. Where something is lacking, they supply it, because they own beauty.” (Plotinus 1991: V: 8. 1) Fifth, the reader should keep in mind that this book should be allowed to unfold. Like a symphony might build a crescendo, one must allow the “notes” to emerge from chapter to chapter rather than simply embellishing the words with preconceived ideas. Given the range of distinctions one must keep in mind for the story to be told, it is important to carefully weigh and balance case studies rather than seeking for ways to blur them. Balancing the nuances within a broad picture is a delicate task, one that led me to adapt an approach well stated by H. Stuart Hughes in his book History as an Art and Science (Hughes 1964). Here he argues that historians are by nature wary of precise definitions. They hate being confined within tight terminological boundaries and are ever alert to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. As a result, they prefer to allow meaning to emerge gradually from context to show that “meaning” is the connectedness of things. In other words, like Hughes, I will assume that what we conventionally call an “event” in history is a segment of the endless web of experience that we have torn out of context for purposes of clearer understanding. To paraphrase Hughes, I shall not tarry over the multifold meanings of the word “meaning” and burden the argument with an intolerable layer of semantic overload. I shall instead permit meaning to gradually emerge from the context. I, too, am wary of precise definitions and have found that overly tight terminological boundaries offer a misplaced concreteness that

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disallows for any real sense of how words, actions, images and ideas have subtly and systematically changed their significance through time.

Chapter 2 Prelude To parody the words of Anaxagoras, ‘ . . . all things were together, till the Homeric system came and arranged them.’ Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), an English professor and literary critic, is likely to be among the first thinkers mentioned in contemporary studies of media and communication. His status as a visionary is so well established today that it is easy to forget how novel his ideas were when first presented midway into the twentieth century. McLuhan himself provides some insight into this in the introduction he added to the second edition of his seminal book Understanding Media. Here he tells us that the need for a new introduction only became apparent after many who first read the book misunderstood his proposal that the medium is the message.9 Seeking to fill out his position, McLuhan cites Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato (Havelock 1963); a publication that appeared contemporaneously and similarly argued that environments are not passive wrappings but active processes.10 1. The Homeric World Preface to Plato was an excellent choice for conceptualizing an environment as an active process, despite recent criticism of some of its conclusions.11 More problematic is that the book looks at the roots 9 McLuhan defines this as follows: “The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” (McLuhan 1964: 23) 10 Havelock notes in The Muse Learns to Write that “McLuhan, whose groundbreaking book The Gutenberg Galaxy eventually appeared contemporaneously with my own Preface to Plato, . . . saw at once that there was an unstated partnership between these two works and later continued to acknowledge it with a generosity for which I shall always be grateful.” (Havelock 1988: 13) 11 Havelock is one of a number of writers (e.g., Jack Goody, Ian Watts, Walter Ong and Herold Innis) who have argued that the “Greek revolution” links to the

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of the verbal/textual tradition, a tradition that has long placed visual art in a secondary position, without explicitly including this bias in the story. Havelock, as the title suggests, examined Greek culture prior to Plato. The impetus to do this is understandable. From the sixth through the fourth centuries BCE, landmark developments within Greek culture and the critical works of Greek thought and literature were accompanied by an explosive growth in the use of written texts. By the close of the classical period, as Havelock points out, the discourse included poets, performers, music and song. The composite also offers a foundation that traces the rocky path from the oral culture of Homeric poetry to the time of Plato. One might say that Havelock gives us a real feel for what Plato means when he refers to “the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” (Republic: X, 607b56). Indeed, Preface to Plato shows that this philosopher is referencing a clash he participates in as well. Havelock argues that at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the fourth there was a shift from the inherited oral tradition represented by Homer and typified by memory, to a new literate culture represented by Plato and typified by abstract thinking (Havelock 1963).12 Introducing a period often omitted from Consciousness Studies, Havelock comprehensively outlines aspects of the pre-Platonic Greek mind. Through his careful explanation of how the oral repetition of the Homeric poem was transformed into the literate culture of writing, we are able to grasp the difference between memory and abstraction in an earlier time. By the end of the book we can perceive how the Greeks conceptualized the difference between using the mind to retain information and the complexity of abstracting

Greek alphabet. In recent years, the “literacy hypothesis” has been dismissed (for instance by Brian Street, John Halverson and Alan Bowen) as an ethnocentric myth. The standard view of Classicists and Classical archeologists is more likely to conclude that whatever happened in Greek culture has nothing to do with the Greek alphabet and its vowel letters. For criticism and cross-cultural perspectives, (see Bowman 1996; Halverson 1992; Ione 2002; Street 1993). 12 Havelock wrote Preface to Plato early in his career. Later he asserted that this shift began when the Greeks invented the first truly phonetic alphabet, which was not merely an adaptation of Phoenician script, but something entirely new (Havelock 1963, 1978, 1983, 1988). The idea is that the Greek alphabet, which represents sounds abstractly, promoted a higher order of thinking on the part of those who used it. This freed up the mind and allowed for what Havelock terms a ‘literate revolution’ by the fourth century. According to Havelock the literate revolution was responsible for the development of abstract analysis of ideas in various spheres of human inquiry (including history, science and philosophy).

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larger ideas. More importantly, this distinction conveys what separates Homeric and Platonic thought. Briefly, the pre-Platonic Greeks had no pre-defined model for the idea of autonomous personhood. Nonetheless they brought this idea into their cultural purview through intuitive methods that led to abstract thought. In essence, various individuals were able to fathom new ways of engaging with the world and to perceive ideas outside of their learned belief system through a non-linear process of seeking for something outside of their conceptual grasp. Propelled by a passion for formulating probing questions, those involved developed an exercise quite similar to how creative individuals (or communities) repeatedly tease out options as they seek solutions to problems they sense and are seeking to form more fully. When successful (rather than tautological) this approach can add novel ideas and innovations to the environment. From this perspective the active, embodied, cognitive and intuitive process offers examples that in turn provide an apt metaphor for how innovation and visualization operate in tandem.13

13

Artists, scientists, technologists and people in general show a normal capacity to conceptualize what was unknown to them previously. For example, according to Piaget’s work, a child’s cognitive development at one point lacks the principle of conservation. This is the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects. Children who have not passed this stage do not know that the amount, volume or length of an object does not change when the shape of the configuration is changed. This is evident if you put two containers in front of a child, one wide and the other thin. Children who cannot conceptualize volume will say there is more water in the high, thin container than in the shorter one. With the mastery of conservation the child makes a cognitive leap, embodying an understanding that would have been inconceivable to the child before the concept was grasped. As they discover formerly inconceivable paths or conceptualize how to resolve paradoxical information, something that was once opaque to them enters their mental picture. Research endeavors that have attempted to equate Piaget’s work to art have been largely unsuccessful. Suzi Gablik’s largely unsuccessful (and now out-of-print) Progress in Art (1977) is a representative example of how this scholarship has proceeded. She provides a linear history of art through which she endeavors to equate Piaget’s ideas with her interpretation of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas about paradigms. Critically analyzing the incongruities within her fascinating book is a task far beyond the reach of this book. Equally interesting and for reasons unknown to me, the research quality within this work has not been evident in subsequent publications, which might explain why she has never come back to address the limitations within this early study. Her later work has increasingly moved toward spiritual arguments that seem to leave scholarship behind to a greater degree with each new publication (Gablik 1988; 1987; 1984).

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More specifically, the Homeric epics overall, albeit despite this worldview’s negation of the possibility, provided a device for early Greek education, a window into their social order and the foundation for many of our implicit views of the world today. What I want to focus on here is the way this cultural verse planted seeds that would later flower into a discussion about autonomous identity, social place and social function. This came about when the Homeric tradition began to codify the oral tradition, or to define what was “known” and what was “believed.” Although I would question the view of Havelock and others (e.g., Jaynes 1976) that the mesmeric quality of the Homeric epic consciousness was almost like being hypnotized or in a dream state. Thinkers who have discussed the Greek creation of the mind (Cornford 1991; Havelock 1963; Ione 2002; Snell 1982; Jaeger 1945) agree that the Pre-Socratics who flourished in the 6th century BCE (e.g., Thales, Anaximander, etc.) initiated a “procedure” for separating mythology from natural processes that seeded the fourth century paradigm shift we associate with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Similarly Greek poetry and tragedy record people posing questions about the actions of the gods, as well as the nature of justice, truth and human behavior. What needs further attention is how the entrenched oral educational system was transformed from a tool that instinctively reinforced cultural mores into a modality that raised questions about its very methods of doing so. Plato’s reference to “the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” frames the two sides of the cultural discourse. In Homeric culture, poetry and performance emotionally encouraged the cultivation of certain norms using the recurrence of lines, identifiable phrases and situations to drive ideas home. Some of the best know phrases include the will of Zeus, the anger of Achilles and the rosy-fingered dawn. Reiteration of each expression aided memorization, a necessity for retention in a culture where societal mores were orally transmitted. Although from our distance it is hard to know how (or even if) the verse changed in the course of recitation, sources do allow us to conceptualize that the mimetic language was not a “strategy” for memorization in the sense that we would use the word today. Rather the ongoing duplication of the key ideas was essentially an embodied activity that allowed the people to effectively use the power of rhythmic language to trigger a collective memory. The verse, which would echo in the minds of listeners, not only aided memorization, it also insured that the cultural encyclopedia was not

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lost to civilized society. It was, instead, efficiently handed down from generation to generation. In the Homeric world the epics played a part in human life comparable to the role of the Bible later, during the Christian era. At the time of this earlier scripture, individuals thought of themselves in terms of a larger group “organism,” much as the parts of the body operate in tandem.14 As parts rather than as autonomous individuals the “people” comprised a vitally connected whole. Thus each conceptualized their organic unity without distinguishing what we would call an individuated personality. Inexplicable individual acts as well as unsystematized or non-rational impulses that disrupted the normal operation of events (or deviated from the preferred modes of behavior) were ascribed to “até”, a temporary state that sometimes clouds or bewilders. According to Homer: “Delusion [Até] is the eldest daughter of Zeus, the accursed who deludes all; her feet are delicate and they step not on the firm earth, but she walks the air above men’s heads and leads them astray.” (Iliad 19:91-94). What Havelock (1963) convincingly argues is that the repetitive structure of the poems encouraged the mind to passively embody certain “appropriate behaviors” for any given situation. Bringing an unquestioned acceptance to whatever prescribed actions they 14 The metaphor that society is an organism appears in many cultures in support of metaphysical ideas about communal connectivity. Looking closely it becomes clear that what the metaphor means differs from culture to culture and from period to period. While beyond the scope of this book, it is useful to note that Plato, too, used connectivity to explain the hierarchy he proposes for the Republic He writes, “[t]he city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way . . . For example, if the finger of one is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for ‘integration’ with the dominating part is made aware and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers and that is how we come to say that a man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased in pleasure . . . the best-governed state most nearly resembles such an organism”. (Plato Republic, V. 462d) A good example from Christianity can be found in I Corinthians 12:12-26, where we find the words, “For by one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slave or free and we have all been imbued with one Spirit. The body consists not of one but of many members. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, ’ it would nevertheless remain part of the body. Or if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it is nevertheless part of the body. If the entire body were an eye, where would the hearing come in? Or if all were hearing, what of the smelling? . . . The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you. ’ . . . when one member suffers all the members share the suffering. When a member is honored, then all share the joy.”

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performed, people automatically fulfilled their place and function within the social order. Deviations from the norm, when they did occur, were not perceived as personal failures, but attributed to the unwelcome forces that unwittingly entered the person. Até, not the individual, would incite any strange behavior that was outside of the emotional surrender to the norms that the oral rhythms were intended to encourage. Through using the poetic form to foster this belief and to activate motor reflexes, the form itself discouraged rational engagement with one’s activities through a questioning mind, as explained by Havelock in the following passage: When confronted with an Achilles, we can say, here is a man of strong character, definite personality, great energy and forceful decision, but it would be equally true to say, here is a man to whom it has not occurred and to whom it cannot occur, that he has a personality apart from the pattern of his acts. His acts are responses to his situation and are governed by remembered examples of previous acts by previous strong men. The Greek tongue . . . [at this point] . . . cannot frame words to express the conviction that “I” am one thing and the tradition is another; that “I” can stand apart from the tradition and examine it; that “I” can and should break the spell of its hypnotic force. (1963: 199)

On the other hand, the songs not only created a rationale for human behavior, they also inadvertently led some listeners to raise questions about education, mythology and the nature of the cosmic unity. To understand how these conflicting frames of reference worked in concert one must conceptualize that at times the narrated events (unintentionally) worked metaphorically, allowing a few individuals to conceptualize options outside of their cultural worldview. The metaphors in turn allowed them to grapple with possibilities inconceivable to them in terms of their own lives, but comprehendible in the context poetry offered. Homer’s earliest epic, the Iliad, demonstrates this well. Here we find Achilles wrestling with an unsolvable contradiction. His dilemma, termed the anger of Achilles, drives this human and psychological chronicle. Indeed this poem immediately alerts the audience to the “anger of Achilles,” opening with the words: “Sing O Muse the anger of Achilles Peleus’ son, sing the destruction that piled pains upon the Achaians, pain upon pain a thousand times.” This warrior wants to do his duty and fight with his companions. Yet due to the complex circumstances that allow for the story, he is not permitted to join them. The following quote captures the anger of this warrior who felt it was his place to fight in battle with his comrades, yet found

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he was forbidden from joining them and thus was not able to fulfill his function. Achilleus weeping went and sat in sorrow apart from his companions beside the beach of the grey sea looking out on the infinite water . . . Never now would he go to assemblies where men win glory, never more into battle, but continued to waste his heart out sitting there, though he longed always for the clamour and fighting. (Homer The Iliad, I: 349,490)

The plausibility of Achilles’ situation here rests within Greek mythology. According to the Homeric paradigm each individual’s place and function was seen as a circumstance defined at birth. Within this context that defined social mobility, the strongest moral force; “is not the fear of god, but respect for public opinion, aidos: . . . In such a society, anything which exposes a man to the contempt or ridicule of his fellows, which causes him to ‘lose face,’ is felt as unbearable.” (Dodds 1951: 18). Weeping Achilles knew his companions did not comprehend his apparent desertion and his concern about losing face contributed to his sorrow. The hook for the audience’s mind here is that they know he is a rare exception to the code that defined the static social positioning. Having been born of the sea-goddess Thetis, Achilles had a bloodline that made it plausible for him to consider the validity of his situation (his place and function). Essentially in Greek culture at this time, only one who was a God (or part God) could legitimately ask if the hand he had been dealt was a just one. Since questions raised through Achilles were believable to those hearing the narrative (due to his ancestry), people were able to conceptualize that there might be situations in which “I” am one thing and the “tradition” is another. In sum, through pondering whether Achilles’ conflict was a part of a cosmic justice — or more aptly seen as injustice — people engaged in a mental process of distinguishing between the distinct individual and the communal mores. This in turn encouraged some to question the static premises of the social order in which they lived. The psychological review that the Homeric stories initiated did not happen overnight, nor was its impact felt immediately. More importantly here, individuals developed the idea of a “self-aware” mind as well as the context of an autonomous identity as they came to consider a larger set of possibilities in regard to how they lived. Looking at the questions over a broad sweep of time allows us to discern that during this time some people began to add a level of

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awareness not previously apparent in the Western psyche. Havelock sums this up well, writing: [S]ome time towards the end of the fifth century before Christ, it became possible for a few Greeks to talk about their ‘souls’ as if they had selves or personalities which were autonomous and not fragments of the atmosphere nor of a cosmic life force, but what we might call entities of real substances . . . as late as the last quarter of the fifth century, in the minds of the majority of men, the notion was not understood and . . . in their ears the terms in which it was expressed sounded bizarre. Before the end of the fourth century the conception was becoming part of the Greek language and one of the common assumptions of Greek culture. (1963: 197)

2. Plato and Illusion Plato’s mind and ideas build on this foundation, while detouring from it. Moreover, as stated in the first chapter, Platonic ideas have dramatically influenced the discourse surrounding views of art and particularly visual art. Briefly and despite his own artistry, Plato’s dialogues demonstrate that, although at times he does seem sympathetic to art, he repeatedly rails against the kinds of illusions he believes the poets and painters in his environment are creating. Plato also criticizes the skillful ways in which artists deceive us. According to Plato, those who make art frequently compel strong and decadent emotions, arousing passions rather than reason. For example, in Ion, an early work, Plato is already expressing some of his doubts about art. Here he explains that possessing the skill of mimesis (imitation) is not to possess true understanding. This distinction between true understanding and having the ability to create the illusion of something (i.e. imitate) is a key part of his metaphysical position, one that argues mere appearances are twice removed from Truth. Again and again, the dialogues introduce the idea that the ability to create the appearance of something (i.e. an illusion) is insidious because it has the power to bewitch the soul. Ultimately Plato equated the mastery of mimesis with the skills of a puppeteer, only good for entertaining children. Confusion about Plato’s arguments is widespread today and it is most apparent in popular culture where we find a tendency to present his Allegory of the Cave (Republic, VII: 514a-517a) as an analogy of an artistic quest for light. Yet Plato infers in the Republic and elsewhere that artists prefer mimesis to true knowledge. To be sure, the image of the Cave is used as a metaphor for an ignorant humanity.

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It is intended to represent the environment of Homeric culture. Speaking of human beings living in an underground den, chained so that they cannot move, Plato introduces the story of a group of prisoners who see shadows on the wall in front of them projected through the light of a fire blazing at a distance behind them. When they converse, the chained men name what they see, unaware that the world they are identifying is far removed from the truth. Eventually one of the chained men escapes, comprehends that what he saw before was an illusion, finds his way to the fire at the back of the Cave responsible for projecting the shadows and finally to the light of the sun outside the Cave. Plato points out that when this once chained prisoner encounters the full light of the sun he comprehends all that he could not fathom within the cave. This newer, fuller light of the sun elevates his mind and, according to Plato, his journey is analogous to the way individuals discover a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Truth. The allegory then proceeds to propose that only a person with true knowledge has the tools to govern in society, for only with a knowledge of the truth can one distinguish what is most worthwhile in life from shadows and techniques of persuasion. More important to this book is Plato’s concern that artists create illusions that are like the shadows of the fire within the Cave. He fears their ability to create these convincing illusions.15 Indeed, as I discuss in a later chapter, if he were living today, Plato would likely replace the cave metaphor with the entertainment of the movie theater or the CAVE used in the virtual reality theater. In the movie scenario the projector would replace the fire, the film replacing the objects that cast shadows. Regardless of our choice of metaphor, the essential point is that the prisoners in the Cave are, according to Plato, not seeing reality. What they see is but a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato’s belief that there are invisible truths indistinguishable on the apparent surface of things, which explains why only the most enlightened can grasp them. Overall, the passage reflects one aspect of Plato’s rebellion against earlier education techniques like poetry and sophistry, as well as his concern that 15

Some say Plato saw the fire and became precisely the kind of person he criticizes, one who weaves powerful tales that endeavor to convince people that his vision of Truth is the correct one for all to adopt. The nuances of this comprise a topic far beyond the reach of this study, are addressed in Nature Exposed to Our Method of Questioning (Ione 2002).

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putting knowledge into minds that do not think does not further society. We see this in the Republic, when he asks: Suppose then there were a man so clever that he could take all kinds of shapes and imitate anything and everything and suppose he should come to our city with his poems to give a display, what then? We should prostrate ourselves before him as one sacred and wonderful and delightful, but we should say that we cannot admit such a man into our city; the law forbids and there is no place for him. We should anoint his head and wreathe about it a chaplet of wool and let him go in peace to another city; but ourselves we should employ the more austere and less pleasing poet and storyteller, for our benefit. (Book III (398B)

Iris Murdoch’s classic book The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banned the Artists (1977) cogently examines Plato’s artistry in light of his grave reservations about art, especially in relationship to the value he placed on a moral purpose.16 She parallels the argument that Plato had a creative mind and was in awe of artistic inspiration in the sense that he saw it as divinely inspired with his stronger assertions that artistic inspiration is often undependable, base, or imitative (i.e., artists produce secondary forms). As she tells us, a key concern Plato brought to his analysis is that when art is reduced to mimesis, artists frequently became so lost in their expressions that their work evolves without a relationship to the needs of the community and without personal grounding. Thus, according to Plato, this leads many artists to become lost in the world of shadows. They do not follow a path that could lead to higher levels of awareness. Plato’s point is that by encouraging the audience to identify with the performance the actors encouraged people to believe in their performances, which were not reality. The actors also encouraged the people to become emotionally involved with the performance. The resulting loss of objectivity, in Plato’s view, was not a comment on the artist’s creative power. It was a comment on the artist’s power to make the audience sympathetically assume the roles of characters without question. In Plato’s opinion this taking on of these identities was not only imitative, it also did not enhance their ability to genuinely know and rearrange their lives. In summary: Art and the artist are considered by Plato to exhibit the lowest and most irrational kind of awareness, eikasia, a state of vague imageridden illusion; in terms of the Cave myth this is the condition of 16

Robert Williams also offers a nice summary on Plato’s problematic relationship with art, see Art Theory: An Historical Introduction (Williams 2004).

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33 the prisoners who face the back wall and see only shadows cast by the fire. Plato does not actually say that the artist is in a state of eikasia, but he clearly implies it and his whole criticism of art extends and illuminates the conception of the shadow bound consciousness. (Murdoch 1977: 5)

In terms of consciousness, what is important to keep in mind is the degree to which Plato’s ambivalence toward art impacted the views of art ever since. His primary concern, mimesis, is well stated in Book X of the Republic, where he concludes: This, then, was what I wished to have agreed upon when I said that in poetry and in general the mimetic art, produces a product that is far removed from truth in accomplishment of its task and associates with the part in us that is remote from intelligence and is its companion and friend for no sound and true purpose . . . Mimetic art, then, is an inferior thing cohabiting with an inferior and engendering offspring. (603b)

3. Knowledge and Praxis Plato not only questioned the mimetic qualities of art, he and his peers elevated ideas over work done with one’s hands as well. Indeed the Greeks’ disdain for manual work is well known and the divide that emerges between scholars and artisans can also be located within the Aristotelian scheme of knowledge, which held, with some minor changes, up to the seventeenth century. In it, theory (episteme or scientia) was characterized as separate from practice (praxis or experientia). Theory was certain knowledge based on the logical syllogism and geometrical demonstration. Practice, by contrast, was concerned with things made and things done (politics, history, ethics, etc.). Essentially, praxis was either that which could not be molded into a deductive theory or the lowly knowledge of how to make things (techne) practiced by animals, slaves and craftspeople (Smith 2004). During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries these categorizations changed again when the empirical methods we now associate with science firmly took hold of natural philosophy, ultimately splitting the natural sciences from philosophy per se. Nonetheless, due to a number of historical factors, the emphasis on theory (over process/practice) had already had a tremendous impact on views of art and aesthetics. What I want to emphasize at this point, as Smith does as well, is that natural philosophers sought out the very kinds of skills artists used in their production process when they sought to perfect the experimental method. Indeed they saw

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practitioners as resources when they turned toward empirical investigation. The emerging empiricists recognized the artists relied on an embodied cognition. Indeed, they admired their ability to carefully observe and physically engage with the materials of nature, learned through their intuitive methodology and saw this type of approach as a model when developing a sense of experiment. Unlike professors (and students) who obtained their knowledge of nature through reading texts, the artists (then artisans), studied through their bodies, their labor and a hands-on inspection of plants, anatomies, minerals and animals (Smith 2004). Varieties of all of these themes are evident in later centuries, as they are in evidence today. More important to this survey is the degree to which the cognitive elements of artistic and scientific innovations mesh. This is not to deny that statements about art are likely to push qualities of praxis aside in favor of philosophy and theory. Later in this book I will argue the debates that segregate either practice or theory invariably fail to recognize the important connections among the brain, the body and the environment that are involved with the production and appreciation of art. Suffice to say, it is important we not lose sight of these connections. To do so is to trivialize the complex factors in play when practitioners push their materials to the limit, frequently working collaboratively in seeking solutions to problems that they sense, cannot yet resolve and may not even be able to clearly verbalize. In other words, stressing “ideas” over cognitive qualities places art and those who produce art into a mold that brings to mind the old distinction between the artisan and the “arista.” [F]ine art” and “artist” are modern terms. Into the seventeenth century “arista” connoted a student of the liberal arts in a university and “art” continued to refer to manual operations. Thus, the early modern connotations associated with the term “art” are much more tied to what we would call “craft” today and those to whom we refer [to] today [as] artists would have generally been viewed as artisans . . . [during the early modern period, circa 1450-1750)] “high” artisans were remaking themselves as practitioners of the liberal arts and struggled to make clear their knowledge of nature. (Smith 2004: 27)

4. Conclusion This précis of often ignored history is introduced here to aid the reader in seeing the foundation of the trajectory that led to the elevation of the textual and literary ideas that now influence discourse

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about forms of art in general, even those that are not literally driven. The specific tensions between the visual, the audial and the textual/literary mentality become more important as this book unfolds. Thus, in each chapter I would urge the reader to keep three things in mind touched on here. First, the transformation out of the Homeric paradigm in the West is representative of how initial questions framed by a culture become the foundation for later responses and ideas. I have discussed this trajectory in Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning and shown that it is not specific to the West, so I will not examine it here. Rather I have chosen to focus on the Western story here. Second, subsequent generations increasingly accept earlier conclusions to cultural questions as implicit. Thus they are likely to rearrange the window dressing without considering that the frame remains unchanged. Finally and of greatest importance to this study, is the degree to which the referencing of a textual/verbal tone influenced the way the Western mind thinks about visual art and the arts generally.

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Chapter 3 Art and Consciousness: Methodologies Perhaps one of the most intriguing items for the new study of consciousness to consider is what, so far, has not been considered. Why is this exploding area of research, intent on discovering the relation of the brain to human awareness, not multidisciplinary enough? Why does it look primarily to text-based fields, rather than the imaging arts, for insight on how cognition actually works? . . . What light might a humanities-based imagist shed on the binding problem perplexing analytical philosophers, cognitive scientists, computer programmers, neurophysiologists or neuroanatomists, linguists and both “strong” and “weak” AI [artificial intelligence] proponents. Barbara Maria Stafford, Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting

1. Analogy and Consciousness In her book Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting Barbara Stafford argues we need “both to retrieve and construct a more nuanced picture of resemblance and connectedness.” (Stafford 2001: 9) through analogy, which she defines as “the vision of ordered relationships articulated as similarity-in-difference.” (Stafford 2001: 9). Stafford relates that analogy thrived in antiquity, crested at the close of the Baroque era, (Stafford 2001: 10) and is unlike Romantic logic which was “erected on a paradoxical play of binaries rather than a dialectics of reconciliation.” Thus, according to her analysis, the logic “tended to disintegrate around two skeptical axes.” (Stafford 2001: 14). In other words, on the one hand, “Romanticism’s essentially nonvisual dissective procedure expressed the isolation, intense interdependence and resulting disconnectedness from the rest of creation — felt by two things or discrete individuals joined in a tenuously exclusive union.” (Stafford 2001: 19). On the other hand, analogy “provides opportunities to travel back into history, to spring forward in time, to leap across continents.” (Stafford 2001: 11).

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Stafford concludes that since the concept of analogy, in recent times, has either been simplified beyond recognition into tautology or become tainted through relentless identification with mystical pantheism, theosophical synchronicity and empathetic quackery of the Hollywood variety, it is time to sketch out another vision. Her vision of a formulation based on resemblance and distinction speaks of equivalence is metaphoric in tone and strikingly bereft of any indication of how empirical science adds to our knowledge base an ongoing basis when new research enters the picture, Stafford ably acknowledges scientific data related to consciousness as it exists today but her humanities-based narrative demonstrates little sensitivity toward the degree to which theories are interpreted differently by scientists themselves. This is not to say that she should put the humanities aside in favor of science. Rather my concern is the degree to which her arguments are essentially in line with the text-based philosophical interpretations that drive Consciousness Studies. Strangely, this is surprising in light of her thesis favoring we turn more to imaging arts. Historically, rhetorical argument has provided the foundation for art history as a discipline, so she mirrors those in her field who are more inclined to ask how to write about images than to ask how they are made or visually experienced. Essentially Stafford’s work, particularly her Visual Analogy, speak of her allegiance to the literary models of the ancient rhetorical methods that structured how the history of art is studied, a topic I develop in detail below. At this point, suffice to say that Stafford does not vigorously question the methodology of art history per se so much as she attempts to offer a novel approach to Consciousness Studies (in Visual Analogy) through proposing we incorporate its narrative imagery. [T]his current malaise, I think, is less about the refrain “What method do we write in?” and more about the bedrock problem of how to reinvent any backward-looking form of inquiry for the smart-machine era. How do we reconstruct the experimental quality of persons, places, acts and events so that they might be illuminatingly recalled in and for the present? The analogical method as a metaphorics can contribute substantially to the rhetorical construction of an integrated imagistics. Such a perspectival modeling of networks or resemblance would cut across temporal and disciplinary divides to bring back concretely what has been unfairly lost or obscured. (Stafford 2001: 182-183)

While I would agree with her that Romanticism provided an “essentially non-visual dissection procedure.” (2001: 19) her solution

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fails to recognize that art historical methodology has always hidden art under the cloth of language. An approach that re-instates Stafford’s backward-looking form of inquiry also falls woefully short in expanding our understanding of the rhetorical abyss that has historically failed to adequately address visual art. Rather than “recuperate analogy,” I would urge that we recognize the limitations within the rhetorical analogies that have informed art history and then look beyond them. Doing so requires a systemic analysis in all eras of history. While the enormity of this task is far more than one book can attempt, some thoughts that reach in that direction are surely worth presenting. 2. Analogy and the History of Rhetoric The historical influence of rhetoric on art theory is unmistakable. For example, E. H. Gombrich’s published a classic survey of art (The Story of Art) in 1950. This narrative is quite unlike his Preface for the Primitive, published posthumously and explicitly said to be about a moment of “taste that came to its climax during my lifetime.” (2001: 6). Consider his aim is to document “taste,” it is perhaps not surprising to find he concisely documents the subtle shifts within some periods and leaves large gaps in the historical timeline that reside outside the parameters of his primitivistic argument. Reading this book with his earlier story of art in mind, the imbalance is quite striking. For example, his early book devoted over a hundred pages to medieval art. The final publication summarizes the years 400-1400 CE in a few paragraphs within a chapter titled “Interlude: Progress or Decline?.” Excusing himself, Gombrich explains that later historians defined this time as a period between two peaks of high achievement: classical antiquity and the Renaissance, which ushered in the modern age. He further states that for a long time the arts of these intervening years were seen as symptom of a decline in civilization ushered in by what later became known as “The Dark Ages,” when artists were unable to match the standards of ancient art in the imitation of nature and in the imitation of beauty. Gombrich next asserts that we have seen a similar challenge in the past century [the nineteenth century], where we find the standards of the Academy and the Salon were undermined and annihilated by primitivist modes (Gombrich 2001: 35). Citing Alois Riegl’s (1858-1905) urge to refrain from value judgments and similar views of other art historians, Gombrich mentions that no student of medieval art “can ignore the ever-present influence of the text of the

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Scriptures” and then briefly turns to “the rebirth of the arts” associated with Giotto (c.1266-1337) (Gombrich 2001: 39-40). The manner in which he puts these centuries aside in the later book is a bit jarring.17 Structurally, Preface for the Primitive begins with a brief introduction of Plato and then quickly turns to Cicero, a superb rhetorician who flourished from 106-43 BCE. A passage from Cicero’s best-known work, De Oratore (III.XXX.98), is introduced to convey that references to painting supplied rhetoricians with metaphors, not as a means to talk about painting per se. It is difficult to say for what reason the very things that move our senses most to pleasures and appeal to them most speedily at first are the ones from which we are most quickly estranged by a kind of disgust and surfeit. How much more brilliant as a rule, in beauty and variety of coloring are new pictures compared to old ones. But though they captivate us at first sight the pleasure does not last, while the very roughness and crudity of old paintings maintains their hold on us. (in Gombrich 2001: 27).

Cicero’s real concern here is the art of oratory. The purpose of this statement, which is a digression within a larger argument, is to warn his readers against trying to seduce their audience by means of verbal display. Gombrich fully explains (Gombrich 2001) that Cicero is warning that just as a master artist can fool us with crudity that is intended to make the work appear more sincere, an orator can as well. Yet, in either case, the artist’s ability to pull off his trickery may in fact rest on a foundation our first impression does not perceive. More to the point, as Gombrich goes on to explain, this tension between perfection and emotional impact has dogged the history of art traditionally. Pliny in ancient times, Vasari in the Renaissance and Gombrich himself in his book, The Story of Art built their narratives on cultural themes related to this tension. Indeed, Gombrich tells us that his last book marks an endeavor to offer a corrective to some of the limitations embedded within the idea of perfection that often 17

Although not writing with any explicit sense of Gombrich’s notation in Preference for the Primitive, Marilyn Stokstad nonetheless offers a wonderful response to his approach in her book Medieval Art, where she tells us; “ [E]xuberantly self-confident Renaissance scholars looked back on this period of a thousand years as an interlude. They considered the centuries after the fall of Rome as a dark “middle” age because the period fell between the time of Classical Greece and Rome and the revival of learning in their own day. Today, these centuries appear to us as a brilliant period out of which emerged our own modern world with its rival nations, its different philosophical, political and economic systems and its varied forms of art and architecture.” (Stokstad 2004)

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defined his early work. He exchanges the analysis of a technical progress toward the imitation of nature (the “perfection” traced in The Story of Art) with an examination of the psychological impact of rougher forms that now coincide with what we might term the deemphasis of the representational narrative.18 Neither, as I will explain, covers all possibilities. Indeed it is a false dichotomy. Gombrich reminds us early on that the ancient world did not have a special term for art or the arts. Instead, the arts were comprised of qualities that were conceived within the wider notion of skill or craft. Unfortunately and despite his broadly based knowledge of art, Gombrich’s argument never directly addresses whether the dichotomy of perfect representation and crudity is ultimately a useful opposition, although his failure to deal with the history of Western art fully and in a parallel fashion when probing the preference for the primitive suggests it is not. Whereas his survey demonstrates that medieval accomplishments speak to us visually, the lack of examples from the Middle Ages in his final book serves to underscore that the posthumous publication is not about art so much as a way to build an understanding for how the relationships between the rhetoric of antiquity resurged with the Renaissance and were once again reformed with the Romantics as well as the movements that followed them. Both Gombrich and Stafford correctly identify the fruits of Romanticism (roughly 1780-1850) in their analyses. Stafford finds its visually deficient worldview lacking and wants to go back to a rhetorical tradition that exhibited a more holistic approach. Gombrich, on the other hand, acknowledges the tradition as one of many stages we can identify on the path to Modernism and beyond. Romanticism is also a tradition that has influenced consciousness debates. The most pronounced influence is the way its many theoretical constructions incline toward the Neoplatonic ideas that resurfaced at this time. Briefly, many in the arts aspired to a spiritual wholeness that, at this time, was a reaction to a number of dichotomies debated within the culture. To oversimplify, we can say that the rationalism of the Enlightenment offers a contrast to the Romantics, who distinguished spirit from the body and contrasted emotion with reason. 18

In light of our knowledge that much of aesthetic theory was contrived by people with no real acquaintance with the art they discussed, it is worth noting that when Gombrich first published The Story of Art he decided not to include any examples he had not seen personally. Later editions were expanded to include works he did not know first-hand.

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3. Analogy and Consciousness Revisited When these views are used in contemporary consciousness arguments, they are typically placed into a framework that is further confused by the amorphous nature of consciousness definitions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, for example, offers five entries that are typical to those found in other lexicons. The first alone appears to encompass the entire universe, dividing the consciousness domain into personal, objective and communal concerns, stating: (a) the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself; (b) the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact, and; (c) awareness; especially: concern for some social or political cause. Characterizations that follow this all-embracing characterization accentuate technical perspectives. These center on states of mind. For example, when used as a synonym for mind, the second definition, consciousness is said to be “the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition and thought.” A third entry describes the totality of conscious states, a nice contrast to the fourth definition, which notes the tendency to use the term to set apart a normal state of conscious from other states (e.g., we might speak of a patient who regained consciousness). The dictionary’s final definition states that the idea that consciousness is “the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware,” (as compared to one’s unconscious processes). More generally, many claim to offer scientific explanations for this hard to define domain. While worthwhile work is often introduced, as discussed below, it is important to recognize that there is no primary research agenda for consciousness theorists. Moreover, as Stafford correctly asserts, consciousness, as a field, tends to discourage the integration of art. Instead the foci include (among other things) identity theories, ideas grounded in philosophies of monism and dualism (rather than pluralism),19 how we best define relationships between brain states and the physical world, whether we can resolve what consciousness is (i.e., David Chalmers “hard

19

Monism is a philosophy that argues reality consists of a single or unified basic substance, principle, or element. Dualism, on the other hand, sees reality as something that consists of, or can be explained in term of, two basic principles or modes, such as mind and body. Pluralism is generally contrasted more with monistic and dualistic perspectives than seen as a cultural dynamic.

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problem,” (1996a, 1996b, 1995c, 1996), functionalism, emergence20 (how something in one state is transformed into something with different qualities), phenomenological views and debates about whether first-person, second-person, or third-person accounts work best in framing the issues. Most noticeable is that when neuroscientific literature is added to the theoretical mix, hypotheses include more laboratory data within their speculative parameters, allowing theorists to ask questions that include (among other things) what level of brain activity is appropriate when looking for some neural correlate of consciousness, whether consciousness can be reduced to a scientific problem and the role of Quantum Theory in the debates.21 Perhaps of greatest interest is the way Consciousness Studies have highlighted differences among those who work in the art, science and technology domain. For example, humanists are more likely to set aside science for postmodern critiques. Scientists, on the other hand, are apt to propose theories that bring in phenomenological theories and aesthetic critiques, many of which rest on eighteenth century views that equate art and aesthetics. While there is some aesthetic overlap, aesthetics itself has a tradition. This is reflected within the integration. Although a topic of interest to Plato and Aristotle, the idea of a distinct discipline that could systematically deal with issues concerning art and beauty can be traced to 1735, when Alexander 20

Anthony Freeman, Managing Editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, explains that; “[E]mergence itself is a controversial concept. The classic example of an emergent property is the wetness of water. Molecules of H2O observed individually do not exhibit the qualities of wetness and liquidity, but taken all together, they do. Yet there is no secret added ingredient in the liquid, just the water molecules. To use John Searle’s oft-repeated phrase (e.g. Searle 1984: 20-2), the emergent property is ‘caused by and realized in’ the constituent parts to the whole. Just as this is true of liquidity and water molecules, so also it is true of conscious mental states and the constituent neurons of the brain.” He then continues; “Some philosophers, such as Michael Silberstein (1998, 2001), say that consciousness requires a more radical emergence theory, involving something entirely new and unpredictable. Others, like Todd Feinberg (2001), doubt whether such radically emergent properties exist in nature, while others again concede that Quantum Physics may offer a genuine example of the phenomenon (e.g. Hagan 2001).” (Freeman 2003) 21 Outlining the literature in this vast field would take this book too far astray. The debates are fully developed in many publications. The Journal of Consciousness Studies, PSYCHE and Consciousness and Cognition are among the best publications for an overview of the technical arguments, theoretical debates and current fashions within this field.

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Baumgarten (1714-1762) called for a new science of perceptual knowledge, an aestheticae, which he introduced in Aesthetica, 2 vol. (1983/1750–58). Baumgarten’s theory, which comes to the fore at about the time we see the entry of Romanticism, emphasized feeling, with much attention concentrated on the creative act. Although this work is little known today, his ideas have filtered through due to their influence on David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (17241804). Two points are important here. First, Baumgarten advanced the discussion of such topics as art and beauty in a way that set the discipline off from the rest of philosophy. Second, what distinguishes him from earlier aestheticians is his modification of the traditional claim that “art imitates nature.” By asserting that artists must deliberately alter nature by adding elements of feeling to the perceived reality he proposes that the creative process of the world is mirrored in their art activity. By the twentieth century, aesthetics was a well-debated perspective more than a proposal for systemizing views of art. Although it is common for thinkers outside of the arts to propose definitive theories, those within the arts have largely entered a more pluralistic phase. For example, Nigel Warburton’s recent book, the Art Question [sic] looks behind theories such as those proposed by Clive Bell, R. G. Collingwood and Wittgenstein in an effort to illuminate the perplexing problems in art (such as the artist’s intention, representation and emotion). Although Warburton fails to answer the “art question,” he does convincingly show contemporary culture has a somewhat pragmatic view of art, one that expands far beyond traditional artistic theories.22 Similarly, in But is it art?: An Introduction to Art Theory, Cynthia Freeland writes; “My strategy here is to highlight the rich diversity of art, in order to convey the difficulty of coming up with suitable theories” (Freeland 2001: xvii). 4. Theories of art and the brain: Semir Zeki Scientific thinking on art is similarly complex, to say the least. Some researchers, as discussed below, study modalities in the laboratory that we can abstractly relate to art (e.g., perception) and thus provide data we can use when forming theories. Others go 22 The problem of precisely defining art is reinforced rather than resolved when we factor in dictionary definitions. Meanings listed range from a skill acquired by experience, study, or observation to a non-scientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.

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beyond this, developing theories of art that endeavor to expand the scientific data beyond its empirical framework. Framing a scientific theory of art is problematic, almost by definition. The scientific intention to speak in terms of universals is unable to comprehensively reflect the diversity, richness and pluralism of art. Science, as a discipline, does not seek for the kind of intuitive blending that defines the fecundity and lushness of art at its best. Thus, when moving from data-driven research to speculation, the urge to tie all of the details together in order to prove preconceived notions the thinker brings to the table is a tendency that inevitably complicates a proposed hypothesis. Semir Zeki, a well-respected cognitive neuroscientist, has illustrated the problem in his work. He writes: [T]he brain has a task, which is to obtain knowledge about the world and a problem to surmount, which is that the knowledge is not easy to obtain since the brain has to extract information about the essential, non-changing aspects of the visual world from the ever-changing information that is reaching it. In general, we can say that art, too, has an aim which, in the words of artists themselves, is to depict objects as they are. And art, too, faces a problem, which is how to distil from the ever-changing information in the visual world only that which is important to represent the permanent, essential characteristics of objects. Indeed this was almost the basis of Kant’s philosophy of aesthetics — to represent perfection; but perfection implies immutability and hence there arises a problem of depicting perfection in an ever-changing world. I shall therefore define the function of art as being a search for constancies, which is also one of the most fundamental functions of the brain. The function of art is thus an extension of the function of the brain — the seeking of knowledge in an ever-changing world. This seems too obvious that it is surprising that the connection has not been made before. (Zeki 1999b: 11-12)

Semir Zeki’s conclusion that the aim of art “is to depict objects as they are” is intended to provide a means to think about art in relation to theories of the mind. His broadly based approach was introduced from a visual art perspective in publications such as Inner Visions: An Exploration of Art and the Brain and his papers titled “Art and the Brain.” (Zeki 1993, 1998, 1999b). From here he went on to expand his theory beyond visual art, as explained in his “Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner.” The range of proposals within this work alone is breathtaking. Its scope does, however, offer an opportunity to dissect a number of historical

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modalities, to broadly engage with the question of how the arts relate to one another and to comment in detail on interpretations of art and the brain. Zeki begins with an astute idea, writing; “I hold the somewhat unusual view that artists are in some sense neurologists, studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them, but studying unknowingly the brain and its organization nonetheless” (Zeki 1999a: 10). It is unfortunate that he fails to engage with this insightful proposal scientifically. Instead, he transforms it into a theoretical argument, centering it on ‘the ideal of love’. Zeki tells us that Dante, Michelangelo and Wagner had created in their brains, an ideal “none of the three found . . . in real life and each was impelled in a different way to create works of art in response to that gap.” (Zeki 1999a: 53– 4). As I have explained elsewhere (Ione 1999a, 1999b, 2003, 2004), this speculative hypothesis is weak on data and scientifically unconvincing. Overall, the sum total brings to mind the philosophical, literary and theoretical flavor of thought that has influenced writing about art in the West. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Zeki’s theory is the degree to which the robust references used to buttress his case serve to remind a reader that, despite his own premise that a real theory of art and aesthetics must be neurologically based, his is not. This comes about when he puts aside the degree to which developing and appreciating artworks involves a number of complex, cognitive operations. Instead, after asserting that his approach is dictated by a truth that he believes to be axiomatic; “that all human activity is dictated by the organization and laws of the brain: that therefore, there can be no real theory of art and aesthetics unless neurologically based.” (Zeki 2002: 54), he presents a tautological and psychologically-based argument best summed up by the phrase “and then a miracle occurs.” Overall, the most significant problem in Zeki’s approach is his failure to explain how this “miracle” occurs. A section aptly titled “Abstraction in the Visual Brain” allows Zeki to briefly summarize research he claims demonstrates abstraction in the visual brain. His discussion of abstraction and the visual brain is then abstractly extended to discuss opera and literary work. His explanation for the sweep of the argument — that the kind of detail we would need for the argument to hold together can be found in his earlier work — ignores two key points. First, his earlier work is similarly focused on vision. In addition, as I have explained elsewhere (Ione 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2001) and as others have reiterated (Levy 2000; McMahon 2000; Nash 2000a; Shortess 2000), his earlier work, too, is speculative

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and removed from the nuts and bolts of art practice and appreciation. In summary, the theory is ill-formed in and of itself and does not apply to art practice and appreciation. Thus, the conclusions this scientist draws from his philosophical conjectures highlight two other major limitations that are ingrained in his theory. One is, as he writes: “How the brain abstracts is only partially known, for simpler constructs only.” (Zeki 2002: 59). If we know so little, it seems, we should draw sweeping conclusions with more care. The second limitation results from his decision to speak about art in terms of historical, philosophical theories, ideals and universals. Putting aside that most of the theories were developed by men who had no direct acquaintance with art, we find that coupling his view of ideals and universals with his view of abstraction leaves the impression we should assume the subsystems of the brain are homologous (in the sense of employing similar principles) when we discuss neural concept formation and art. I would argue that painting with the visually biased brush he chooses in picking the studies he cites, blurs neural distinctions that researchers know occur when processing language, visual art and music. Even the most general studies distinguish among language, auditory and visual processing (see Carter 1999; Greenfield 1997; Posner and Raichle 1997). It would have been helpful to clarify why he favors a homologous view, if he does and to include some discussion that related his visuallybiased argument regarding abstraction to known processing distinctions among visual art, music and literary works. While it may well be, as he infers, that abstraction and knowledge-acquisition are homologous insofar as visual art, music and language are concerned, we need to know with more specificity how his view integrates empirical studies that have demonstrated modularity — including his own scientific research. Again, had he discussed some of the work now available on the literary and musical brain, the reader would be better equipped to understand how he comes to draw his conclusions. These kinds of distinctions are particularly critical in light of the turns we can locate in art historical theory. Briefly, research has demonstrated that words and music are primarily processed in different parts of the brain — although the entire brain is used in this processing. It is also well known that subtle language distinctions are evident in brain processing when we compare spoken words to those written or heard. These kinds of distinctions have been repeatedly recorded in basic studies. Yet Zeki (and he is not alone in this) does not say how particular cortical areas

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and binding should be explored with regard to the neural concept formation. Without some indication of precisely how the binding mechanism under discussion operates, his theory has neither a clear nor a firm neurological foundation. In short, as the theory now stands, it is unclear what Zeki is saying and why he ignored the many published studies that would have allowed him to offer a more robust exposition. A top-down, homologous theory that does not address known distinctions, and how different areas of the brain contribute to a mental abstraction, when our data show discernable differences, is at best vast mystification. Zeki’s failure to critically engage with data is disappointing. His decision to look only at the visual brain is inexplicable because the kinds of studies that would help clarify his position are far-reaching. For example, while work on the musical brain is not as abundant as work devoted to vision, a growing number of researchers are exploring the musical brain and studies of knowledge-acquisition in this area are growing. Studies by Robert Zatorre (2001, 2002), a neurologist and musician, would have been an excellent touchstone since Zatorre pioneered investigations into the neurobiology of music about two decades ago. Isabelle Peretz (Zatorre 2001), also a neurologist and musician, studies amusia (tone deafness) in her lab at the University of Montreal. Her research has provided evidence of the distinctive nature of the pathways involved in perceiving music. Andrea Halpern, a singer and cognitive psychologist, uses Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging to observe the brains of subjects as they imagine specific melodies (Halpern and Zatorre 1999). Another excellent resource is Christo Pantev’s work. While at the University of Münster in Germany he and his colleagues showed that a much larger area of the auditory cortex was activated in musicians on hearing a piano tone compared with a non-musician (see Pantev et al. 1998, 2001). He is now using magnetoencephalography to track neural development in young musicians taught by the Suzuki method. Anthologies, such as The Biological Foundations of Music, published by the New York Academy of Science offer a wider spread of research directly related to knowledge-acquisition. Equally unsettling is that theories, such as the one Zeki proposes, speak as if they are founded on neurological studies when they are instead philosophical notations that reference historical views of art and aesthetics. It is striking to see how he places his argument in terms defined by Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and other philosophers rather than neurological research that directly relates art and the brain. It is also ironic to see this approach in light of the number of

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contemporary philosophers who view recent scientific research as a tool that will aid us in distinguishing philosophical arguments from actual brain operations. Given Zeki’s dependence on philosophical sources in framing his arguments, rather than empirical data, it is not surprising to find his conclusions are largely unrelated to current research in this area. In a larger sense, this top-down approach might be contrasted with Robert Solso’s Cognition and the Visual Arts (1994), where visual art is examined more in terms of a bottom-up process. One noteworthy contrast is that Solso engages more thoughtfully with artistic process. What Zeki’s inclusion of historical philosophers does, however, is lend support to a monolithic view of art, favored historically, which aligns art with universals. Adopting this historical foundation allows him to easily frame his views in terms of “universals” and ideals, rather than explaining particular operations. Unfortunately, as stated, the sweeping assertions that result do not rest on scientific analysis. They do, however, allow him to treat the work of Dante, Michelangelo and Wagner as if the distinct differences among them are inconsequential. These choices also allow us to place Zeki historically, as I will explain shortly. Finally and of great concern, is the way Zeki evaluates the data he does present when he turns to the three artists named in his “Neural Concept Formation and Art” article. Briefly, the neural concept formation argument is a theoretical construct that he essentially segregates from the psychological interpretation he offers in support of his argument. Broadly, he tries to make the proposal through the idea that an unrequited love was given form in the art of Dante, Michelangelo and Wagner. The specifics of his analysis extend so far beyond his theory that they deserve some attention. 5. Falsification of Zeki’s Theory Art that falsifies Zeki’s analysis is not hard to find and allows us to return to history. Indeed some of the limitations within his theory are best considered in light of Zeki’s psychological analysis. For example, he begins the Dante section of the “Neural Concept Formation” paper by explaining that his “concern here is with Dante’s relationship to Beatrice, the ‘lady’ who inspired all his work.” (Zeki 2002: 62). He concludes: “Dante’s work was inspired by a brain concept that could, he knew, never be realized in life.” (Zeki 2002: 65). What I find most extraordinary in Zeki’s discussion of Dante and The Divine Comedy is his approach. His focus on the romantic passion

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that inspired The Divine Comedy is built around Dante’s relationship with Beatrice. Then the argument is supported by an analysis of whether the views of Aristotle prevailed in Dante’s mind despite the Platonic flavor of the Divine Comedy. Given Zeki’s impulse to focus on Dante’s relationship and to view it in terms a philosophical analysis, it is useful to once again ask if his study is neurological and to probe how his interpretation aligns with how others have responded to Dante’s work. First, in approaching Zeki’s research it is important to point out that his analysis of The Divine Comedy lacks neurological notation. As such, it is in no sense neurologically based. Rather he presents a philosophical, psychologically constructed examination. Moreover, Zeki aligns his thought with critical analyses that mentions Dante’s relationship with Beatrice, and gives little thought to the artists who have paid homage to The Divine Comedy in their own work. What is indeed striking when we focus on the varied artistic responses is that the unfulfilled love Zeki sees as Dante’s motivation in not what compelled the subsequent artists to respond to Dante’s masterpiece. Despite Zeki’s emphasis on Beatrice’s importance, the responses of others were not deemed less successful, although they were created without a similar romantic situation. For example, it isn’t novel to argue there are compatibilities in spirit between Dante and Michelangelo (1475-1564). Michelangelo himself paid tribute to Dante, writing; “Ne’er walked the earth a greater man than he.” The full sonnet reads: What should be said of him cannot be said; By too great splendor is his name attended; To blame is easier than those who him offended, Than reach the faintest glory round him shed. This man descended to the doomed and dead For our instruction; then to God ascended; Heaven opened wide to him its portals splendid, Who from his country’s, closed against him, fled. Ungrateful land! To its own prejudice Nurse of his fortunes; and this showeth well That the most perfect most of grief shall see. Among a thousand proofs let one suffice, That as his exile hath no parallel, Ne’er walked the earth a greater man than he.

Sandro Botticelli’s (1445-1510) recently re-published interpretation showed his esteem for this early interpreter generally through a series of images very much in accord with Dante himself philosophically. William Blake, characteristically, did not illustrate

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Dante’s story so much as he used it to critique Dante’s views of religion and cosmology (Bindman 2000). In addition, TV Dante, a recent play co-directed by Tim Phillips and Peter Greenaway offers a striking response, very much of our time. In this case, Phillips has said that as he worked with the text he came to realize how much Dante’s layering of meaning and the richness of his allusions could be sustained in the fluid medium of television (Phillips 2001). Finally, in a parody by Gary Graves (2002) we find Dante’s own ideas of universality used to comment on how people turn to abstractions about universality to manipulate our understanding of all we cannot explain. In this play the actors show the audience that promoting particular ideas about universal principles often serves to ingrain certain ideas in our minds despite the fact that these so-called axiomatic truths are ideas, or ideals and may have no relationship to how things actually are or the way things actually happen. Zeki, too, has offered an artistic interpretation of Dante’s work. He, too, engages with the philosophical notions, rather than presenting an analysis based on empirical scientific data. Although there is no indication that Zeki’s theoretical response was inspired by a romantic relationship similar to Dante’s with Beatrice; it is clear when reviewing Zeki’s speculative argument that he felt the allure of Dante’s imagery and his response was grounded in philosophical views, not scientific parameters. Similarly there are too many unanswered questions and leaps of faith when he turns to Michelangelo. According to Zeki; “what made Michelangelo leave so much of his work unfinished can be traced to the same source as that which made Dante create his art — the impossibility of realizing the ideals formed by the brain in the experience of particulars in real life.” (Zeki 2002: 65). Then, when introducing Michelangelo, Zeki explains that Michelangelo’s unfinished work attests to art’s great power and that we can surmise that Michelangelo’s unfinished pieces, being ambiguous, speak to us in neurological terms. He further explains, the “ambiguous” work of great art speaks to us in a neurobiological sense, because when “a work of art is ‘unfinished’ it offers several solutions, all of equal validity.” Reading this, it was unclear to me what is neurological about his definition and how we should apply this neurobiological interpretation to “unfinished” artwork by artists whose work and life clearly refute Zeki’s assumptions. An artist whose work raises questions about the credibility of Zeki’s thesis regarding the conjunction of art, love and unfinished works of art is Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–69). More

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specifically, we know that love was often expressed in Rembrandt’s art and that he didn’t find that unrequited love was necessary in producing work, finished or otherwise. Rembrandt’s renditions of the women with whom he shared his life show this exceptionally well. Reviewing the catalogue for the recent exhibition Rembrandt’s Women reveals a number of easily accessible examples of how love was portrayed both in his finished and unfinished work (Williams 2001). A Woman in Bed, a particularly poignant painting, has the peculiar honor of being said to represent all three women in Rembrandt’s life. While we don’t know who the model was, we can easily see that Rembrandt has invited the viewer to share an intimate moment. Similarly, the face of another sensual work, A Woman Bathing in a Stream, depicts Hendrieckie, one of the women with whom Rembrandt shared his life. Looking closely we find the handling of the paint is unusually spontaneous and the picture appears unfinished in some parts. This is most evident in the shadow at the hem of the raised chemise, the right arm and the left shoulder. This painting’s earthy sensitivity, its ability to capture a personal moment and its unfinished areas, all, in effect, demonstrate that Zeki’s correlation of unrequited love and unfinished works of art is too glibly applied. Zeki’s discussion of Wagner, his third artist, is more developed than his interpretations of Dante and Michelangelo. I was impressed to see he gave a bit more thought to how Wagner’s process of composing the music translated to the listener’s brain. I believe the Wagner section would have been stronger had he incorporated some of the exciting work being done on synesthesia into the discussion. Briefly, one of the outstanding features of Wagner’s work is its reach and another is that he approached his work with the intention of stimulating cross-modal experience. He believed that opera was the highest form of art because it combined visual, dramatic, vocal, musical, choreographic and textual elements into a single form. Juxtaposing contemporary scientific experiments that have deepened our understanding of cross-sensory connections with artistic experimentation would have allowed Zeki to examine Wagner’s work from a number of rich perspectives. Had he looked at them he might have spoken about a number of recent scientific studies that have raised questions about the very philosophical and historical assumptions he relies on in his exposition of art. As Christopher W. Tyler and I have discussed (2004), what is most impressive about contemporary research in this area is the way the idea of five distinct senses, as codified by Aristotle, has been re-

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examined and found to be too black and white. Suffice to say that scientists are opening “neurological” doors with synesthesia studies that will aid further study of sensory integration. This includes our ability to conceptualize how an artist like Wagner developed work capable of stimulating cross-modal sensory experiences within his audience, among other things. There are several problems that are not unique to Zeki’s work but, rather, help frame some of the difficulties that arise when speaking about art, science, technology and consciousness. Like many writers, Zeki comprehends that the embodied cognition of an artist is likely one that can teach us much about brain functions when he tells us that he holds the view that artists are in some sense neurologists, studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them, but studying unknowingly the brain and its organization nonetheless. (Zeki 1999a: 10). Yet, unfortunately, this highly respected scientist offers a theoretical analysis that ultimately fails to recognize embodied cognition in art practice and appreciation. Like many other scientists who comment on art, he presents a tautological and psychologically based argument that confuses the science more than it clarifies the art. As discussed below, when Richard E. Cytowic’s Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (Cytowic 1989, 2002) pairs synesthesia with art in order to present his “scientific theory” he, too, demonstrates that the tendency to jump to conclusions is apt to keep the scientist from sifting for insights. Cytowic writes that “Both synesthesia and the artistic experience are ineffable and both indescribable by language.” (Cytowic 2002: 319). Furthermore, according to Cytowic; “when we say that art speaks to the depths of our souls — it speaks to that greater formless part of ourselves of which we have no awareness.” (Cytowic 2002: 306) These broad statements hardly meet the criteria of a scientific argument. Clearly, something that is defined in terms of “the depths of our souls” represents a scientist’s opinion more than an empirical fact. 6. Conclusion In summary, one obstacle we face in proposing consciousness theories of art is that historical methodologies have not incorporated visual art. The tendency has been to instead frame art in terms of rhetorical and theoretical thinking. We see this problem extended into present inquiry when Zeki peppers his argument with philosophical notations that reference historical views of art and aesthetics. Many of these thinkers, as noted earlier, never actually saw the art they

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analyze. Resting on their expertise, his theories (and analogous arguments) are thus undermined by the exclusion of key neurological studies. Unfortunately, the combination fails to offer the kind of substance that aids us in distinguishing philosophical arguments from actual brain operations. Similarly, the rhetorical thrust of Stafford’s proposal suffers from the inadequacy of logical equivalence in arguing a case that sufficiently incorporates revolutionary alterations in our understanding. Both proposals foundationally underscore why I am arguing here that there is a need to be aware of flavorful arguments contrived in terms of the very historical trajectories and theories of mind that elevated natural philosophy, science, theology and spirituality, while placing visual art in a secondary position.

Chapter 4 Polyphonic Chords, Chromatic Painting and Synesthesia In the cinema, feedback is possible almost exclusively in what I call the synesthetic mode . . . Because it is entirely personal it rests on no identifiable plot and is not probable. The viewer is forced to create along with the film, to interpret for himself what he is experiencing. If the information (either concept or design) reveals some previously unrecognized aspect of the viewer’s relation to the circumambient universe — or provides language with which to conceptualize old realities more effectively — the viewer re-creates that discovery along with the artist, thus feeding back into the environment the existence of more creative potential, which may in turn be used by the artist for messages of still greater eloquence and perception. Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema

1.

Cross-modal studies of the brain

In the last chapter I suggested that one area where science has significantly updated long-standing philosophical ideas is synesthesia research. In this chapter I would like to expand further on this area. It is generally agreed that synesthesia occurs when an individual receives a stimulus in one sense modality and experiences a sensation in another. Historical difficulties of subjecting cross-modality to rigid scientific analysis led earlier commentators to cast the phenomenon in terms of abnormality, philosophy and metaphor. Clearly discernable patterns of correspondence were not obvious and attempts to study connections were stifled by the contradictory historical data, which was comprised of lists of stimuli and synesthetic responses. For example, accounts such as those attributed to Scriabin and RimskyKorsakov equated colors with given musical notes and keys. (e.g. see Cytowic 1983; Harrison 2001). Yet, reportedly, Scriabin claimed the key of C-Minor was red, while Rimsky-Korsakov perceived it as white (Harrison 2001). The confusing and haphazard historical records are now being revisited as researchers design studies capable of examining cross-

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modal sensation from a neural perspective. Although exciting findings have reinvigorated synesthesia research, of greater interest are the many documented accounts that were perceived as incoherent and now appear to be essentially correct in light of what laboratory experiments are revealing (Harrison, J. 1993; Ramachandran 2001; Harrison, Paul 2001; Ramachandran & Hubbard 2000; Baron-Cohen & Harrison 1997). Moreover, the validation of older accounts complements a long historical literature on sensory inter-relationships that is robust and cross-cultural. The range is particularly thought provoking when contrasted with current research findings regarding the phenomena. One of the earliest efforts to make sense of these relationships was the Pythagorean quest to assign a particular color to each musical note, about the 6th century BCE. In more recent times, the list of famous figures involved with the synesthetic experience includes Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Scriabin, Vassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Sergei Eisenstein, Oliver Messiaen, David Hockney and Richard Feynman. These attributions are based on some of the intriguing comments we find in their writings or remarks they have made about their own work. In his What Do You Care What Other People Think? Feynman (1988: 59) claimed; “When I see equations, I see the letters in colors.” To composer Alexander Scriabin the key of F-sharp major appeared violet in color (Myers 1914). Writer Vladimir Nabokov noted in his autobiography Speak, Memory (1947: 21); “[t]he long ‘aaa’ of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French ‘a’ evokes polished ebony.” And composer Oliver Messiaen waxed lyrical about “the gentle cascade of blue-orange chords” in one of his pieces (Bernard 1986). 2. Synesthesia and historical neuroscience Historical documents also establish that synesthesia has long been seen as neurologically abnormal, because it was at odds with the idea that we have five distinct senses, as codified by Aristotle.23 It is also at 23 “Now I call the proper object of each sense that which does not fall within the ambit of another sense and about which there can be no mistake, as sight is of color and hearing of sound and taste of savor, while touch has several different objects. Each particular sense can discern these proper objects without deception; thus sight errs, not as to colors, nor hearing as to sound; though it might err about what is colored or where it is, or about what is giving forth a sound. This, then, is what is

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variance with the Law of Specific Nerve Energies formulated by Johannes Müller (1826), following the earlier insights of Charles Bell (1811). The law implies that each sense modality has its characteristic sensory quality, regardless of the physical means by which the peripheral nerve was stimulated. Thus, signals traveling up the optic nerve are always experienced as visual activation; whether stimulated by optical, tactile, sonic or electrical activation of the photoreceptors. Müller’s concept is deeply embedded in the analysis of brain function and seems to negate the possibility of cross-modal activation in the cortex. How could the nerve energy be specific if it activated more than one sense modality? On the other hand, the physical energy that activates the nerve has a synesthetic quality, in that we can feel as well as hear a strong sound vibration. (There seems to be implicit agreement that this kind of cross-modal activation of the peripheral nerve does not qualify as synesthesia.) In sum, the emphasis in synesthesia is on cross-modal interactions within the brain rather than the peripheral nerves. The particular manifestation of the cross-modal interaction is idiosyncratic, however, for one synesthete might always see a number or a letter as a particular color while another might associate a taste with a sound. Historically, the first bona fide report of synesthesia seems to have been a medical treatise in Latin published, by Dr. G.T.L Sachs in 1812 (Dann 1998). The title of his treatise in English may be rendered “The natural history of two albinos, the author himself and his sister.” (Sachs 1812). Although there is no known association between albinism and synesthesia, in this case both siblings had extensive synesthetic color associations with sounds, digits and other numerical data. In fact, they reported highly specific and invariant color sensations evoked by vowels, consonants, musical notes, the sounds of instruments, numbers, dates, days of the week, city names, periods of history and the stages of human life. The work attracted substantial interest in the medical community and was soon translated into German. Indeed, it must have provoked substantial debate in relation to the Bell and Müller championing of the separation of the sense modalities, particularly as this was the era of romantic experimentation with new musical and poetic forms to evoke a greater wealth of sensory and emotional experience. It would be interesting to know whether there was discussion of such issues in the post-

meant by the proper objects of particular senses.” (Aristotle, De anima, II, 5: 418a

12-20)

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Napoleonic salons, since Romantic poetry of the nineteenth century is replete with synesthetic metaphors (Siebold 1919; Ruddick 1984). At about the same time, Johannes Purkinje, the physician who investigated numerous aspects of human biology, published a series of papers devoted to subjective visual sensations — hallucinations, afterimages and a wide variety of visual phenomena derived from the eye (Purkinje 1819). In fact, this investigation represents the fullest treatment of the topic to this day, in which he developed a classification system of 28 categories of entoptic and related phenomena. Although they seem closely related, he did not include synesthesia in this classification. A scientific approach to color-sound associations was carried by the poignant figure of Gustav Fechner, a physicist who fell ill with a brain fever for a year and then recovered with the idea of resolving the mind-brain dichotomy with the science of psychophysics, the direct measurement of sensation. Fechner (1876) tabulated the color-tone associations of 347 as part of this effort to find regularities in the domain of the mind, but he did not emphasize the specificity of the sensory quality as true synesthesia. The first comprehensive investigation of synesthesia seems to have been carried by out the notable professor of psychiatry, Eugene Blueler during his medical studies. He later tried to integrate Freudian psychoanalytic theory with Wilhelm Wundt’s new field of experimental psychology, introduced the term “schizophrenia” to describe the fractured mental state of this condition and gave Carl Jung his early training. His student, Karl Lehmann, who had synesthesia, prompted the synesthesia study. He found that about 12% of a sample of nearly 600 people reported sensations of color-vowels associations, although there is some question about whether metaphorical associations were also included in the reports (Bleuler & Lehmann 1881). Since vowels have no common associations with colors in the language in general, however, the occurrence of metaphorical associations would itself seem to imply some degree of synesthesia. 3. Updating Historical Conclusions In the last two decades the ability to probe intersensory relationships has been given a boost by new technologies of brain imaging. The results have been counterintuitive in some respects. For example, Frith & Paulesu (1997) evaluated the change in local cerebral blood flow in a group of six female synesthetes listening to color-evocative words, in comparison to the response to pure tones.

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Increased blood flow (implying increased neural activity) was seen in many more brain areas of the synesthetes in comparison to the change in a matched group of nonsynesthetic controls. All participants showed greater activation to the words in traditionally linguistic brain areas in the inferior frontal cortex and in the temporal cortex. The synesthetes also showed bilateral increased activation in two visual brain areas — dorsally at the junction of the occipital and parietal lobes and ventrally at the junction of the occipital and temporal lobes. These two areas correspond to the principal brain regions activated specifically in tasks of the naming of colors associated with common objects shown without their colors (Martin et al. 1995). Their function therefore seems to be associated with the “conception” rather than direct perception of colors. An important aspect of this enhanced activation is that it was not seen in the primary visual projection area V1, or in the subsequent projection areas V2, V3 or V3A. These are all areas with colorselective cells that could have supported the enhanced color perception of the synesthestes, but any change in cellular activation was below the resolution of the methods used. An additional surprise was that there was no significant change in the brain area most strongly associated with color processing, area V4 on the ventral surface at the back of the brain. The areas where increased activation showed up were later visual processing regions commonly associated with object and space perception, despite the fact that the synesthetes did not report any special enhancement of object awareness beyond the associated color and that the colors were related to purely formal aspects of the word, such as their first letter, rather than objectrelevant properties. The other brain regions that were differentially activated in the synesthetes in the Frith & Paulesu (1997) study were two non-visual areas on the right side of the brain – the middle frontal gyrus and the insula, a deep cortical region lying just below it. The insula on the left side showed a pronounced deactivation complementary to activation on the right side. These brain areas are typically associated with functions of complex motor control and decision making, but Frith & Paulesu offer no interpretation of either the activation or the deactivation of these frontal regions. One might speculate that they represent a control mechanism by which the synesthete brain switches from a predominant left-hemisphere activation of speech (since five of the six synesthetes tested were right-handed and therefore would have had left-hemisphere dominance) to a right-hemisphere activation of verbal associations not normally accessible in non-synesthetes. This

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kind of attentional switch could help to explain how the synesthetic colors were brought to consciousness without enhanced activation of the early color processing areas. Indeed, Frith & Paulesu reported that the color experiences of their synesthetes were evoked only when attention was drawn to the sound of the words by subvocalizing during reading, but not during normal reading. 4. Art, Synesthesia and the Brain This work makes it possible to design experiments to evaluate whether synesthesia might be an innate condition in some or show evidence of brain plasticity in others. We can now compare the neural functioning in innate synesthesia and in synesthesia of those affected by life-altering neurological events. One case of note was reported by Vike, Jabbari, & Maitland (1984). This subject saw kaleidoscopic and spiraling lights in his left eye when stimulated with clicks of 65 decibels. His synesthesia stopped with the removal of a large cystic mass extending from his left medial temporal region to the midbrain. Similarly with Jonathan I., a color-blind artist made famous by the neurologist Oliver Sacks, we find a life-altering neurological event brought about a loss of synesthesia along with his loss of color perception in general. Mr. I. also illustrates that grappling with this phenomenon underscores there are diverse, complex variables related to the senses that scientific research has yet to resolve. Briefly, Jonathan I., who died in the late 1980s, had been a painter who had always relished color before an automobile accident left him unable to see color at all. Although no reliable anatomical information is available about this patient who died about three years after his accident, John Harrison concludes that his achromatopsia was most likely damage to the lingual and fusiform gyri of the brain (2001). Before his accident his work was abstract, colorful and highly nonrepresentational. After his accident, he found he had an achromic condition that left him unable to work effectively with color. In addition, prior to the accident Jonathan I. experienced the form of synesthesia in which one sees colors when presented with musical tones. After the accident he lost this synesthesia along with all other color experience. This loss is particularly intriguing when the case is considered in its full context, for it demonstrates that the history of an artist and the history of an individual has a tremendous impact on how the brain develops (Sacks 1995). Blind to color relationships in his general environment and in conceiving his artwork, Mr. I’s entire life

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changed. For a painter, no doubt, this change was devastating and it required him to develop a totally new approach to his life and his profession. Mr. I. began to prefer to venture outside when the light made it easiest for him to distinguish forms in his “gray” world and changed his diet, preferring foods he “knew” were “naturally’ black and white. Although Mr. I. became totally color-blind, these losses did not keep him from painting. In fact, after a year or more of experiment and uncertainty, he moved into a strong and productive artistic phase, as evocative as anything in his long artistic career. Looking at the monochromatic paintings he produced at this time it is important to keep in mind that the accident only damaged the section of his brain specialized for color (designated as visual area V4 in the occipital lobe) and yet the depth of the overall change altered his entire way of being. Perhaps of greatest importance to his life as a painter was that he did not lose just his perception of color, he also lost his sense of color imagery, the ability to dream in color and even his memory of color. Although he continued to paint monochromatic abstracts that portray a tonal, musical quality, these paintings did not have the neural sensory relationships of earlier work. Nonetheless, the gray-tone paintings produced at this time were highly successful and people commented on his creative renewal when seeing this new “phase” he had “moved” into. The excitement people felt when seeing his monochromes is perhaps most meaningful when we reflect on the fact that very few people knew that this new phase was anything other than an expression of his artistic development. They failed to recognize that it was brought about by a calamitous neural loss (Sacks 1995). Two aspects of his case are particularly noteworthy neurologically. First, since he continued to paint, researchers were able to use his work to explore how a brain could adapt to radically new modes of expression and ways of seeing. Second, although Sacks believes this kind of case allows us to assess how the cerebral “mapping” may be drastically reorganized and revised in cases of the special use or disuse of individual parts, we need not necessarily draw this conclusion. Clearly his brain did adapt. Yet, too, these adaptations did not bring color back into his memory or visual experience. He never recovered his synesthesia or any sensation of color. 5. Theories and Science As scientific studies proceed, many continue to debate about what, if anything, we can learn from artists who spoke about experience in

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terms we today characterize as synesthete now that a strictly physiological evaluation of historical figures is impossible. Does this mean that historical cases should be interpreted metaphorically? Although the debates are complex, some have pointed out that the conclusions applied to historical accounts are often limited by the contradictions evident in the literature and other factors as well. Another area of concern is that current interpretations of synesthesia tend to follow trends in brain research, where studies concentrate on a search for the organic basis for the experience. Artistic projects, however, stress experimentation. Whether innately synesthete or not, artists are likely to gravitate toward projects that enhance sensory interchange. Further investigation into historical cases of artists developing techniques to investigate perceptual and emotional mechanisms might contribute to developing more foundation for contemporary neurological research into synesthesia. The difference between contriving metaphors and developing techniques to explore perceptual and emotional mechanisms is as relevant as the ability to distinguish an innate synesthesia from one developed through focused endeavors. Finally, all of these points suggest that broadening our understanding of synesthesia will require we broaden our view of historical cases without losing sight of their inaccessibility to direct study. Understanding their merits is aided by the work of contemporary teams who are now identifying which neural correlates appear to be “cross-wired” in synesthetes and are comparing synesthetes’ brains with those of non-synesthetes. Ramachandran & Hubbard (2001), for example, have proposed that cross-wiring in the fusiform gyrus is the neural basis of grapheme-color synesthesia. Ramachandran has even suggested that synesthesia may form the basis of primordial color perception. In one case, a subject who was genetically color-blind reported that numbers evoked sensations of “Martian colors” that he had never seen with direct vision. The implication is that the synesthesia activated color-coding circuitry within his brain that could not be reached through the defective wiring from his photoreceptors. Indeed the work of a number of scientists (e.g., see Cytowic 1989, 2002; Marks, 1978; Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001; Baron-Cohen & Harrison 1997) is involved in exploring the neural mechanisms of synesthesia. These neurologists are removing this sensation from the taint of charged terms such as “abnormal” or “aberrant.” Surveying the research that now challenges Aristotelian notions of five distinct senses, we find studies of letter confusions that have shown that the

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colors seen by synesthetes can be so vivid that they interfere with the identification of colored numbers (Mattingly et al. 2001; Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001). Other studies show that the synesthetic colors may be used to penetrate the crowding effect of arrays of nearby shapes, letters and numbers (Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001; Wagar et al. 2002). The synesthetic color provides a marker identifying particular numbers or objects under conditions when they are invisible to people without this special perception, who are unable to distinguish discrete numbers within the masking array. In addition, researchers such as Mills et al (1999) are designing tests to determine that synesthete reports are accurate over time. In sum, without a doubt, contemporary methodologies and the current explosion of techniques to explore the brain, synesthesia, like other formerly misunderstood behaviors, are opening doors that allow us to re-evaluate art, neural wiring and sensory relationships. 6. Kandinsky and Klee Equally fascinating are the many artists who agree that their creations defy explanation; leaving the impression that successful work is somewhat magical. All of us can recall the sense of exhilaration that often accompanies encountering an artistic masterpiece we previously knew only from secondary sources. If our first hearing of Beethoven’s Fifth or our first visual exchange with a Cézanne painting came after developing an acquaintance with the work through descriptive accounts, we were likely reminded of the degree to which explanations suffer when compared with the artwork itself. Regardless of how skillfully our metaphors express the rhythm, tonality, color and texture; exposure to the authentic creation suggests the contrived representation is aptly termed a shadow or pale imitation. Invariably a translation fails to capture the way visual art connects with us in space and music pulsates in time. Even a nonverbal syntax, like the relatively recent phenomenon of musical notation, reminds us that a symbolic text can convey a compositional arrangement, but in this form the sensory vitality of the music is rigidified and silenced. Projects in which an artist successfully merges sensory modalities are perhaps more intense and harder to explain in discrete terms. The variables we must address are particularly evident when we look at the work and stories of those who choose to experiment in this way. For example, Vassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Paul Klee (1879– 1940), both painters and trained musicians, were drawn to the ways

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one can manipulate abstract possibilities in both art and music. Yet, although each effectively brought musicality to his painted work, when looking at the motivations of these two colleagues we find significant points of divergence that the kinds of studies outlined above fail to include. It seems Klee and Kandinsky first met, briefly, in Franz Stuck’s painting class in the Munich Academy in the summer of 1900 (Roskill 1992). They met again in 1911 and their professional friendship further strengthened after Klee joined the Blue Rider group (founded by Kandinsky and the painter Franz Marc) in 1912. Later the bonds between the two deepened when Klee accepted an appointment at the Bauhaus in 1921 and Kandinsky joined him in 1922. Working sideby-side for many years, both painters articulated their projects in terms of the Bauhaus aspiration to unify all of the arts, a goal they shared even before their appointments. Indeed some claim that the resemblance between their work in the early 1920s is so close that an untrained eye might well confuse the two (Haftmann 1967). Perhaps more intriguing are the distinct variations between them that clarify on examination, despite the evidence that they often articulated similar principles. According to Roskill; “Klee and Kandinsky . . . [were] like a musical partnership . . . even while their ‘styles’ of performance and commentary remained entirely different in cast.”24 (Roskill 1992: xvi) In particular, Klee’s approach was based on personally felt impulses and was quite process-oriented. His hope was to “one day . . . be able to improvise freely on the keyboard of colors: the rows of watercolors in my paint box.” (Düchting 1997: 17). His urge to work color as one might sound led to an experimental practice often discussed in terms of his efforts to find innovative ways to group chords and express resonance. Kandinsky, by contrast, aspired to develop a vocabulary that would point toward universals. He saw art as a medium of the mystical and, to him; “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.” (Kandinsky 1986: 25). Haftmann succinctly summarizes the psychological premises that defined each process, writing; “Kandinsky took hold of the world but remained outside it. Klee sank himself in the world.” (Haftmann 1967).

24

Vassily Kandinsky’s wife, Nina, noted that although they worked as colleagues for close to thirty years, Kandinsky preserved a certain distance in his relationship with Klee, preferring the formal mode of address Sie to the familiar Du.

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Their compositions, writings and histories further supports this contrast. Paul Klee worked from a seed he felt within himself and endeavored to make something precious to him and previously invisible to others, visible. To his mind, compositional elements were tools he could use to engage all that he felt intuitively and internally. This was evident when he taught his students that; “Not form, but forming, not form as final appearance, but form in the process of becoming, as genesis.” (Haftmann 1967: 86). Playful, sardonic and child-like, his wide-ranging variations delineate how freely he accommodated each work as it was shaped. We see this in the wiry forms in Klee’s early graphic work (e.g., his 1903 Virgin in a tree and the 1914 Instrument for New Music), the subtle tonality of his polyphonic images (e.g., Dynamic–Polyphonic, 1931), done with colored chalk on paper and the many fantasies he presents in a secret language to illustrate the degree to which he continually strived and succeeded, in his quest to say something novel. Whether using line variations to suggest rhythm or capturing a chromatic tonality, Klee aimed to feel the pulse of his piece and to slowly nurture it along in tune to a tempo we feel through looking at it. Kandinsky, on the other hand, adopted a top-down approach that was echoed in his frequent use of the word Gesetzmässigkeit (loosely translated as law-governed character). His best known book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, (originally published in 1911 as Über das Geistige in der Kunst) and later pieces demonstrate this. The work also illustrates his efforts to present his art in terms of spiritual science.25 This tract and his other theoretical expositions are quite unlike Klee’s writings, where we find records of soul-searching and documentation of his experiments (Roskill 1992). Kandinsky’s allegiance to universalism and his attraction to mysticism, theosophy and other occult systems was evident in the classroom, his publications and compositionally. When lecturing his students, Kandinsky, unlike Klee, would proceed quite deliberately. Grouping a few objects together, he would abstract from them a logical structure of lines and particles of color. Then he would analyze this structure in terms of the pictorial means — point, line, surface, space and so on (Haftmann 1967: 82). Basically, to Klee’s mind, the kind of structure Kandinsky was seeking to articulate through his logical, calm and carefully constructed analysis was an 25

A compelling overview of Kandinsky’s interest in the spiritual and how this influenced his practices is offered by Ringbom in ‘Transcending the Visible: The Generation of Abstract Painters’ (1987).

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intellectualized short-cut that lost sight of personal dynamism. Klee’s advice to his students conveys his distaste of an analysis of structure in terms of pictorial means. He said; “To paint well is simply this: to put the right color in the right place.” (Kudielka 2002: 32). In the Fugue in Red, for example, we see how he stabilizes the beat of the colors on the flat surface, evoking musicality through subtle coloration. Even in musical terms, the contrasts are striking. Indeed, their musical tastes too show foundational disagreements. Kandinsky equated his work with Schönberg’s twelve-tone music, which made him realize that the concept of tonal harmony was undergoing a radical change and that dissonance was becoming a means of expression on par with consonance (Maur 1999). Kandkinsky endeavored to join this view of music with his own move toward abstraction and transcendence. As Kandinsky explains in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), it is his view that; “The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forward and upwards . . . [The Artist] sees and points the way.” (Kandinsky 1986: 4). Later, in Point and Line to Plane (1926) he elaborates on how the artist points the way to others (Kandinsky 1979). Having asked what is to replace the objects of traditional art, Kandinsky declares it is the task of a science of art to reveal the compositional laws inherent in abstract forms, enabling the artist to discard fidelity to merely “external” nature. His words carry his view that “The coming period demands a more exact and objective way to make collective work in the science of art possible.” (Kandinsky 1979: 76). Klee, on the other hand, was convinced that the modern music of his day, which Kandinsky applauded, was too academic and overly dictated by educational theory. For this reason Klee focused on developing an abstract, visually-based language that in turn was based on historical musical models. His move to create cross-disciplinary harmonies clearly diverged from those of his colleague, who was not seeking innovation so much as fulfillment of his desire to blend the arts into an all-inclusive spiritually felt meshing of sensations. Moreover, Kandinsky’s systematization of a tonal harmony that coincided with his elevation of an objective, mystical science outside of nature represented precisely the kinds of academic equation Klee reviled. Klee believed that musical development had already passed its prime, going downhill after Mozart. He acknowledged that he deliberately chose painting over music in the belief that innovative

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possibilities were emerging in visual abstraction, while music was going in the wrong direction. His animated expressions show he nonetheless adeptly made his choice in a way that combined both modalities. Inserting a musical quality, Klee’s artwork is distinct from both the art and music of earlier epochs. Beyond a doubt, it is very much of his time. Indeed, his special way of tuning the visual to the musical articulated how ably he put together projects that aligned with his personal sensitivities more than a communal style. His accomplishments are particularly evident in the overlapping qualities he used to combine qualities of both art forms, perhaps most clearly articulated in the structures he derived to refine his variations of themes, something which he noticed above all in the polyphonic fugue (Düchting 1997: 14). Equally striking is the way each artist intersects with the cognitive neuroscience and Consciousness Studies literature. Topics that stand out include the relationship between science and spirituality as well as unresolved issues such as emergence and binding. Perhaps the most pronounced distinction comes through when we compare Kandinsky’s urge to depict transcendence with Klee’s view that; “For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space.” (Klee 1969/1925: 7). Klee’s embrace of personal process clearly differs from Kandinsky’s aim to build “a spiritual pyramid which would some day reach to heaven” (Kandinsky 1986: 20). Nuances that distinguish them further clarify the distance between a science of art grounded in the mystical (Kandinsky) and a practice that relies on experimentation (Klee). 7. Kandinsky, Klee and the Scientific Research Agenda Kandinsky’s aspiration to give form to universal tenets using the “scientific method” comes up frequently in consciousness debates. His legacy also offers one example of the weak empirical foundations often used in these arguments. This artist’s efforts to formulate “objective” statements that he saw in terms of a science of art, although systematic, are not scientifically convincing. As Roskill points out, in pressing for the existence of a pictorial logic grounded in scientific laws, while at the same time rejecting the positivistic tenor of latter-day science, Kandinsky’s argument slips and slides: it breaks up into opposites and alternatives pursuing logic along a flexibly shifting thread, but also giving space to digressions that seem based on free association between one topic and another (Roskill

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1992, p. 40). Given this, it is difficult to interpret Kandinsky’s laws as we would a laboratory science, which in part explains why scientists have often considered the techniques he speaks about as metaphorical at best and (more often) closer to the metaphysical and mystical. Still, since Kandinsky often talked of his experiences with synesthesia, we can endeavor to position this aspect of his experience in terms of current scientific research and philosophical debates (Ione & Tyler 2003, 2004). When doing so it is prudent to balance what we know of his background, particularly in light of the tendency to mention his name when the discussion turns to synesthesia. For example, he had striven to enhance his cross-modal capabilities from childhood and his writings make a strong case that he was a true synesthete (Ione & Tyler 2003). Stimulated to develop a sensory unification of color and music, Kandinsky systematically devised painted dynamic compositions that are difficult to perceive in terms of static representation. Rather, the concrete painted forms evoke a visceral language that entices colors to sway to unheard music. The viewer immediately senses that each point seen is moving toward the evocation of its counterpoint, just as each series of lines appears to correlate with a sonic form. Kandinsky’s writings support the viewer’s reaction, often stating his longing to provide painting with the independence from nature that he felt in music. He frequently spoke of how an understanding of art and music can expand the value of using associative techniques aimed at enhancing sensory exchange. In addition, the idea that he developed his innate capabilities is supported indirectly by our knowledge of how he worked as well as the circumstantial evidence contained in his writings (Kandinsky 1912, 1913, 1947; Lindsay & Vergo 1982). Thus, his case is easily fit into the aesthetics philosophical framework,26 just as synesthesia overall is easily aligned with consciousness as well as philosophically defined concepts such as meaning, emotion and other elusive modes. In addition, much of the historical discussions rest on well-honed categories that aid in bracketing themes such as metaphor, interpretation, subjectivity, language and history. Finally and perhaps ironically, although it continues to be debated whether Kandinsky was actually a synesthete, the foundational issues 26 A particularly problematic aspect of his argument is that it is based on the unscientific assumption that artists are seers who glimpse a higher truth and reveal it to others through the pieces that they create. See Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning for an analysis of the problems inherent in this argument. (Ione 2002)

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became somewhat moot with the advent of LSD (the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide) in the 1960s. Multimodal synesthesia is experienced by most who take LSD, revealing that it is a latent facility and that it takes only the specific effects of the miniscule dose of this drug to release (see Marks 1978). Such releasers imply a kind of neural plasticity in which the latent synesthesia can be triggered and, presumably, developed by appropriate forms of stimulation. Cytowic (2002) points out, however, that the effect is not universal and that LSD does not produce synesthesia every time the drug is ingested. On the other hand, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, the specific condition we term synesthesia occurs when an individual receives a stimulus, in one sense modality and experiences a sensation in another. Neither the scientific overview above nor the case studies directly address why there has been so much confusion about the synesthete modality. What is a bit clearer is the degree to which philosophical interpretations have built on what Aristotle termed “Sensus Communis”, a theoretical position many continue to reference in some form when seeking to update theories about sensory unity. Aristotle introduced this term in the first part of On Memory and Reminiscence and thus we can date the philosophical legacy in the West back to classical Greek thought. He explained the idea saying that: Why we cannot exercise the intellect on any object absolutely apart from the continuous, or apply it even to non-temporal things unless in connection with time, is another question. Now, one must cognize magnitude and motion by means of the same faculty by which one cognizes time (i.e. by that which is also the faculty of memory) and the presentation (involved in such cognition) is an affection of the sensus communis; whence this follows, viz. that the cognition of these objects (magnitude, motion time) is effected by the (said sensus communis, i.e. the) primary faculty of perception. Accordingly, memory (not merely of sensible, but) even of intellectual objects involves a presentation: hence we may conclude that it belongs to the faculty of intelligence only incidentally, while directly and essentially it belongs to the primary faculty of sense-perception.

This line of thought has been continually updated as the philosophical tradition refined its concepts. For example, Immanuel Kant writes in his Critique of the Power of Judgment: [W]e must [here] take sensus communis to mean the idea of a sense shared [by all of us], i.e., a power to judge that in reflecting

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Polyphonic Chords, Chromatic Painting and Synesthesia takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone else’s way of presenting [something], in order as it were to compare our own judgment with human reason in general. . . Now, we do this as follows: we compare our judgment not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgments of others and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everyone else. . . (Immanuel Kant 1929 160; Ak. 293–4).

Harry T. Hunt again revisits these ideas explicitly in On the Nature of Consciousness (1995). Hunt, too, expands the theoretical focus, seeing the idea in terms of symbolic cognition, Romantic imagination, aesthetics and consciousness. The idea is generally more implicitly assumed, much we find in Lawrence E. Marks’ The Unity of the Senses: Interrelations among the Modalities. He opens with a summary of his theoretical position, writing: 27 What is ‘the unity of the senses?’ Simply stated, it is the thesis that the senses have a lot in common . . . The unity of the senses is perhaps a theory, but even more importantly is a way of looking at sensory functioning: It is a viewpoint that pulls together a host of phenomena . . . My goal is to assemble all of its parts, to show how the unity of the senses expresses itself in perception, in phenomenology, in psychophysics, in neurophysiology. (1978: ix) [italics added]

As noted above, Richard E. Cytowic’s Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (2002)28 updates Marks’ theory and he also pairs synesthesia with art. He writes that “Both synesthesia and the artistic experience are ineffable and both indescribable by language.” (2002: 319). Cytowic’s view that “when we say that art speaks to the depths of our souls — it speaks to that greater formless part of ourselves of which we have no awareness.” (Cytowic 2002: 306), is hardly scientific, as mentioned above. It does, however, fit nicely with Kandinsky’s urge to place artistic sensitivity in a transcendent realm that we cannot speak about directly. Ironically, thinkers like Cytowic bring assumptions about art into their work in a way that allows us to open a space for placing modalities like synesthesia in terms of the all-embracing mysticism Kandinsky elevated. In doing so they are not accommodating certain realities. One is that a visual language is relational and not transcendental when art speaks to a viewer. Whether 27

This revised edition of his 1989 publication with the same title speaks to Marks’ abstraction theory directly. 28 Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning (2002) offers a broad overview of the many implicit assumptions that elevate spirituality in discussions of philosophy, art and science.

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or not this is an explicit intention, views that are founded on theories outside of our awareness are arguably unarguable. V.S. Ramachandran, one of the most exciting researchers working on synesthesia (Ramachandran & Hubbard 2000, 2001), offers some comments that suggest interpreters should assert more care when drawing theoretical conclusions about synesthesia. As he explains, “you can’t use one mystery in science to explain another mystery” (Romano 2002). Furthermore, he adds, if synesthesia is just metaphor it does not explain anything because we have no idea how metaphors are represented in the brain. We do, however, have research that shows there is a neural basis for synesthesia and this does provide an experimental foothold (Romano 2002). To my knowledge Ramachandran and other researchers have not yet developed experiments that are refined enough to probe whether a deeper understanding of the artist’s brain could point to information that goes beyond establishing a neural basis for synesthesia. In light of the research that has exposed flaws in historical assumptions, it seems prudent to avoid the tendency to blur the lines between art and science with terms like ineffability. Indeed it seems that in time it is likely that artistic experiments might have more to say about binding or brain plasticity given the many who have stated it is possible to develop and/or increase crossmodal awareness through working toward this end in one’s studio. For example, Jack Ox is an intermedia artist who has been experimenting for over twenty years with how to combine different media into one. She claims that now it is easy and natural for her to see sonic forms (Ox 1999: 7). Kandinsky likewise claimed he saw colors and Kandinsky described the impact of an 1896 performance of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin in Moscow, saying: The violins, the deep tones of the basses and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colors in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me (Kandinsky, 1913, p. 364 [italics added]).

Yet, although he claimed he was a synesthete, some now say Kandinsky was not a ‘natural’ so much as one who developed his abilities through associative techniques aimed at enhancing sensory exchange, much like one might develop relative pitch. While we can’t test him, penciled notes in his books that spoke of exercises one could

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do to enhance the experiences and offer some support of this idea.29 Even the titles of his works (e.g., Improvisations, Impressions and Compositions) evoke music and accentuate his desire to bring the essence of cross-modal experience to a wider audience. Klee’s techniques, on the other hand, present another vantage point that we must examine in terms of art as well as cross-modality in the brain. Overall his approach stimulates thoughts about psychophysically designed experiments, along the lines pioneered by J.J. Gibson (1950, 1987). Some may argue that Gibson’s work is now somewhat peripheral to research highlighting cognitive operations (Zeki 2001). A counter argument would be that Gibson’s interest in the world we see is relevant to visual arts precisely because the artist establishes an environmental relationship with the artwork while constructing it. Klee, who never aspired to call his approach science, talks about his far-reaching experiments with color and form without attempting to adopt an empirical facade. His words instead suggest he revised his motifs as he constructed them, continually adjusting elements in order to tease out intense visual reactions. The abstract, subtle relationships that resulted, as such, are hard to characterize but do, nonetheless, evoke complex chords, rhythms and tonal variations.30 Placing these modalities in terms of higher cognition and symbolic language seems to rigidify the objects he made more than it allows us to recognize their musical vitality. To side-step the degree to which Klee formed an active relationship with each developing work would be particularly naïve in light of what we know of his teaching method, as discussed above. To be sure, his work appears deceptively simple at first glance. What makes the originals striking is that the imagery is so infused with the delicate rhythms and intricate counterpoint of musical composition that the symbolic language becomes secondary. Our experience of Klee’s virtuosity confirms he achieved his goal of playing color like a “chromatic keyboard”. It is striking to see that his small compositions rarely attempt to resolve large issues, although the tension between simplicity and complexity belies their size. Their smallness and eloquence makes them difficult to interpret. Ranging from small watercolors to linear, geometric and mosaic-like motifs in his career, Klee’s work eventually culminated in a simplified, flatly painted and 29 These ideas are further developed in ‘Is Kandinsky a Synesthete?’ and ‘Synesthesia: is F-Sharp Colored Violet?’ (Ione & Tyler 2003, 2004) 30 Artists who do representational work demonstrate yet another reason to inject psychophysical research into the mix, as discussed in greater detail below.

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broadly drawn series of gouaches and oils done between 1935 and 1940, a style that came about when he suffered from a progressive skin and muscular disease. 8. Conclusion In summary, the translation of motifs taken from nature into free, rhythmical linear structures and tonal values is based on the principle of rhythm: a vision the artist distilled from his knowledge of the rudiments of music. Clearly, working on his own terms, Klee became one of the most original technicians and innovators among the earlier abstract expressionist artists of the twentieth century. Reviewing his motifs, moreover, we find that they demonstrate that Klee continually re-examined his personal themes and re-evaluated his forms as he derived his visual elements. His oeuvre seems to suggest a mind capable of seemingly limitless invention. Paralleling his work with Kandinsky’s suggests that the kind of universalism many consciousness thinkers desire must somehow be squared with a pluralistic range of projects. Building a theoretical construct that allows for this kind of nuance, I would argue, is not an achievable or even a desirable goal.31 On the other hand, I would add, integration of cognitive neuroscience research can add, often immensely.32 In my view, including information about brain processing allows us to weigh the range of viewpoints, which is an important step in formulating questions that 31

Good references for this include: But is it art?: An Introduction to Art Theory, Cynthia Freeland (Freeland 2001); the Art Question [sic] by Nigel Warburton (Warburton 2002); Theories of Art Today (Carroll 2000), a collection of articles by contemporary philosophers of art (among those included in Theories of Art Today are Dickie, Danto, Davies, Stecker), a publication that offers a survey of the major voices in regard to art theory and demonstrates that it seems premature to conclude that there is some agreement on what we mean by art and aesthetics in the contemporary world; and the Art in Theory series (Harrison & Wood 1993; Harrison, Wood & Gaiger 1998, 2001), where the reader will find arguments and primary sources that detail major themes from 1648–1990. 32 The three issues on art and the brain published by the Journal of Consciousness Studies demonstrate this well. Also of interest from a consciousness perspective are Robert Solso’s Cognition and the Visual Art s (1994) and The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (2003), Margaret Livingstone’s Vision and Art: The Psychology of Seeing (2002) and Semir Zeki’s Inner Visions: An Exploration of Art and the Brain (1999b).

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have the potential to foster a closer relationship between art and consciousness. In other words, we can approach art and consciousness from multiple vantage points. Some theorists are prone to unequivocal statements such as art IS “a higher cognitive process, a fully human kind of symbolic language”. Others and I see myself in this category, reject the inference that we know precisely what art is and what we need to explain (Ione 1999b, 1999d, 1999f, 2000a, 2004). I do not see that the lack of a precise definition precludes establishing points of conjunction that will aid in our understanding of art, cognitive neuroscience, and, by extension, consciousness. Instead, looking directly at the work artists do, particularly closely paired contemporaries like Klee and Kandinsky, reveals there is evidence to support the idea that a number of equally valued approaches to art exist. In other words, neither this chapter nor this book pretends to comprehensively resolve theoretical issues. Nor do I offer a detailed response to the long-standing debates on the question of whether we should view the arts as distinct or harmonious. Hopefully the sum total will, however, offer information that can aid in building a richer relationship with the complexity of art, science, technology and consciousness. Indeed, surveying how Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky, two trained musicians, related visual art and music is one way to illustrate how foundations might overlap and display conceptual variations nonetheless.

Chapter 5 Books, Rhetoric and Visual Art First of all, he forged a shield that was huge and heavy, elaborating it about and threw around it a shining triple rim that glittered and the shield strap was cast of silver. There were five folds making the shield itself and upon it he patterned out many things, in his skill and his craftsmanship. He made the earth upon it and the sky and the sea’s water and the tireless sun and the moon waxing into her fullness and on it all the constellations that garland the heavens, the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion and the Bear, whom men also call the Wagon, who turns about in a fixed place and looks at Orion and she alone is never plunged in the wash of the Ocean. Homer, The Iliad XVIII, (The Shield of Achilles, lines 476-489)

One intriguing difference between Kandinsky’s urge to universalism and Klee’s intuitive and personal approach is that both of these painters spoke of subjectivity, a feature that began to take hold at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Romantic turn distinguished the scientific empiricism and philosophic logic from the “emotive feeling” attributed to the artist. Ironically, Zeki’s arguments, discussed in Chapter 3, resonate with this modus operandi, for he too equates art with the subjective. The discrete elements that highlight this quality are worthy of additional reflection, as is the degree to which the turn toward these ideas reflects the Western tradition as a whole. Approaching this topic returns the discussion to why I earlier took issue with Stafford’s view that the bedrock problem faced when endeavoring to integrate visual art into Consciousness Studies in not “What method do we write in?” 1. Ekphrasis Homer’s depiction of the shield of Achilles is technically termed ekphrasis. Ekphrasis, the Greek term for description, refers to the verbal representation of visual representation. Homer’s representation is generally seen as the prototype and was followed by contributors to

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the tradition that range from Virgil and Dante to recent figures like William Carlos Williams and John Ashberry (Heffernan 2004). A popular practice among Greek rhetoricians, ekphrasis skillfully wove words together so that the language captured paintings, sculpture and buildings. Ancient teachers of rhetoric also saw it as a way to teach the skills of oratory, where the goal was to bring the subject described before the mind’s eye of the listener. Later, writers such as Dante (1265-1321), Alberti (1404-1472) and Vasari (1511-1574) set the tone for Renaissance debates in part through their explorations of the conventions of antiquity, including ekphrasis. For example, Giorgio Vasari writes in his Preface to the 1568 Lives of the Artists: “Sculpture and painting were perfected by Homer’s time, as is proved by the inspired poet himself, who presents the shield of Achilles with such art that we seem to see it carved and painted before our eyes rather than merely described.” (Vasari 1967: 27) Dante’s The Divine Comedy provides one of the best examples of how the form developed from the canonical Homeric epics. Replete with allegorical allusions, the verisimilitude he put into words is the ingredient that holds his tale together. This allows Dante to offer a synthesis of pagan and Christian ideas. Invariably cited to show the growing influence in Dante’s time of classical thought within the primarily Christian culture, readers find it believable in part because the rich descriptions transport us to each scene. Whether it is the physical appearance of a character or a description of architecture, Dante’s language successfully draws pictures in the reader’s mind. It is hard to escape the allure of this book due to Dante’s success in using imagery to travel through the inferno, purgatory and paradise. Indeed Zeki’s decision to include this artist in his “Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner” underscores that this work remains powerful to this day. 2. Manuscripts and Printing Dante is often seen as a figure on the cusp of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, while the sixteenth century contributions of Alberti and Vasari to the visual arts landscape are said to represent a move away from the norms of the Middle Ages. While it is beyond the scope of this book to examine medieval art and aesthetics through surviving paintings, statuary, architecture and other artifacts in detail, it is nonetheless important to envisage that the art of all times offers cultural artifacts through which we can learn about the people, their

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symbols, fashions, concerns and technology. Through the accomplishments of Middle Ages we can ferret out their innovative strategies, examine new materials and see the way this community defined itself over time. The art also serves as a corrective to textual accounts. One of the extraordinary aspects of the Middle Ages is the degree to which ideas have changed since our culture has become more visual.33 For example, this book, like many today, is a black and white publication with few images. While the use of color reproductions has increased significantly in recent years, the expense of adding this kind of information compels many to publish largely textual works. This was not always the case. The manuscript culture that thrived throughout the Middle Ages, before the development of the printing press, was filled with artistry even in the less expensive, more mundane book. Strictly speaking a manuscript is any written document that is put down by hand (Latin manu scriptus written by hand), in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. The roll (rotulus) was, along with the tablet, the principle vehicle for writing during antiquity. Rolls were originally formed of sheets of papyrus pasted together and were stored in a capsae, cylindrical boxes resembling Victorian hat boxes. They were unrolled horizontally from left to right, with about four columns of text visible at any one time. The drawbacks of the roll in terms of portability and cross-referencing led to its general replacement by the codex. Originating in the first century, the codex (from caudex, Latin for tree bark), is a book composed of folded sheets sewn along one edge, a style quite distinct from either the roll or tablet. Initially a low-grade form manufactured of papyrus, its portability and ease in consultation quickly made it 33 If a man of the culture of 1840 had been asked to characterize French civilization in the fifteenth century in a few words, his answer would probably have been largely inspired by impressions from Barante’s Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne and Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. The picture called up by these would have been grim and dark, scarcely illuminated by any ray of serenity and beauty. The experiment today would yield a very different result. People would now refer to Joan of Arc, to Villon’s poetry, but above all to the works of art. The so-called Flemish and French masters — van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Foucquet, Memling, with Claus Sluter, the sculptor and the great musicians — would dominate their general idea of the epoch. The picture would have altogether have changed its color and tone. . . It is a general phenomenon that the idea which works of art give us of an epoch is far more serene and happy than that which we glean in reading its chronicles, documents, or even literature. (Huizinga 1999: 222).

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popular among Christians. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the codex largely supplanted the roll as the favored vehicle for literary texts (Brown 1994). Before the radical transformation we see with the advent of the printing press in (c.1450s), manuscripts were sewn together in the form of a book. Thus, although production mechanics became easier, manuscripts of the Middle Ages superficially resemble the modern books. Looking more closely, it is fascinating to find that medieval manuscripts were generally ablaze with color, unlike the largely black and white books that followed. Indeed, nearly every single medieval book, however humble, includes writing in more than one color, bright red as well as black or brown. Almost every medieval manuscript was designed to begin with an enlarged opening initial, sometimes simply in the same ink as the text, but frequently in patterns of red and blue or in many colors (de Hamel 2001). Additionally, book production worked within certain parameters. Formal elements of the page required a plan for script, decoration, images, margin and binding needs. Moreover, although we tend to use the term “illuminated manuscripts” to speak of these books, many were not adorned with gold or silver. The majority did, however, include more than one color, as mentioned. Although most manuscripts were decorated with miniatures, illuminated manuscripts were decorated with motifs of the highest caliber that were only within reach if one was rich and privileged. With the development of mechanical book production, much of the beauty of these unique objects was transformed.34 The significance of this is clearer once we look at the introduction of printing. At this time, some continued to practice illumination techniques by embellishing early printed books, but overall work was limited due to the introduction of the new technology. Unfortunately adding imagery proved too costly and time consuming. During the initial years the printers left spaces for the customary adornments, but these were mostly gone by 1500 (de Hamel 2001). Color was a major casualty as well. Once the new production methods took hold, leading printers sought out and depended on mechanized methods of reproducing illustrations.

34 Although we tend to call these books unique objects, not all were totally unique. Some illuminators used a process that permitted them to make several copies from one original, much like tracing paper allowed one to make identical copies of an original cartoon (Lebvre & Martin1997: 27).

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For example, xylography, a technique for wood engravings in use since the late fourteenth century, was quickly adopted. This technique of wood engraving dates back to China of around the 1st century. Xylography is said to be the oldest engraving technique known. The engraver outlines his drawing with sharp tools (penknife, hollow chisel, etc.), raising the relief for the ink or the color to be laid on. Called the blackline method, it gets its name from the efforts of the engraver to leave the parts that are not meant to receive ink. The technique appeared in Europe no earlier than the last quarter of the 14th century, presumably because of the use of paper. This assumption is usually made because by that time it had been observed that paper was better suited than rough-surfaced parchment for making the impressions from the wood reliefs that manuscript copyists used to reproduce the outline of ornamental initial capital letters. With this knowledge, the process was extended to the making of religious picture, which initially appeared alone without text, although brief text sections were later added. In the first half of the 15th century small, genuine books of several pages, religious works or compendiums of Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus and called donats, were published by a method identical to that of the Chinese. Some propose that experiments in carving the blocks containing letters of the alphabet that could then be cut up into usable and reusable type led to movable type. By the middle of the fifteenth century, prints were also being produced using the intaglio (cut or incised) technique. In the intaglio process, the lines cut into a metal plate are filled with ink, the surface of the plate is wiped clean and dampened paper is pressed against the plate with such pressure that it is forced into the grooves and picks up the ink. Three intaglio processes in use during the Renaissance (drypoint, engraving and etching) were integrated into book production. Intaglio techniques, such as mezzotint and aquatint, were developed later, in the seventeenth century. To some degree these were incorporated into book production as well. Their appeal was the way each introduced shades of grey into the normally black and white print. By the end of the eighteenth century (in 1798), Aloys Senefelder in Munich invented lithography, which was soon followed (early in the nineteenth century) by photographic techniques, a subject studied in some detail in a later chapter. Three tracks are evident here. First, the potential of the print medium had an undeniable impact on the development of all disciplines and is particularly noticeable when we consider how it influenced art and art history. In publications, prints replaced hand-

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drawn and printed images, medieval pattern books and were a tool for spreading knowledge of ancient classical antiquity during the Renaissance revival. The diagrammatic images that worked well with printing allowed science to prosper in part because of their capacity to standardize technical materials, very much prone to error with hand copying. Prints, however, had the opposite effect on art history. While the use of exquisite prints provided a new outlet for artists, the woodcuts, engravings and etchings that spread knowledge and facilitated stylistic comparison lacked the color and bearing of the artistic works they referenced in the printed literature. It was not just that the printed forms were not given the prestige of paintings. They also offered a contrast to the colorful paintings and the earlier miniatures formerly found in abundance. Second and by extension, the printing press further elevated the rhetorical approach to art. Without a doubt, the tradition espoused by Cicero was more compatible within the textual culture of the printed book and the debates between perfection and primitivism Gombrich exposes in his work on “taste.” For example, as noted earlier, Gombrich tells of Cicero, who dates about midway between Plato and Plotinus (Neo-Platonism). He explains how Cicero contributed to rhetorical debate and literary criticism and notes that like many of his peers Cicero had little to say about artistic imagination. His views instead buttressed the ancient view that the mechanical, craft-based arts (e.g., painting and sculpture) were lower forms. Painting, while useful in making rhetorical points, was nonetheless below the “liberal arts.” 3. Visual Art and the Liberal Arts We know that by the fifteenth century, visual art aspired to become a liberal art, like poetry and music. Literary discussions debated parallels between art and poetry, the comparative merits of the figurative arts and whether the role of the mind in painting’s creative process, a process long equated with manual labor, was in evidence. Establishing the importance of the mind rested in part on providing a scientific basis for visual art. This was accomplished by providing theoretical arguments that linked it with perspective, optics, anatomy and ideas. Their success is evident in art publications. Technical literature (recipes) began to appear less frequently, as art joins ranks with the philosophical and literary styles. Influential publications were now also largely image free. Thus to conceptualize the debate in terms of mimesis and something more akin to Nelson

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Goodman’s view of art as a symbolic system (Goodman 1965, 1976, 1978, 1984) is to lose sight of the early environment and the efforts to frame visual art through the ideas of rhetorical thinking. The rhetorical emphasis continues today and continues to place visual art within a methodology that is built on (and burdened by) languagedefined categories. In addition, the entry of the printed book coincides with the elevation of framed paintings. They began to become more prominent within the culture at this time, just as the value of the illuminated manuscripts diminished. This is brought home when we examine surviving illuminated manuscript repositories. Aside from those that remain intact are the many we know today solely as images. Although stunning when displayed as wall-hung miniatures, these works of art were excised from their original context. Thus when we see them as framed works, as we are likely to, we fail to appreciate how visual adornment was integrated into the books compositionally. Framed miniatures do show, however, the nature of historical fashions. Many of the excised miniatures were saved simply because they were beautiful, accentuating the elevation of beauty (and the sublime) in later centuries. Certain aspects particular to the preserved works are worth noting. One is their ability to trace the art form’s development from the otherworldly, abstracting traditions of late-medieval painting to the conquest of space and form during the High Renaissance. Equally impressive is their ability to convey their liturgical purpose. Briefly, all medieval churches and monasteries were required to own essential sets of liturgical manuscripts. These might include oversize choir books, known as antiphonaries and graduals, which contain the sung parts of the mass. The typical form of decoration for these books was a large initial, often several inches square, placed at the beginning of each hymn and used as a framing device for a narrative scene appropriate to the text. Carried out by artists of the highest caliber, the miniatures are masterpieces. Their complexity, moreover, makes them work well whether found cut out of the volumes that were then destroyed or in their codex form. The framed miniatures also work well due to their resemblance to art we can identify from the time in altarpieces and smaller predellas. 4. Art Technique Nonetheless, both symbolic and narrative interpretations fail to distinguish a number of qualities that become apparent when we look

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closely. One is the artist’s ability to find a means to build a relationship with both a developing work and an audience that only knows the finished product. In terms of the medieval mind, for example, painting on panel or parchment included a number of procedural steps we can trace through unfinished manuscripts that have survived. We also find this in panel painting, a tradition more often integrated into art literature. Procedural operations might include coating a piece of linen with gesso in order to lay it on the wood. This piece not only covered the joins, it also served to even out the surface. Up to eight layers as well as sanding might be required. These might appear to be manual tasks until we recognize that developing a feel for these operations includes knowing how materials interact chemically and how each is affected by environmental conditions and what materials can and cannot accomplish. For example, in the Middle Ages egg yolk was the preferred binder for pigment. One of its shortcomings is that it is almost impossible to show light within the picture using egg tempera. The paint is unable to convey a convincing idea of luster, sheen, or reflection, because the egg gives a surface that is too matt and the egg will, depending on the lighting, appear as either a dark or a pale background color. Indeed, in certain lights it will overwhelm the other colors completely. (MacGregor 1997b: 18) One solution artists experimented with successfully was adding gold leaf and colored glass. These materials were capable of reflecting light and could bring some reflective quality to the work, something the paints alone could not produce. Nonetheless, unlike pigments bound with oils, the painted images were not able to actually represent different times of day, for instance. In light of the limitations of the medium, symbolic representation would be used to make distinctions. Egg also did not have the capacity to bring life-like qualities to the colors and textures. In fact, oil was an exciting technology because it provided a tool for representing reflection, light and the subtlety of the physical world convincingly. The impact of this is much more apparent when we look at the light in pictures conceived with egg tempera. One such piece is the small Wilton Diptych, a portable altarpiece painted for the private devotion of King Richard II who ruled England from 1377 to 1399. A diptych is a painting, carving or piece of metalwork on two panels, usually hinged like a book. The artist of this diptych is unknown, although it is believed he made the masterpiece in the last five years of Richard’s reign. The altarpiece received its name because it came from Wilton House in Wiltshire, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke.

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Generally it is argued that the immaculate painting and gilding of the two panels that comprise the work transformed this piece into a heavenly vision. On the inside we find Richard II being presented by three Saints to the Virgin and Child and to a company of eleven angels. Nearest to Richard is his patron Saint John the Baptist. Behind are Saint Edward the Confessor and Saint Edmund, earlier English kings who came to be venerated as saints. The outside of the diptych shows a white stag with a chain around its neck and a shield showing the coat of arms of Edward the Confessor. Even at first glance the extensive gold leaf embellishment is the small diptych’s most striking feature. Yet we cannot fully appreciate what it adds to the altarpiece until we view this art by candlelight. Then we perceive the way this anonymous artist integrated gold’s reflective qualities into the viewer’s experience with a full knowledge that the piece would be seen by candlelight. To say it is extraordinary to see the way the glow of the candles adds to and subtracts from, what we see without this light is almost an understatement. By candlelight we can clearly conceptualize that the small size, intended for personal devotion, fulfilled its religious function. The soft light adds an aura. It is also difficult to perceive the painted figure of Richard II by the dimness of the flame’s illumination, yet the gilded Virgin, the Child and the three saints, by contrast, remain remarkably visible. Soft and subtle, this is the kind of effect/experiment rarely captured with language. Description fails to capture the relational quality of the visual effects this artist clearly understood when he manipulated his materials to produce this well-crafted object. The result itself is neither an object nor a process. It stands alone and yet evokes an experience as it creates an environment. This kind of work is commonly found within the medieval aesthetic. Although easily wedged into a narrative that defines it in terms of signs, spirit and symbols this exposition misses the artistic accomplishment. In the service of the Church, artists used available materials to, in effect, bring heaven down to earth. The Wilton Diptych achieves this goal, as do cathedrals, altarpieces, sculpture and paintings in general. In summary a confluence of event moved painting to another level. This included the invention of oil paint, the invention of the printing press and the elevation of rhetorical methodology to speak about artistic representation.

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5. Conclusion Before turning to painting per se, it is important to fast forward first. Whether or not the use of ekphrasis is buttressed by the degree to which many of the arguments about art and aesthetics were textually driven, is no doubt open to debate. We can say, however, that the more accessible textual information has influenced arguments. Bosanquet’s History of Aesthetic, first published in 1892, reminds us that the playing field was not level and this tilted framework built upon its own biases. In a short footnote within the book, Bosanquet relates that Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), the author of the Laocoön had of course never seen the original of the Laocoön when the book was written. Bosanquet explains: “I do not know that he had ever seen a cast; probably his judgment was formed from engravings.” (Bosanquet 1892/1956: 221). The piece depicts the priest Laocoön, who had warned his compatriots not to accept the Greek gift of a wooden horse. According to the tale, the serpents that crushed them to death attacked him and his sons. His lack of first-hand knowledge did not stop Lessing from using the statue as his point of departure when he takes issue with his contemporary, the art historian Johann Winckelmann, over his interpretation. Comparing the sculpture with Virgil’s narrative, Lessing concludes they show different areas of competence among the arts: If it is true that in its imitations painting uses completely different means or signs than does poetry, namely figures and colors in space rather than articulated sounds in time and if these signs must indisputably bear a suitable relation to the thing signified, then signs existing in space can express only objects whose wholes or parts coexist, while signs that follow one another can express only objects whose wholes or parts are consecutive. (Lessing 1766/1963: 95)

His overall argument, which points out that whereas painting is bound to observe spatial proximity — and must, therefore, select and render the seminal and most expressive moment in a chain of events, poetry has the task of depicting an event organically and in its temporal sequence. The essence of poetry thus lies not in description but in the representation of the transitory, of movement.35 35 The Homer text is cited above. Virgil’s, Æneid, (70 B.C.–19) 2001: lines 579589) reads, “My sons,” said Vulcan, “set your tasks aside; / Your strength and masterskill must now be tried. / Arms for a hero forge; arms that require / Your force, your speed and all your forming fire.” / He said. They set their former work aside, / And

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[T]he shield of Achilles [is] that famous picture, which more than all else, caused Homer to be regarded among the ancients as a master of painting. But surely a shield, it may be said, is a single corporeal object, the description of which according to its coexistent parts cannot come within the province of poetry. Yet this shield, its material, its form and all the figures which occupied its enormous surface, Homer has described, in more than a hundred magnificent lines, so circumstantially and precisely that modern artists have found no difficulty in making a drawing of it exact in every detail . . . The same cannot be said of the shield of Aeneas in Virgil. The Roman poet either failed to the fineness of his model, or the things which he wished to represent upon his shield seemed to him not, of such a kind as to allow of their being executed before our eyes. (Lessing 1963/1766: 114115)

Although he is cited today as one of the important figures in aesthetic theory, few note that his conclusions in favor of poetry were based on accounts of works of art he knew more by reputation than as works in and of themselves.

their new toils with eager haste divide. / A flood of molten silver, brass and gold, / And deadly steel, in the large furnace roll’d; / Of this, their artful hands a shield prepare, / Alone sufficient to sustain the war.”

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Chapter 6 Theory: Innovation: Practice Jan van Eyck’s eye operates as a microscope and as a telescope at the same time — and it is amusing to think that both these instruments were to be invented, some 175 years later, in the Netherlands — so that the beholder is compelled to oscillate between a position reasonably far from the picture and many positions very close to it. . . . However, such perfection had to be bought at a price. Neither a microscope nor a telescope is a good instrument with which to observe human emotion. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting

1. Leon Battista Alberti and Giorgio Vasari The tension between art writing and art practice is further accentuated when we turn to the figures now seen as the founders of the field as practiced today. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), generally characterized as the first Italian art historian, initiated the genre with his publication of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that art historians continue to cite today. In this publication, Lives of the Artists (Delle Vite de’ pi eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori), he coined the term “Renaissance” (rinascita) when he spoke of a “rebirth” in the arts that had been in the air from the time of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Characterizing Alberti as “The Architect of Florence,” Vasari tells us: When theory and practice are united in one person, the ideal condition is attained, because art is enriched and perfected by knowledge, the opinions and writings of learned artists having more weight and more credit than the words or works of those who have nothing more to recommend them beyond what they have produced; whether it be done well or ill. The truth of these remarks is illustrated by Leon Battista Alberti, who, having studied the Latin tongue and practiced architecture, perspective and painting; has left works to which modern artists can add nothing, although numbers of them have surpassed him in practical skill. His writings possess such force that is it commonly supposed that he surpassed all those who were actually his superiors in art. (Vasari 1967: 208-209)

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Indeed, Alberti’s On Painting (Della Pittura) is generally said to have opened a new stage in art theory. Frequently its distinctive contribution is stated through a comparison with Cennino D’ Andrea Cennini’s The Craftsman’s Handbook. (Il Libro dell’ Arte 1437). The handbook is a source book on the methods, techniques and attitudes of medieval artists. It allowed Cennini to explain that, in his view, painting holds a high place among human occupations because it combines theory or imagination with the skill of the hand. Cennini also offers the first known explanation of the technique of painting with egg tempera. Alberti’s writing, on the other hand, sets itself apart from this earlier work by not providing a technical recipe book on preparing paints or workshop secrets. Rather he gives the reader an argument in which he endeavors to show art as a “liberal art.” Alberti, a humanist, inventor and engineer, played an important role in building a foundation for the transition of the artist’s position and identity in the Italian Renaissance. Born out of wedlock (in 1404), Alberti’s illegitimacy complicated his position within the structure of his society. These social difficulties were abated due to his father’s commitment to providing him with a quality education. He subsequently built on this fine educational foundation and ultimately achieved recognition in a number of fields. By 1432 Alberti’s literary accomplishments led him to become a secretary in the Papal Chancery, where his ongoing employment in the service of the Church insured him the income he needed to pursue his many interests. As Grafton tells us, in this thinker’s life and work creativity is seen as not making something completely new but, rather, as reusing a classic idea or theme in a novel way. We thus need to see his contribution in that light as we conceptualize how this well-known historical figure made manifest his desire to fuse painting and the liberal arts. In doing so, we must also recognize that his work was not creative in the way we think of creativity today. Rather, Alberti’s will to succeed in terms of all that his world valued was quite acute and thrived in terms of the values of his culture, which were not our own. The larger point is that he extensively turned to the rhetorical techniques he gained through his education and developed a facility in applying them in other domains. Contemporary references to Alberti are likely to demonstrate that we have learned to see Alberti through the lens of Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). This book established Alberti’s reputation as the quintessential Renaissance Man, claiming that no less a figure than Leonardo da Vinci was merely a second to him, Burckhardt wrote; “Leonardo da Vinci was to

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Alberti as the finisher to the beginner, as the master to the dilettante.” (Burckhardt 1995/1860: 107). The predominance of this characterization has allowed later thinkers to lose sight of Alberti’s humanness and the degree to which he used the skills and devices employed within his community to achieve his goals. One of major importance was emendation. Essentially emendation, a process of circulating texts among other scholars for correction, was a common practice among rhetoricians. Sources suggest that Alberti valued the collaborative nature of this practice which may account for his adoption of this technique as his projects moved from rhetoric to art, architecture and engineering. Strange as it might sound today, when we assume perspective is a scientific technique, in Alberti’s time even a theory of perspective was open to emendation, as Grafton fully details in his excellent biography of Alberti (Grafton 2002). More important here, during the Renaissance, On Painting was an integral component in the development of the methodology used to speak about art. Alberti, who was among those who saw emendation as a stage in composing a work as well as a specialized service the learned could offer to others, turned the emended approach into an art form and used it in his discussions of art as well. The first version of De Pictura (On Painting) was written in Latin in 1435 and then loosely translated into Italian under the title Della pittura, completed in 1436. Alberti dedicated this second version to Filippo Brunelleschi, among others. Brunelleschi, a self-taught architect frequently credited with the formulation of the laws of linear perspective, was a key figure in Alberti’s time. When Alberti decided to codify the basic geometry, he approached Brunelleschi with a request for emendation precisely because he saw Brunelleschi as the most learned figure on this matter. Alberti did not speak of perspective solely as a device an artist should use to imitate nature objectively. Rather, to his mind, the artist should be especially attentive to beauty. Overall what sets the book apart is Alberti’s way of telling his audience that the greatest paintings are those that include istoria [historia]. History painting was perceived as the optimal form for istoria because, if well done, the artist would demonstrate a command of everything, ranging from the human figure to natural representation. Ultimately, istoria came to define what an artist should aspire to achieve. This was the quality that elevates complex narrative and allegorical paintings.

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Theory: Innovation: Practice The istoria will move the soul of beholder when each man painted there clearly shows the movement of his own soul. It happens in nature that nothing more than herself is found capable of things like herself; we weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing and grieve with the grieving. These movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body. Care and thought weigh so heavily that a sad person stands with his forces and feelings as if dulled, holding himself feebly and tiredly on his pallid and poorly sustained members. In the melancholy the forehead is wrinkled, the head drooping, all members fall as if tired and neglected. In the angry, because anger incites the soul, the eyes are swollen with ire and the face and all the members are burned with color, fury adds so much boldness here . . . Part of this I fabricate out of my own mind, part I have learned from nature (Alberti 1966/~1435: 77-78).

Two aspects of On Painting stand out when we compare writing and visual art. First, in laying out his theory of perspective there is a great deal of emphasis on his philosophical position. More specifically, the publication (in two editions of 1435 and 1436) was deliberately contrived to fit art within the humanistic tradition. Despite his statements on perspective, the book is not a scientific treatise so much as an opportunity to speak of an internal principle he has in mind, one he often equates with the soul. Alberti explains this by saying; “Let no one doubt, that the man who does not perfectly understand what he is attempting to do when painting, will never be a good painter. It is useless to draw the bow, unless you have a target to aim the arrow at.” Second, remarkably, this highly technical treatise on visual perspective contained no drawings in either the 1435 Latin version or the Italian translation that was produced in the following year, although editions today are likely to have diagrams inserted to aid the reader in conceptualizing Alberti’s ideas. Grafton comments, It is unclear why Alberti — who provided illustrations for Mathematical Games, for his work On Sculpture and for a short treatise, parallel to On Painting, on perspective — did not equip On Painting with the diagrams that would have made this densely technical book far more accessible” (Grafton, 2002: p. 100).

Giorgio Vasari’s Lives is often seen as contemporary to Alberti’s works, although Vasari was very much his junior. As mentioned, Vasari’s equally influential work was comprised of biographies of the great Quattrocento artists. Indeed, Lives has long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Overall this publication outlined the influential theory of Renaissance art and traced a progression through Giotto,

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Brunelleschi and finally the titanic figures of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. First published in 1550 and dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, a second edition in 1568 includes a partial rewrite and the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural). Part of the appeal of these biographies is the amusing stories Vasari pens to bring each artist to life. Although the anecdotes have the ring of truth, time has made clear that many are fictitious. Nonetheless, the work remains a classic. In terms of innovation, it is intriguing to think of the writings of Vasari and Alberti in light of the invention of the printing press, which we date to the mid sixteenth century. Vasari used the then new printing press for the first edition published in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino of Florence, which was soon followed by the updated 1568 edition. Alberti’s publication circulated in manuscript form until 1540, when it was first printed. Unfortunately, there is no record verifying the actual size of either print run. Even without a precise number, early publications had a larger audience because more copies of books were immediately available due to the printing press. Another significant aspect in light of their influence on visual art history/theory is that neither book was illustrated in the way a groundbreaking art book might be today. The 1550 edition of Vasari’s Lives contained no illustrations. He added woodcuts and biographies with the second printing, which explains why, in this rare instance the second edition is commonly preferred. The tendency to cite Lives as the initial text of the discipline we now call art history demonstrates its impact remains noteworthy.36 Nonetheless, it is generally acknowledged that the biographies are filled with factual errors and prejudiced in favor of Florentine art. Still we view the biographies among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art and the somewhat recent recognition of Vasari’s errors does not diminish his reputation as the “Father of Art History”. 2. The Western Art Canon: Northern and Southern Perspectives Much of the flavor of the Florentine story Vasari highlights is encapsulated in The School of Athens,37 a painting by Raphael Sanzio 36 See Donald Preziosi’s The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology for a concise summary (Preziosi 1998: 21-30). 37 Useful information about the people represented is available at http://hypo.gedip.etat-ge.ch/www/athena/raphael/raf_ath4.html. Excellent images, identification of

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(1483–1520). This large, complex work, one of the four main fresco walls in the Stanza della Segnatura, is often described as an allegory of secular philosophy and is said to illustrate the historical continuity of Platonic thought. Compositionally, the fresco depicts Plato and Aristotle surrounded by philosophers, past and present, in a splendid architectural setting. Leonardo was the model for the face of Plato, whom we see centrally located, holding a copy of his book, The Timaeus, while pointing upward to the spiritual dimension. Next to him we find his younger pupil Aristotle, holding a copy of his Ethics. Looking closely at the painting, we find many well-known figures. For example, Raphael depicts Heraclites, sketching on a slab of marble. A close examination of the intonaco shows that Heraclites was the last figure painted when the fresco was completed, in 1511.38 The allusion to Michelangelo is said to represent a late gesture of homage to the artist, who had recently unveiled the frescoes of the Sistine. Finally, it is said that the space in which the figures congregate is based on Bramante’s design for the new St Peter’s in Rome. Zeki’s argument on the art of Dante, Michelangelo and Wagner, outlined in Chapter 3, comes to mind when viewing this representative work. In an effort to present a theory of art and the brain Zeki tells us he chose three men who were deeply rooted in the Western culture, the Christian tradition and each one had been deeply influenced by ancient Greek civilization (Zeki 2002: 61–2). What Zeki fails to add is that his perspective most decisively glorifies a particular vantage point on the art historical canon. More precisely, he is adopting a

the figures and a brief history can also be found in James Beck’s Raphael: The Stanza della Segnatura, Rome (1993). For images of the fresco see http://www.vatican.va/museums/patrons/documents/vm_pat_doc_12101999_raphael_ en.html. 38 Affresco (generally translated into English as “fresco”) is a form of painting done on freshly laid wet plaster with pigments dissolved in lime water. As both dry, they become completely integrated. This technique, known as “true” fresco, was particularly popular from the late thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The common assumption that all mural painting is fresco painting is an erroneous idea. One can paint on fresh plaster, or intonaco, to make a painting in affresco or a fresco, but in its true form the artist started by applying colors on the wet (or fresco) intonaco as soon as it has been prepared and laid on the wall. This allowed the colors to be absorbed by the wet plaster. When it dries and hardens, the colors become one with the plaster. Technically speaking the plaster does not “dry” but rather a chemical reaction occurs in which calcium carbonate is formed as a result of carbon dioxide from the air combining with the calcium hydrate in the wet plaster.

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framework represented by the Italian Renaissance, artists and thinkers who closely linked their work with the ideas of the ancient Greeks. Michelangelo, a master who worked within the bounds of this tradition, sums up this view of art in his harsh criticism of Flemish art. According to Michelangelo: Flemish painting . . . will appeal to women, especially the old and very young ones and also monks and nuns and lastly men of the world who are not capable of understanding true harmony . . . [these painters] render exactly and deceptively the outward appearance of things . . . Though the eye is agreeably impressed, these pictures have neither art nor reason; neither symmetry nor proportion; neither choice nor values nor grandeur. In short, this art is without power and without distinction . . . (in Klein & Zerner 1989: 33)

Michelangelo then goes on to say: It is practically only the work done in Italy that we can call true painting and that is why we call good painting Italian. (in Klein & Zerner, 1989: 33)

Although art theory was increasingly defined in terms similar to this and as outlined by Italian theorists like Alberti and Vasari, this was not the entire story, even if we confine our discussion to Western views. Indeed, not all art conformed to this tradition in practice. To be sure, the Italian tradition defined art as a modality in the service of philosophy and spiritual pursuits and, without a doubt, this is a line of thought that has largely been adopted by aesthetic theory, cognitive science and I believe Consciousness Studies as well, despite the fresh empirical data that has been brought to the study of the mind. This adaptation has taken form implicitly, as a part of how cognitive science continues to define its methodology. Indeed, the question “what is cognitive science?” is generally answered in a way that characterizes it as an extension of the theories of mind we date back to antiquity. Plato’s Dialogues are then inevitably cited as the key starting point although, as noted earlier, Plato brought contradictory views to the table. If we are to grasp what is missing here, we must establish some sense of the views of art circulating at this time. For example, although Leonardo is among those depicted in Raphael’s School of Athens his scientific investigations into the natural world set him apart from his artistic peers. His urge to represent details of the visual world — landscape, mountains seen through smoke, movement — without dwelling on the elements of human psychology highlighted by many

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of his colleagues, is more common among the Flemish Michelangelo distastefully speaks of in the quote above. Reading Michelangelo’s views closely, it is striking to discover that he finds Netherlandish art attraction and directs his contempt towards its lack of rational and poetic elements. Leonardo, on the other hand, relishes art’s capacity for visual representation on its own terms. This is confirmed by the way he downplays the painter’s capacity to paint the soul as a feature of painting’s superiority in his writings, a view that goes against the grain of istoria (historia) Alberti emphasized (discussed below). It is also striking in light of Leonardo’s scientific inclinations, including his efforts to understand the relationship between vision and the brain. 3. The Paragone The differences are further distinguishable when we consider the controversy or comparison (paragone) among the different arts and sciences. This was a frequent literary theme during the Middle Ages. Although contemporary thought tends to think of the idea in terms of Leonardo’s paragone on the relations of painting and sculpture,39 his disputation on the superiority of either painting or sculpture is only the last and most persistent instance.40 Early on the controversy took shape as the artists claimed the right to be admitted among the members of the seven liberal arts. It was not just that this was seen as a path that would free them from the restrictions of the guilds, they also understood they would gain a higher social status. In other words, originally the paragone opposed the visual arts to the intellectual or liberal disciplines, among which were music and literary forms. Eventually the painter “proved” his profession was a “science” moving some of the debate to the supremacy of painting and sculpture. An abundance of documents in the first half of the sixteenth century attests to the popularity of the topic. Most indicative of the range of opinions on painting and sculpture are the responses Bennedetto Varchi (1503-1565) received in response to a letter he sent to artists and sculptors inquiring about the paragone. Answers from Vasari, Bronzino, Tasso, Pontormo, Francesco da Sangallo, Tribolo, Cellini and Michelangelo helped stimulate the development of the 39 Italian Art, 1500 -1600: Sources and Documents offers a collection of the most relevant documents summarizing the paragone (Klein & Zerner 1989). 40 Galileo was still to add his opinions on the matter, but since he is not an artist, his influence on art theory is less pronounced.

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language and concepts through which art could be appraised and understood, as did the parallel discussion of the respective merits of painting and poetry. To the best of my knowledge Leonardo did not directly contribute to the Varchi discussion, although he certainly made noteworthy contributions to the debate that are more insightful in comparison. Since classical antiquity, poetry had been assessed in terms of “invention” of subject matter and composition, as put forth, for example, in Horace’s (65-8 BCE) Ars Poeticas, which referenced the notion that poetry and painting are alike, although it was an idea that had had some currency even before Horace. He relates painting and poetry, saying ut pictura poesis. Translated: “as is painting so is poetry,” the words are often (either implicitly or explicitly) reversed to “as is poetry so is painting,” to indicate an extended analogy, if not an identification, between the two media. The views connect to those of Aristotle, especially his idea that poetry and painting as arts of imitation should use the same principal element of composition (structure or plot in tragedy and design or outline in painting, (see Poetics 6.19-21), which largely furnished the authority for later attempts to measure the kinship of the arts or the order of hierarchy (Leonardo’s paragone). Speaking in terms of the paragone, Michelangelo acknowledged that the exposure to the thoughts of his colleagues changed his opinion. Writing to Varchi, he tells him that: I used to consider that sculpture was the lantern of painting and that between the two things there was the same difference as that between the sun and the moon. But now that I have read your book, in which, speaking as a philosopher, you say that things which have the same end are themselves the same, I have changed my opinion; and I now consider that painting and sculpture are one and the same thing . . . (that is to say, both painting and sculpture) proceed from the same faculty, it would be an easy matter to establish harmony between them and to let such disputes alone, for they occupy more time than the execution of the figures themselves. As to that man who wrote saying that painting was more noble than sculpture, if he had known as much about the other subjects on which he has written, why, my serving-maid would have written better! (in Klein & Zerner, 1989: 14)

Leonardo, on the other hand, particularly in the Codex Urbinas, acknowledges many similarities between painting and sculpture, elevates painting and concludes that painting is a matter of greater mental analysis. He rests his case on painting’s superior scientific content and the intellectual effort involved, especially in the

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conceiving of space, color and atmosphere. His view is among those others cited in reference to debates over the nature of representation that has predominated since Plato discussed imitation. Overall, Leonardo’s idea of the paragone aligns with his view of fantasia, the word invariably used to convey his understanding of imagination. Leonardo sees fantasia as the ability to recombine images or parts of images into entirely new compounds or ideas. Leonardo’s paragone of the early 1490s then forcefully argues that the painter was superior to the poet, because sight was by far greater than all other mental capacities. In other words, rather than favoring “the mind’s eye” Leonardo asserts that “the [poet’s] imagination cannot see with such excellence as the eye.” To summarize, Leonardo saw drawing as a most essential tool in capturing the magnificence of sight he references. To some degree this explains why we think of Leonardo as an artist who thought deeply about sight, knowledge and nature. He was fascinated with the eye and the imagination. His notebooks tell us he experimented with the camera obscura and saw the eye as an instrument, in both cases testifying to the tension he saw between seeing and knowing. In other words, it is not surprising to find he defends the painter against the poet and the image against the word. Thus when a scientist (Semir Zeki, for example) singles out artists in a particular tradition, (like Michelangelo, for example) it is not surprising to find that he adopts the kind of arguments that represent his sample. In Zeki’s case and he is not alone in this, we find a psychological argument is presented rather than the kinds of visual interpretations Leonardo was searching for in his expositions. Strangely, despite being a visual scientist and for whatever reason, Zeki’s commentary on art appears less committed to probing relationships between art and the brain than in presenting a particular view that encapsulated in certain valuations that were to define one perspective on good art that was in turn adopted in later aesthetic theories in the West. In this case, he assumes the Italian point of view, not the fashions of the Flemish artists Michelangelo derides. Zeki is not unique in this but rather serves to highlight the degree to which particular philosophical and religious predispositions might be inscribed in a theory proposed in scientific terms, even within a theory that on its surface seems compatible with cognitive neuroscience and consciousness.

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4. Jan van Eyck In reading Leonardo’s praise of painting in reference to the paragone disputes one could imagine oneself reading a disquisition by Jan van Eyck (1390-1441), a Flemish artist. Van Eyck is known for his optical studies and his ability to translate this knowledge into painting. Like other Northern painters, he had a keen interest in the world we see, a factor that no doubt contributed to his investigations of oil paint, a medium that brings a reflective quality to the work. Indeed, with the introduction of oil paint we see a major change in the look of art. For this reason, van Eyck offers a microcosm through which we can begin to more deeply examine the many tensions among historical interpretations of art and begin to focus in on the development of painting. The printing press, generally dated to the mid-fifteenth century, was coming online about a decade after van Eyck died. In light of this painter’s influence on painting technology, he allows us to quickly focus in on the convergence of events that surround the advent of the printing press and elevation of oil painting. From a narrative perspective, van Eyck’s compositions also offer a window onto fifteenth century Flemish life and people. He distinguishes the Northern perspective from the Southern, providing a record of how life was becoming more secularized in the North at this time. Closer inspection also uncovers van Eyck’s capacity to tease out a number of novel paint possibilities that changed painting forever. His success primarily rested on his exceptional understanding of how to use oil to robustly represent light, color, physical forms and sensual qualities. Some say Jan van Eyck’s place in history was assured when early writers on art (Vasari 1967: 106-107; Mander 1994: 54-57) described oil painting as a sudden technical innovation that he discovered after much experimentation. Vasari writes: Giovanni da Bruggia [Jan van Eyck] in Flanders set himself to try different experiments in colors and labored to produce a perfect varnish. Once, when he had completed a picture with extreme care, he varnished it and set it in the sun to dry. The picture cracked deplorably. He decided that what he needed was a varnish that would dry in the shade and quickly. He finally made a varnish of linseed oil boiled with other mixtures. He mixed this with his colors and found them more easily blended than was possible with tempera. Giovanni began a great number of paintings and, as he worked, his skill increased. The fame of Giovanni da Bruggia’s invention spread all over Flanders and

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Carel van Mander (1548-1606), on the other hand, relates that: [Joannes], a wise, learned man, very inventive and ingenious in various aspects of art; he investigated numerous kinds of paint and to that end practiced alchemy and distillation. He got so far as to succeed in varnishing his egg or glue paint with a varnish made of various oils which pleased the public very much as it gave the work a clear, brilliant shine. In Italy many had searched for this secret in vain . . . The year that Joannes invented oil paint was 1410, as far as I can discover and ascertain. In this Vasari or his printer erred by describing this invention as having taken place a hundred years later. (van Mander 1994: 57-58)

Extensive analysis has now decisively established that both of these chroniclers overstated the case. Many painters were experimenting with oils, even as far back as the 8th century (Dunkerton et al 1991). What van Eyck and other Netherlandish painters did was conceptualize the optical possibility of using systematic glazing to make a painted surface look more realistic. Still, and despite the evidence that clearly documents the invention of oil painting, it was a discovery that took place over a long period of time; research can hardly quantify why people continue to be drawn to agree with the attribution of priority to van Eyck. Indeed his paintings are often introduced in books with the statement that in viewing them one can see why van Eyck had long been credited with the invention of the oil paint technology. This attribution is then convincingly explained by looking closely at his work and at descriptions of van Eyck’s virtuosity. Erwin Panofsky, the eminent art historian, has noted in Early Netherlandish Painting, the tendency to credit van Eyck with the invention of oil paint has a logic to it. Van Eyck knew ways to make oil paint behave that no one had displayed previously. His experimentation coupled with what we know of van Eyck’s method suggests that (like the early Greeks) he forged a path to something novel through an active process of cognitively working within the context of his experience trying new avenues as his experimental process allowed him to sense further possibilities. His products support this, suggesting he brought a focused and coordinated hand, eye and brain relationship to each task.

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Viewing the actual work we can visually verify Panofsky’s statement that van Eyck allowed his eye to operate as both a microscope and a telescope, and see that the beholder’s eye is compelled to oscillate between a position reasonably far from the picture and many positions very close to it (Panofsky 1953: 1:182). Engaging with the work allows us to marvel at this master’s craft, his attention to detail, his ability to render delicate texture, light reflections and refractions, his skill in representing physical forms and how van Eyck approached the representational goals of his time. A small painting, The Man in a Red Turban, is perhaps the best work through which to envisage van Eyck, the painter. This is because portraiture, perhaps more than any other genre of painting fulfilled the chief aim of early Netherlandish artists: to render precisely the tangible reality of the visible world. Van Eyck’s portraits successfully fulfilled this criterion. His success in this genre attests to his keen “eye’, his mental capacity, his craft and the extraordinary transitions of his time. More specifically, when we gaze at the Man in a Red Turban, superficially the panel shows a man with deep penetrating eyes and documents van Eyck’s exceptional painting skills. Since the sitter’s gaze is the gaze an artist would use when painting a selfportrait, many have suggested that this Man in a Red Turban has his eyes directed toward his own reflection in a mirror and, as such, is Jan van Eyck’s self-portrait. This conclusion is strengthened by the painted inscription, which appears to be chiseled onto the bottom of the wood frame and states “Jan van Eyck made me.”41 The intense eyes, however, are often seen to be more of a deciding factor than the inscription, for the eyes are said to convey what the eyes of a painter look like. In this case, the eyes of a painter are defined as eyes capable of piercing through surfaces and translating the many nuances we see into a rich replication of reality. It is a compelling idea to call the Man in a Red Turban a selfportrait for another reason directly related to the penetrating eyes captured in this work. The eyes speak cogently to the degree to which Jan van Eyck’s “eye” aided a descriptive talent many claim none have surpassed in the history of Netherlandish portraiture. Still, while van Eyck no doubt depended on his eyes, a large part of his skill in capturing faces also resulted from his exceptional understanding of the 41 The National Gallery, London notes that the painting is inscribed, signed and dated: on the original frame, top: A_C . IXH . XAN. [ALS ICH CAN; As I can] bottom:. JO[ANN]ES . DE. EYCK . ME . FECIT. AN[N]O . MCCCC . 33. 2. OCTOBRIS. [Jan van Eyck made me on 21 October 1433.

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unique qualities of oil paint so well documented by commentators. He used a subtle blending of glazes to give the meticulous attention needed to achieve the verisimilitude that was required for a portrait (Ainsworth and Christiansen 1998: 139-145). This glazing, which illustrates what the perfection of the oil paint technique added to the painter’s toolbox, brought the extraordinarily robust quality to this panel and all of van Eyck’s work. Yet, while each painted surface has an exceptional look, more exceptional was that van Eyck conceptualized how to bind oil and pigment in ways no one previously had. His paint provided a technical solution that allowed his brushstrokes to bring a life-like vividness to physical forms. It was an insight that changed the direction of painting. Overall it was, of course, only after van Eyck perfected this new technology that it enlarged the representational vocabulary all painters used. The leaps we attribute to van Eyck were a part of a confluence of events that led people like van Mander and Vasari to conclude van Eyck was not merely a technician but the inventor of the oil paint technology. Essentially this conclusion reflects that van Eyck’s “eye,” his attention to detail and color relationships, his patience in application and the rich quality of his descriptive product could not simply be reduced to van Eyck’s knowledge of well-known painting techniques. Even the subsequent evidence that shows the invention of oil paint was actually the result of the efforts of many painters has not diminished van Eyck’s reputation. While the idea of a singular invention has been tempered, few will dispute that an exceptional visual quality separates van Eyck’s skill from that of his peers (and some would add many later masters as well). Overall the way oil’s transparency expanded representational possibilities is best seen when looking at his depictions of light. Here we find the most visible examples of what was added to painted surfaces with this new technology. You may recall that in the last chapter I mentioned that egg tempera could not convey light itself. As a result, symbolic notations and additions like gold leaf were used to compensate. Oil bound pigment did not have this limitation. This paint brought a robust vitality, a life-like look to the representation of all objects because it could replicate the various ways light hits an object. On the other hand, addressing the subtlety of accurate representation showed how closely light is related to color and texture visually. Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait illustrates both of these points. If we turn to the Double Portrait and ask what color the brass candleholder is, the answer is that it depends on how the light hits it

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(MacGregor 1997a, 1997b). Looking at a brass chandelier in a room would similarly reveal a medley of colors. The variations of light and shadow all come together to vary the colors we see. All in all the nuances he achieves in his rendition depicts his mastery and allowed him to convincingly convey the fixture’s form and variations. We further see his skill through how he painted the parallel bands on the luster of the brass surface of the candleholder. The composite reveals that the paint is applied in a way that helps delineate the cylindrical shape and, by extension, the color of the object. Here, as in all his work, van Eyck coordinated the object’s color with the diffuse light and a reflective surface in a way that accurately crafts the object. A similar effect is consistently represented in the many panels in which we find jewels. When we look closely we quickly see how the oil paint allowed van Eyck to depict a stone’s mass as well as its sparkling intensity. Likewise, a fabric’s weave, pattern and folds show oil paint’s ability to bring an internal brilliance and coherence to a representation. Again, van Eyck did so in ways that earlier media like egg tempera, colored stones and gilding could not. Painters quickly embraced oil’s capacity to faithfully model because viewers believed they were not simply seeing objects placed in space — but were seeing “real” objects. In addition, painters were enthusiastic about the paint’s ability to represent reflection, multicolored jewels, metals rich with luster, lavishly decorated fabrics and other physical forms. As a result, the oil technology was added to the artist’s repertoire with great enthusiasm. The products are not just beautiful to behold, they also go hand-in-hand with the arguments about mimesis and representation historically prominent in art debate. Even today we are so convinced by the richly vivid illusions we see in these historical representational paintings that we believe they are representing perceived objects, jewels and fabrics. Our sense of this reality is such that we often feel as if our eyes are optically and physically touching “real” jewels, garments, floor coverings and drapery. Three points need to be emphasized here. First, Jan van Eyck was a Flemish artist. Like many Northerners he had an interest in optics, color and detail. These interests reflect van Eyck’s Northern background. Second, his success was so great that Italian artists were eager to learn his techniques. His knowledge of pigments, varnishes and techniques for laying on glazes led the sixteenth century art historian Giorgio Vasari’s to say that artists in “Flanders and Italy and the rest of the world” saw van Eyck’s pictures and “were anxious to learn his method.” Similarly Carel van Mander, a Northern artist and

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writer, spoke of van Eyck’s use of oils as the founding moment of northern art. Third, Italian theories which highlighted metaphysics and history painting have predominated in forming the Western canon. Their concerns were far from the technological feats I am describing here. Nonetheless, one could make the case that part of the reason van Eyck’s work appealed to the Italians was that he did not fail to allude to the formal 3-dimensional mathematically derived perspectival system so defining of Italian painting. If we look closely at the exquisitely crafted panels of The Ghent Altarpiece or The Arnolfini Double Portrait we find indications of his skill in negotiating the formal possibilities geometrically (although he deviated from geometric modeling as well, no doubt due to his knowledge of paint, light and optics). Thus, when comparing van Eyck’s depictions with those of his contemporaries we see that it was not just that the oil technology altered paintings per se. It also allowed physical tokens to be removed from paintings. For example, an artist was able to depict jewels with all of their sparking reflections rather than exhibiting them using colored glass that was added to a piece of art in order to simulate the stones, a difference the Ghent Altarpiece shows well. Hands, too, are exquisitely characterized. Here again the breathtaking effects are derived from the way oil allows detail and subtlety to render the physical form with incredible accuracy. One exceptional rendition is the emperor’s hand in the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece. The figure holds a wand van Eyck so gracefully executed that the grasp, complete with subtle shadowing, compels us to ask what we mean when we speak of illusion and reality in art? The innovation that allowed van Eyck to create the illusion of reality was not possible with earlier media. If abstract ideas are deemed superior, how can we explain why were all so taken with the technological power of van Eyck’s oil painting, so novel when he introduced it? The splendor of his large and small pieces elevates the complexity of this question. Dedicated on May 6, 1432 in the Church of Saint John, Ghent (now the Cathedral of Saint Bavo), the Ghent Altarpiece is a room size polytych. The work was installed above an altar in a chantry chapel founded by the wealthy patrician Joos Vijd and his wife Elizabeth Borluut. The astonishing realism of the altarpiece rests not only in the fidelity with which figures, plants and animals are represented in a convincing space, but also in its ability to forge a sense of continuity between the pictorial and the real world. On the exterior, the frames between the painted panels of the Annunciation scene appear to cast shadows into the Virgin’s chamber, in accordance

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with the actual direction of light in the Vijd Chapel. On the lower level, the technique of grisaille42 is used to depict fictive statues of the two Saints John, possibly as a painterly challenge to the longestablished convention of sculpted retables (an altarpiece, decorated with painting or sculpture which stands at the back of an altar). More astonishing still are the near-life-size nudes of Adam and Eve on the interior, who appear to project out of the depths of their niches into real space. 5. Van Eyck’s Narrative The perfection of the smaller Arnolfini Double Portrait (1434) helps frame the questions posed above in terms of van Eyck’s time and our own. Panofsky asserts this painting achieves the concordance of form, space, light and color so effectively that even van Eyck was never able to surpass it. These pictorial elements offer a reference point for the fifteenth century and a formal example of how one artist, van Eyck, adeptly used paint to achieve a representational concord. In other words, we can also decode this poignant fifteenth century narrative from our twentieth century perspective. Turning first to the basic composition, we see two smartly dressed figures standing full length in a comfortably furnished interior, a room suffused with a warm dim light. The couple, said to be Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Jeanne Cenami, provide a central symmetry to the piece that is reinforced by how Arnolfini is holding his wife’s hand while raising his right hand in a gesture of solemn affirmation. The vertical created by their position is accentuated by how the chandelier and the mirror on the wall line up between them. The terrier in the center of the foreground further unifies the pair, despite the fact that they are not looking at one another. While this arrangement appears to be quite static, looking critically reveals a great deal of complexity, leading Panofsky to conclude in his now classic interpretation of this piece that we cannot classify the painting as a “portrait” or as a “religious” composition per se. We do, however, know the painting is a prochronistic masterpiece.

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Grisaille is a painting technique that begins by using black and white to create various shades of gray and gray washes. After creating the “colorless painting,” which offers strong contrasts and a three-dimensional look, the painting is colorized with layers of transparent oil colors. By applying color over the gray toned underpainting, the artist can create rich, luminous effects of radiant light and translucent shadows.

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Prochronistic actually means something that speaks of its time and speaks of the future as well and there are several prochronistic elements worthy of mention. One is that the painting can be said to be representing a canon law of marriage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The lone candle burning in the chandelier emphasizes the solemnity of the marital oath, for it does not seem to be serving any practical purpose in this scene, which was staged in broad daylight. The ideas that what we see includes the performance of an oath is quite plausible since the law was that a marriage oath included the joining of hands and, on the part of the groom, the raising of his forearm. Finally, the painting’s function as a marriage certificate is reiterated by the artist’s signature, which shows he was there as a witness. Not only do the words “Jan van Eyck was here” (Johannes de Eyck fuit hic) state his presence, we also see a figure believed to be the artist in the mirror on the wall behind the couple. Panofsky’s suggestion that the Double Portrait is a marriage portrait of personal consent is a position other critics now challenge. Some point out that recent infrared photographs show van Eyck altered this hand to make it less upright. To be sure, this might indicate, as Panofsky suggests, that van Eyck was trying to make an important and specific gesture more exact. However, we could also say van Eyck was simply moving the hand to various positions in order to determine how to make it less distracting (Dunkerton et al 1991). Likewise the image, which shows van Eyck entering the room in the company of another gentleman who many interpret as a second witness, might simply be a formal statement, one recording van Eyck’s ability to render surface detail and reflections on surfaces. Additionally, to further confuse the debates, Seidel has argued that the portrait supplements a public ceremony, while Hall believes it records a betrothal, rather than serving as a marriage certificate. Accepting any of these arguments as the definitive one does not diminish the prochronistic nature of the painting. In other words, isolating the specific circumstance the painting depicts or why van Eyck painted particular features as he did are not scientific questions. To be sure, we know that the painting is set in the fifteenth century and thus speaks of that time. Still a definitive explanation of the narrative does not account for why the painting also “represents” future possibilities that were not yet concretely etched into the cultural story at this time. For example, we can now say that the painting represents that the borderline between “portraiture” and “narrative” and between “profane” and “sacred” art was beginning to

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be abolished in the fifteenth century. It was apparent then, when painted details began to change subtly. Harbison (1991) notes in Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism that the Arnolfini Double Portrait, like all of van Eyck’s work is an historical image and our analysis speaks of our relationship with the historical image. It includes how artistic dialogue was intertwined with social and cultural concerns generally. We, as later observers can see the entire trajectory. We can re-construct the earlier methods of observation, representation and historical convention. Through this reconstructive process we can see how paintings subtly joined personal, religious, scientific and social elements in an earlier time. Looking behind the superficial illustration we can then see the complexity of human life in the fifteenth century and how our own vantage point differs from the earlier one. Our distance also allows us to see how the images depict rich narratives, conveying both the seen and unseen. These narratives document that the real and the illusory, the public and the private, the sacred and the secular overlapped and were beginning to become indistinguishable. These are qualitative additions to theory, however. 6. Vision, Narrative and Theory When distinguishing qualitative and quantitative concerns it is useful to continually ask where one stands. Van Eyck, as shown above, offers a window onto the fifteenth century. His work also offers a segment of a debate still in evidence today. When we compare experiments with the cameral obscura, photography and visual representation with predispositions that art comes to us through “the mind’s eye” we are resurrecting trains of thought that have older strains. In terms of history, particularly European history, the complexity of the issues is further illuminated if we add in the work of scientific figures. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), for example, brings Leonardo to mind, concluding that sight is like a picture (“ut pictura, ita viscio”). This difference between “as is painting so is poetry” (ut pictura poesis) and “sight is like a picture” is accentuated in the eighteenth century and continues to this day. Kepler’s conclusion came about through his studies of vision and the eye. Tycho Brahe was so impressed by Kepler’s knowledge of astronomy and skill in mathematics that he invited Kepler to join his research staff in the observatory at Benatek (now Bentky and Jazerou), outside Prague. After Brahe’s death Kepler gained access to Brahe’s incomparable collection of naked-eye astronomical

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observations over decades. Kepler felt that before he could use the results he needed to solve the problem of atmospheric refraction. He asked: how is a ray of light, coming from a distant heavenly body located in the less dense regions of outer space, deflected when it enters the denser atmosphere surrounding the Earth? His result, published in his 1604 Paralipomena included an analysis of the process of vision that provided the foundation for all of the advances in understanding the structure and function of the human eye. Kepler wrote that every point on a luminous body in the field of vision emits rays of light in all directions, but that only those rays can enter the eye that impinge on the pupil, which functions as a diaphragm. He stated that the rays emanating from a single luminous point form a cone, the circular base of which is in the pupil. All of the rays are then refracted within the normal eye to meet again at a single point on the retina, identified by Kepler as the sensitive receptor of the eye. If the eye is not normal, the second short interior cone comes to a point not on the retina but in front of it or behind it, causing blurred vision. All in all, the important point is that no prevailing theory of art, art theory, or art practice holds historically. What we can say is that the Western tradition has taught us to prize descriptive representation in every medium. We can also trace the theoretical elevation of art in the Renaissance that built a theoretical perspective within this tradition. Once established as a liberal art, the tradition was consolidated with the introduction of academies. These institutions, so maligned in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, initially allowed artists to establish themselves as professionals. By the end of the seventeenth century these venues flourished throughout Europe. Indeed, modernism made us connoisseurs of stylization and invention in part as a reaction to some of the flaws within the academy. The Enlightenment itself is the term generally used to speak of a gradual transformation that took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Art, like all other fields, was affected. Theoretical writings map further debates on whether painting or poetry was supreme. Debates pitting the universal against the contemporary pluralistic fashions are first etched out in this time, where we can also locate the invention of aesthetics. Alexander Baumgarten’s (1714-1762) two-volume publication of Aesthetica (1750-1758) defines the parameters of the field. Although others had treated the topic, Baumgarten advanced the discussion of topics such as art and beauty in a way that sets them off from the rest of philosophy. His theory emphasized feeling and concentrated much

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attention on the creative act. It is also said that Immanuel Kant (17241804) used Baumgarten’s Metaphysica (1766) in his own metaphysics course and that this book influenced Kant’s doctrine of sensibility as well. Although it could be argued that Kant’s influence on art history and visual art is peripheral, many have cited Kant’s ideas in building and/or explaining their work (e.g., Clement Greenberg,43 Wölfflin and Panofsky). Indeed, according to Tobin Siebers, we cannot discover “a single defense of art on ideological grounds that does not owe a substantial debt to Kant.” (Siebers 1998: 34). Therefore, as Cheetham writes, (2001) Kant’s legacy in art history and visual arts extends well beyond the themes of the Critique of Judgment, (1790), the book in which he speaks extensively about art and aesthetics. Kant’s influence, I would argue, has been greater than the literature often acknowledges. Gombrich, for example, only mentions his thought in passing, despite his influence on eighteenth century thought overall. Or, as Cheetham points out, Gombrich invokes Kant’s “stern and frightening doctrine that nobody and nothing can relieve us of the burden of moral responsibility for our judgment” as an antidote to the “theophany” that Hegal purportedly saw in history. On the other hand, in “The Literature of Art” Gombrich omits any reference to Kant or any philosophical writer (Cheetham 2001). More obvious are the ways Kant propelled the reshaping of science and philosophy, which in turn shifted the parameters in theory manipulation, methodology, art criticism and ideas about art practice as well. His subtle, constant and cumulative influence defies efforts to simply place him within the late eighteenth century. Kant, termed the Father of modern thought by some, probably saw little art during his spectacularly uneventful life. This might explain why he gave preeminence to drawing over color in art (Rosenblum 1967). Born, in Koenigsburg, Germany, he lived, worked and died there. We not only know that he never ventured far from his home base, it is also said that his daily schedule was so regimented that the people of the town would set their watches by him. Having 43

In a March 1998 Art Forum review Arthur Danto quotes Greenberg. He writes, “Greenberg saw Modernism as a totality, sufficiently discontinuous with what came before to require a special account and he was systematic enough to realize that “almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture" had to be explained with reference to the same factors. This he credited to an ascent to a level of critical selfconsciousness: “I identify modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant.” (Danto 1998)

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never left home, Kant formed his views of the world through travel manuals, which in this pre-photographic age were bereft of the glossy color reproductions that allow us to easily envision what we will find in other parts of the world before our visit. Without direct, first-hand knowledge of art and little exposure to reproductions, it is clear he was only in a position to visit with art in his mind. Perhaps it is not surprising, given this, that he could only judge art and the artist from the outside. His overall project was not art so much as to define the scope and limitations of reason. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), for example, he argues that although we can assume the existence of the external world, we can only know things as they exist for us and not as they are in themselves. This argument rests upon his idea that all knowledge comes to us through sense experience and data provided by the senses is shaped according to a priori qualities of mind. Thus what we experience is of subjective origin and apparently doubly so when Kant reflects on art. The Critique of Practical Philosophy (1788) extends his thought to the realm of moral life and defines the categorical imperative. This idea is that one should act always according to that principle by which you can, at the same time, will that it be universal law. This was followed by the Critique of Judgment (1790), which contains a section on aesthetic judgment. Here he engages with the idea of beauty, ultimately distinguishing beauty from the sublime. The key point here is that beauty is a distinct and specific thing, as distinguished from the sublime, which does not reside in nature. 7. Conclusion Kant in effect extends Plato’s ambivalence toward art through his re-structuring of knowledge relationships. One of the most salient differences between these two thinkers, I would argue, is their placement of beauty. Kant, in distinguishing the sublime from the beautiful, characterizes real art as impure and elevates the spiritual resonance of art to a plane quite separate from common life. It certainly was in his. This is a mirror image of Plato’s view that art represented the baser elements rather than the ideal. As noted earlier, Neo-Platonism altered the original Platonic view of art and came to define the view we nonetheless associate with Plato.

Chapter 7 The Nineteenth Century: Painting, Photography and Vision Science A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feeling and picturesque imaginings. William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature

In the nineteenth century, as noted in the first chapter, William Whewell proposed the term “scientist” as an analogue to “artist.” To reiterate, as the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth century, scientific empiricism was establishing itself in a way that suggested a need to distinguish the data-driven methodologies from the larger purview of natural philosophy. Within this context, Whewell proposed that just as musicians, painters and poets are termed “artists,” the culture could term mathematicians, physicists and naturalists “scientists.” Yet, even within this parallelism we can continue to ferret out much experimental convergence. As new inventions emerge, artists continue to work with scientists in refining ideas about vision, representation and visuality. 1. Exploring Vision and the Stereogram Photography illustrates trends and fashions. Easily seen in terms of nature, representation and mimesis, dominant ideas in interpretations of art, vision and images that have defined much of Western thought since the time of Plato, we often lose sight of it as a nineteenth century innovation, one that contributed to the debates of that time. The systemic interface fostered innovative, collaborative work in vision research, allowing artists and scientists to forge new collaborations that led to (among others things) the development of vision science, improvements in painting technologies, the invention of photography, the formulation of non-Euclidean mathematics and the discovery of the X-ray at the end of the century.

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For example, visual science as known today began to take form in 1838, when Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) provided the empirical grounds for rejecting the then prevalent notions of binocular combination, or how we see (Wade 1983). This work on binocularity was presented to the Royal Society in London by using paired outlines of the same geometrical figures, as the drawings would be seen by either eye respectively (see Figure 1). One point Wheatstone was trying to convey is easy to perceive if you close one eye and extend a finger so that it is pointing at a specific spot. Now, without moving your finger, open that eye and close the other eye. As you can see, your finger is no longer pointing at the same spot. The Wheatstone demonstration made this point in quite another way. When doing so he additionally explained that we fuse what our two eyes see. To convey this Wheatstone used a stereoscope he had

Figure 1: These paired drawings are similar to the couplings presented by Wheatstone in his 1838 demonstration of binocular vision.

invented specifically for this purpose. The instrument precisely superimposed the paired drawings on either side using a combination of lenses and mirrors specifically designed to show that our two eyes merge the two slightly different images we perceive into a singular form. Wheatstone was able to convey the fusion accurately because the stereoscope’s design was based on measurable distances between our eyes. This means the instrument was able to clearly accommodate for the fact that we normally converge two perceptions when we see, although we think we see one image with both of our eyes. The noteworthy feature, indeed the element that made the instrument most exciting scientifically, was the instrument’s capacity to convincingly demonstrate how the two slightly different images formed on the retina of each eye are due to each eye’s different position in space.

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More concisely, since Wheatstone’s demonstration produced what appeared to be a 3-dimensional form to the viewer, he was able to experientially convey that the fused result we see is neither a flat image nor an exact counterpart of a physical object as the object is extended into space — in this case an actual cube. Instead, two slightly different visual experiences are merged to appear as a whole and the singular whole has a quality that differs from the perspectival depth of a singular form drawn on a flat surface. Wheatstone’s own words best explain the value of these paired images and what they showed regarding the hitherto unobserved phenomena of binocular vision: For the purposes of illustration I have employed only outline figures, for had either shading or coloring been introduced it might be supposed that the effect was wholly or in part due to these circumstances, whereas by leaving them out of consideration no room is left to doubt that the entire effect of relief is owing to the simultaneous perception of the two monocular projections, one on each retina. But if it be required to obtain the most faithful resemblances of real objects, shadowing and coloring may properly be employed to heighten the effects. Careful attention would enable an artist to draw and paint the two component pictures, so as to present to the mind of the observer . . . perfect identity with the object represented. (Wade 1983: 72)

In summary, with the stereoscope Wheatstone (1) clarified how we see, (2) described that paired images can appear as one image to a viewer, (3) conveyed that two correctly spaced flat images can appear to have a 3-dimensional quality, and, finally, (4) demonstrated that the way we perceive the world does not correspond to the kind of one point linear perspective artists have presented since the Renaissance. (In Renaissance perspective the sense of depth is technically created using vanishing points that are constructed using a one-eyed or monocular vantage point.) A stereogram, the name now given to this kind of pairing, has an exceptionally robust, 3-dimensional quality that comes about due to how the eyes are superimposing the slightly different images on the left and right. Side-by-side photographs have the capacity to demonstrate binocularity more effectively than line drawings due to the camera’s ability to record complex vantage points without including incorrect perceptual information. The 3-dimensional quality of this visual superimposition is precisely what Wheatstone demonstrated using the stereoscope and paired outline drawings. In

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other words, the photographs demonstrated binocularity more effectively than the line drawings due to the camera’s ability to record complex vantage points. A more robust vantage point comes to mind when we find that today Wheatstone’s work in vision and perception is often linked with the work of his colleague Sir David Brewster (1781-1868). Although the men were contemporaries and shared an interest in visual science, their rivalry becomes clear when reading their correspondence, recorded debates and scientific writings (Wade 1983). Both Brewster and Wheatstone, nonetheless, agreed the camera could aid empirical research. As a result, both men worked closely with early photographic pioneers and eventually the fruits of these collaborations entered the culture as a whole. Indeed one obvious outcome was the new ways the camera could depict the physical world and how its capacity to quickly reproduce complex scenes expanded understanding of binocularity, as well as how we see in general. Less obvious is the way in which the technology stimulated photographic artistry. 2. Photography The camera’s accuracy and ability to render quickly (even with all of the camera’s initial pictorial limitations!) served two purposes. On the one hand, it could permit a scientist to put aside the tedium of making precise pairs of perspective drawings — with all of their possible errors — when studying binocularity. On the other hand, it could allow studies to consider more complex images and visual relationships. The clear advantages were welcome additions to the original hand-drawn stereoscopic line drawings. Moreover, once Brewster invented the two-lensed binocular camera and an easy to use stereoscope (in the 1840s) it became possible to fully appreciate how the stereoscopic experience differed from looking at flat images contrived to picture the world. But let me emphasize that photography was not only intriguing because of the ways it aided scientific inquiry. Close investigation also shows that many nineteenth century photographs contain the formal, aesthetic and visual qualities generally associated with modernism and thus looking closely suggests we must consider how to revise the linear chronologies that are used to describe photography and modernism, an area I will consider momentarily. Equally important is that when we combine the

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methods and practices that crossed domains we discover the degree to which new kinds of information circulated among several disciplines. Two areas of interface are particularly noteworthy. First, the literature shows that artists and scientists independently invented photographic processes and worked collaboratively as well. The primary French contributors were artists (Nicéphore Niepce and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre), while the primary English inventor (William Henry Fox Talbot) was trained in several sciences. Second, the photographic processes, like the stereogram and stereoscope, were invented in the 1830s. Thus, photography and the scientific advancements connected with binocularity coincided chronologically. Thus they are logically paired contextually. Each innovation also enlarged our information base in a different way and these enlargements interfaced. In summary, the invention of visual tools that were used by both artists and scientists indicates that both artistic and scientific inventions reached into the community as a whole. How these tools touched each domain and crossed domains needs to be pursued if we are to speak directly of how focused artistic and scientific perceptions differ from casual human perceptions. This is particularly evident when we compare how a superficial perception differs from the kind of active viewing a practitioner uses when producing innovative work. The key point here is that the innovations operated on several levels and, as a result, impacted the nineteenth century community in multiple ways. More specifically, while some stereograms advanced scientific investigations, many were conceived for entertainment or to simply record the world. Likewise, while the public frequently saw photographs as a form of entertainment, we can also find examples of photographic stereograms that clearly demonstrate that many of the new practitioners were artists, interested in subtle, visual, aesthetic statements. Photography, in fact, was explored from every angle. At about the same time Wheatstone presented his work with vision and the stereoscope, several photographic processes were discovered and quickly combined with the stereoscopic technology. Interest in these photographic stereograms was propelled by the entry of hand-held stereoscopes as well as stereo cameras that were designed to mechanically register two slightly different images; the two lenses acting like two eyes. Giving the convergence in time of these discoveries it is no coincidence that stereo images are the most frequently cited examples of the confluence of artistic, technological and scientific influences in the nineteenth-century. Within this

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framework, stereo enthusiasts emerged who were in awe of how a three-dimensional quality arose when fusing the stereograms. Settings quickly emerged to fulfill this cultural need. Theaters, seaside locations and marketing techniques that urged attendance have led to the equation of the stereograms with popular culture. Often overlooked in the way this story is told is that scientists who specialized in vision and related topics were drawn to (and continue to explore) the way the new technologies can rapidly produce complex images. These technological products allow them to do experiments without them having to be as concerned about the rendering inaccuracies that are likely to occur in a drawing or painting. Thus, as scientists pursued their studies of binocularity in the laboratory, home parlors and entertainment centers served as the venue in which popular culture marveled at the new ways of seeing presented by the wondrous devices. 3. Artistic Photography Carleton Watkins, for example, worked with a stereo camera that gave him several options. His artistry is particularly apparent when we look at his breathtaking photographic recordings of California’s natural beauty. Watkins, who was a practiced and technologically astute photographer, cultivated a subtlety frequently found in the work of those who pursued the artistic possibilities of photography. In some of Watkins’ best photographs, for example his stereogram entitled, “Inverted in the Tide Stand the Grey Rocks,” we find the stereo camera registers two slightly different images, the two lenses acting like two eyes. These side-by-side photographs, like his singular prints, reveal an aesthetic eye at work. Moreover, despite being produced as commercial products, both the singular and paired views demonstrate the exquisite possibilities photography offered. Maria Morris Hambourg, Consulting Curator of Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, explains Watkins’ aesthetic as follows: In landscape, as in human life, meaning lies less in objects than in relations, the links that tie specific incidents and entities together as an event or a place. In grasping myriad related connections and recording them photographically, Watkins created an intelligible world that maps and illustrates mental activity, mimicking the skeins of meaning our perceptions generate. His photographs awaken us to the exquisite pleasure of active seeing, inducing that conscious visual alertness we experience when viewing

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landscapes by Cézanne, for example. Only here the artist’s mental calculations are not laid down in painted strokes. They merge diaphanously with the trees and dissolve on the surface of the objective world.

She continues: Looking at the photograph, we think we see the true structure of nature, its orderly scaffolding and superb textures merely disclosed; it takes real imaginative effort to recognize that no things in the picture nor the relations between them were selfevident. Everything — the slant of a shadow on fresh clapboards, the depth of the darkness in cracks in pine bark, the silkiness of slightly shimmering water — is the delicate trace of the artist’s considered attention. (Hambourg 1999: 16)

Hambourg’s description of Watkins’ work speaks to how his vision of the landscape brings it to life with a brilliance that defies the idea of it being merely a mechanical representation or “just a landscape.” Others have placed this kind of artistry in a larger context. Crary, for example, proposes that we understand both nineteenth century photography and the avant-garde art of that century as overlapping components of a single social surface on which the modernization of “vision” was everywhere taking place (see Crary 1992). This is to say that the developments in optics and vision, like photography and the emergence of modernist painting, can be seen as part of a larger, more fundamental transformation occurring within Western culture. Watkins also offers a contrast to many prominent photographers who, by the middle of the nineteenth century, were producing both singular and stereo photographs. Julia Margaret Cameron, for example, benefited through adopting a quite different creative approach. She deliberately avoided the perfect resolution and minute details that glass negatives permitted opting instead for carefully directed light, soft focus and long exposures (counted in minutes when others did all they could to reduce exposure to a matter of seconds.) (Daniel 1999). All of these elements explain why her many prints are extraordinary. They also demonstrate her tremendous capacity to bring a measure of life-like vitality to her portraits. This quality is easily seen in some of her most famous portraits (e.g., those of Sir John Herschel 44 and Lord Tennyson).

44

This brief overview hardly does justice to the enthusiasm for photography and the many who contributed to its development. Sir John Herschel, for example, took

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Finally, surveying the spectrum reveals that photography is too narrowly characterized when defined in terms of stereo images and prints per se, just as it is too narrowly characterized when defined as a nineteenth-century technology that offered a means to render permanent images of nature, which previously had only been stabilized using the hand and eye. Indeed, reviewing the documents produced at this time demonstrates the degree to which the term photography is itself misleading when talking about the mechanically fixed images of the nineteenth century. The photographic diversity itself shows the range of technical and subtle perceptual differences of the early prints. The images also pinpoint intersections between artists and scientists, a broad range of aesthetic qualities, a variety of imaginative ideas and photographic responses to the camera’s capacity to record the physical world. Whether (or not) the camera was a witness to the “true reality”, its story was developed alongside the scientific research and in congruence with scientific investigations. One example is the clear, crisp daguerreotypes, which grew out of Joseph Nicéphore de Niepce’s 1827 pictures produced on bitumen. After some collaboration with Niepce, in January 1839 Louis Daguerre displayed his “Daguerreotypes” — pictures on silver plates — to the French Academy of Sciences. Three weeks later Fox Talbot reported his “art of photogenic drawing” to the Royal Society. His quite different process based the prints on paper that had been made light sensitive, rather than bitumen or copper-paper. The glittery, reflective surface of the silver-plated copper sheets used to produce the daguerreotype generally was exquisitely detailed, in marked contrast to the way the water stabilized photogenic drawings produced a soft image bereft of the daguerreotype’s detail. Calotypes, an extension of the photogenic process, were produced when sheets of paper were brushed with salt solution, dried and then brushed with a silver nitrate solution. After being dried again, the paper was used in the camera. Unlike the daguerreotype, the calotype could be used to produce multiple copies of any image. Still, like the photogenic drawing before it, the calotype contained less detail than the competing daguerreotype. The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, for example, worked with glass negatives, developing techniques that allowed her to avoid the perfect resolution and minute details that these negatives permitted. Rather than aiming to achieve exquisitely defined details, the very first photograph to be taken on glass in 1839. In it he shows his father, William’s, famous telescope in Slough, near London.

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she opted instead for carefully directed light, soft focus and long exposures (counted in minutes when others did all they could to reduce exposure to a matter of seconds.). 4. Motion The mystery of the “three-dimensional” stereogram is as titillating as the evolution of motion study. These projects offer a topical aid in conceptualizing the innovative stages that led to film, video and dynamic media projects. These early photographers also employed diverse methods. Working internationally, the well-preserved pieces by Carleton Watkins (American), Roger Fenton (English), Gustave Le Gray (French), Nadar (also French, pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Swedish/British) and others of equal reputation dazzle us with the range of experimentation the new technologies encouraged. Examples explicitly illustrate that photographers needed to think about (and balance) chemistry, light, environmental conditions, optical quality, focal length, aperture, shutter possibilities, distance and perspective. As a whole, motion experiments convey the complexity of the tasks necessary for excellence. We perceive that early innovators might employ a clever camera angle to mask blur or resort to outright fakery to achieve goals. Many early prints highlight common “tricks”, ranging from composite printing to pose figures so that they appear to capture motion to re-touching (to correct eyes, hands, or blur) and even the wholesale re-drawing of large sections of an image followed by a photograph of the re-drawn image. Multiple examples of certain motifs (e.g., the sea and ice-skating) illuminate how the artistic mind approached solving problems using nineteenth-century technologies. Agitated seas, for example, were fascinating subjects due to the difficulty of accurately photographing turbulent waves, which move quickly. Overcast skies associated with rough weather added to the challenge, for they provided less light. The efforts of these photographers struggling against the physical limitations of cameras and chemistry attests to their abiding interest in deriving solutions that would resolve the multifaceted problems posed by the sea. Iceskating, too, was a popular subject. In this case the reflective quality of light reduced exposure time. Faced with the array of stimulating material, it is difficult to highlight one or two works of the first photographers. From an historical perspective, George Washington Wilson’s 1859 “Loch of Park Aberdeenshire–Sunset” is particularly noteworthy. When it hung in the Octagon at the Royal Photographic

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Society the plaque described it as “the world’s first instantaneous photograph.” All of these experiments reference the artist’s mind wordlessly solving visual problems without the need of rhetoric or a pre-defined plan capable of accounting for all of the variables through logical analysis. Balancing unpredictability with experimentation allowed them to develop techniques that allowed photographers to better prepare as they moved forward. Eadweard Muybridge’s (1830-1904) work in California with Leland Stanford is perhaps the best know experimental work employing nineteenth century photography. This body of stopped motion experimentation was conducted on Leland Stanford’s Palo Alto Stock Farm, now the site of the Stanford University campus, (which accounts for the richness of the museum’s Muybridge holdings). The story generally told is that in 1872 the railroad magnate Leland Stanford made a bet with a fellow horseman, contending that all four of a horse’s feet are off the ground simultaneously at some point while galloping. Whether such evidence was needed to settle a bet has not been substantiated. Prodger (2002) believes that the story of the bet is apocryphal. What we do know is that to date there are no primary accounts of this bet ever having taken place. Everything is hearsay and second-hand information. It also seems unlikely that the initial photographs survived. Muybridge claimed that his early shots were precise and others describe them as poorly exposed and inconclusive. Whatever the truth, at some point Muybridge definitively proved that all four feet of a galloping horse were off the ground simultaneously and there is existent photographic evidence of this. Drawn and painted examples that might be reproductions from his early, “muddy” photographs also exist. These support the idea that the early equestrian photographs may have been somewhat unclear and problems were corrected by artistic renditions. For example, it is hypothesized that Thomas Kirby van Zandt’s drawings and paintings were traced from a projected lantern slide. This procedure would have allowed an artist to enhance indistinct portions of a photograph. The celebrated Animal Locomotion collotypes Muybridge produced at the University of Pennsylvania in 1887, together with hand-annotated proofs and glass plates are similarly impressive. One series was taken from an oblique angle, a challenge that Muybridge went to great lengths to achieve. It is surprising to see how much more organic and three-dimensional is the impression conveyed by this small change in viewing angle. In sum, Muybridge’s zoöpraxiscope itself conveys that while

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photography has a mechanical component, it moves our visual imaginations and our aspirations. We then create better tools to open the doors to the possibilities we envisage. Chronophotography is one of the many experimental forms that shows this. The techniques, which grew out of Muybridge’s California motion studies, were fully examined in works by Thomas Eakins, Etienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz and Albert Londe. As a whole, these projects convey how a novel technology encouraged creative minds to step aside from narrative motifs and to play with visual impact instead. Etienne-Jules Marey, for example, shows the degree to which work that was developed using the photographic processes blurred the distinction between the artist and scientist. A French physiologist and chronophotographer, he set up in a small Parisian laboratory where he studied movement using recording instruments and graphs. Using polygraphs and similar recording instruments he succeeded in analyzing diagrammatically the walk of man and of a horse, the flight of birds and insects. Many of the experiments are strikingly artistic. His exquisite and well-executed albumen self-portrait “Self-Portrait Wearing a Turban Made With a Spinning Plate” (c. 1886) has a mandala-like appearance that makes us move with the spinning figure. Indeed, Marcel Duchamp explicitly cites Marey as a source for his painting Nude Descending a Staircase. Viewing the range of imaginative images, we are compelled to repeatedly ask how we can distinguish an artist or scientist from a person who is better defined as an excellent technician. Photographic artifacts, printed materials and devices constantly reinforce the limitations with seeing practitioners in terms of overly discrete categories. Often our answers bring to mind that before the term artist came to the fore, there was little space definitionally between art and craft. Rather, whatever we call these creators, their aspirations bring the inventive mind into focus. For example, looking at a re-built zoöpraxiscope (Muybridge’s first motion-picture projection) reminds us that he introduced in it 1879. His zoöpraxiscope was originally used to demonstrate the correctness of the sequential motion studies, which the machine did by adding motion to the still images. Equally tantalizing is the way our delight in nineteenth century motion studies is enhanced in ways their creators could not have imagined. Contemporary web-based projects, such as the Digital Muybridge,45 pay homage to historical projects while also taking them into the twenty-first century. This group 45

See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bregler/bodies.html

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pursues the analysis and synthesis of human motion from video streams (or photo plate sequences as in Muybridge’s motion studies). The studies focus on articulated full body motions and capture video sequences of people walking, running, dancing and other body gestures. Equally impressive are websites that animate the sequential stills of the nineteenth-century projects. These permit us to appreciate the studies as stills, to perceive their capacity to convey motion when activated and to pair our technological innovations with those that made our advancements possible. Nadar’s twelve-frame self-portraits can be seen cycling online, offering a particularly delightful example of how the old and the new now blend.46 Online examples bring to life Muybridge’s early experiments with Stanford’s horses, content on the zoöpraxiscope and the evolution of his various photographs bring to mind what could and could not be accomplished with the nineteenth century tools. We can also identify exhilarating conceptual differences that relate to innovative developments. A comparison that comes to mind is the pairing of the nineteenth century set of Felix Nadar self-portraits with a contemporary work by Kiki Smith’s (b. 1954); her circular selfportrait, My Blue Lake (1995, Photogravure and lithograph).47 Her marvelous print could not have been conceived with the technologies of Nadar’s time. The twelve small black-and-white frames depict him turning around. In looking at the slightly different poses of the static faces we can assume he shot the back of his head and shoulders, turned by thirty degrees and then shot his image again in a sequential series of poses. Since he proceeded sequentially until he returned to his original position, we can only imagine him producing the work, (much as we see it re-created on the Chronophotographical Projections website). Smith’s contemporary piece, also of the head and shoulders, similarly suggests a 360-degree image. Her work, however, was actually produced in the round with a camera unknown in Nadar’s time. Using a device from the conservation department at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Smith’s print is taken in the round and then exhibited flat. Thus, rather than the representational series Nadar presents, where time is stopped and we must imagine the sequence moving in space, Smith’s rendition resembles some kind of

46 They are posted at the Chronophotographical Projections page: http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima 47 This is easier to see when looking at the image. It is available at http://www.artnet.com/artwork/423911603/_Kiki_Smith_My_Blue_Lake.html

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exotic map of 3-dimensional space translated to a flat, 2-dimensional surface. Work in this area also shows that creativity is a cross-disciplinary modality. Thomas Eakins, a Philadelphia painter, worked with Muybridge and was aided by similar photographic studies when he formulated ideas regarding how to change an image that was in effect frozen in space into something closer to the vital environment in which we live. The French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey similarly showed that photography stimulated creative, visually intriguing prints and fostered information exchange among enthusiasts. When Muybridge confided to Marey his difficulties in studying the flight of birds, Marey invented a “photographic gun” for the purpose. The “gun” had a rifle-like sight and a clock-mechanism so that when the shutter was tripped it made twelve exposures of 1/72nd of a second each to make it easier to examine a bird in flight. No doubt, the chronophotograph was Marey’s most compelling invention. It was visually alluring and produced visual evidence that changed our understanding of Newton’s first law of motion, which states that the direction of an object in motion can only be changed by an external force. Cats (and rabbits) have the ability to twist round while falling and so land on their feet, as Marey’s chronophotograph illustrates. When animated this illustrated experiment is even more surprising. The animated demonstration superbly conveys how, like Muybridges’s zoöpraxiscope, the chronophotograph contributed to empirical motion studies while simultaneously initiating projects that subsequently led to the development of cinematic technologies, video and other art forms. An effort to wedge these visual treats into the narrative story of art invariably diminishes all they offer on their own terms. Rhetorical explanations hardly cover the expansive innovations of the nineteenth century mind. While we can find and identify conceptual trajectories, the photographic revolution reaches beyond the manual techniques of earlier printmaking by incorporating a different subset of knowledge related to chemistry and physics. In terms of art history, photography accompanies the entry of modernity and, with it, the kinds of questions that now define modern art begin to emerge in a way that once again re-configures the visual as well as the image/text relationship. In our image saturated age it often seems that pictorial information has blinded us to how visual information informs our lives, transformed art and distinguishes the pre-photographic world from one in which pictures abound.

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Similarly we are apt to forget that those who are responsible for defining the history of ideas frequently drew conclusions with significantly less visual information than we have today. This led, in large measure, to this century’s sudden realization that techniques and technologies can only be effectively described by written or printed words when demonstrative pictures accompany them (Ivins 1978). Thus while Modern art is a term now used to denote innovative developments in Western painting that date back to the nineteenth century and the advent of modernity, it can also be cast in a larger context. Many see modernization as a continuous and open-ended process in which the culture reaches out to enlarge experience, so characterization is double-edged. In other words, it is important to now add in the degree to which painting, too, reframed its goals and intentions in the nineteenth century. 5. Painting: Cézanne In the mid-eighteenth century we start to see more definitive changes in terms of the practice of painting as well. Paint manufacturing became increasingly a matter of chemical synthesis rather than the grinding of solid pigment and was later transformed into an industry. Initially most retailers did little more than package the ready-made paints from manufacturers 48 (Ball 2001). One major innovation in paint supplies was the collapsible metal tube, invented in 1841 by an American portrait painter named John Rand. The tin tubes replaced the parcels of pigs’ bladder in which oil paints had previously been stored and made paints far less liable to dry out in their packaging. Ball remarks; “This was particularly significant for the Impressionists’ predilection for painting out of doors; Renoir remarked that ‘without paints in tubes, there would have been no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism.’ No Renoir either, one presumes.” (Ball 2001: 179-180). As anyone who has experimented with painting knows, there is a difference between having the tubed paints and knowing how to use them effectively. Indeed, a well-done work of art frequently includes 48

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pigments, as commercial merchandise, tended to be categorized either with imported spices or with drugs (since some artists’ materials also had pharmaceutical uses). Grocers, who also dealt in foods and medications, sold them. This brings to mind that in ancient Greece pigments were called pharmakon.

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more than imaginative yearnings and more than we comprehend immediately. Indeed, for many, the pleasure of learning about the art’s internal complexity adds to the experience of both painting itself and art appreciation. No doubt this, in part, explains why whatever is included in an artist’s wordless expression is apt to be a subject of academic study. For example, Donald Preziosi, an art historian and critical theorist, defines art history as “one of a network of interrelated institutions and professions whose overall function has been to fabricate a historical past that could be placed under systematic observation for use in the present.” (Preziosi 1998: p.13). Acknowledging that there are diverse ways art historians might do this, even given the ways in which scholars might disagree, Preziosi states that the principle aim of all art historical study has been to make artworks more fully legible in and to the present. Whether or not the academics succeed is an open question and has become a larger issue as visual projects extend far beyond the purview of art history. Indeed, so much visual information is a part of our lives today that art history only seems to offer one vantage point from which to comment on the increasing relevance of visual communication. Moreover, in terms of the textual emphasis historically, the introduction and the trajectory that leads out from it have radically altered the landscape. This transfer to visual culture is frequently said to begin with photography, but the history of the rhetorical explanation remains strong even with the photographic tradition. Some artists nonetheless and Paul Cézanne comes to mind, simply defy all attempts to capture the complexity of their expression with words. Earlier I examined the prochronistic aspects of van Eyck’s innovations of the fifteenth century on their own terms, in an effort to introduce how radically oil paint transformed what an artist could present. The reach of his accomplishments is more evident when compared the accomplishments of a later master like Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). This nineteenth century painter, like van Eyck, lived during an era where we find an extensive revision in the human understanding of optics, vision, perception and painting. Both, too, linked their work to a tradition and yet each opened a new door. An intriguing element of Paul Cézanne’s legacy is that while he aligned his work with the classical Renaissance tradition of Western art, his innovative body of work ushered in a decisive break with the standards of that tradition in the twentieth century. Looking at this in terms of Cézanne’s representational system, however, we quickly see an anomaly. The formal content of Cézanne’s paintings no more appears classical than it appears to be like the pluralistic art of the

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twentieth century, although one can relate it to each. Given this and given Cézanne’s allegiance to classicism, his work offers an excellent vantage point for once again seeing historical trajectories influence strategies of visualization and innovation. As discussed, the nineteenth century was a time when views on color, vision and seeing were transformed. Cézanne’s letters and his conversations with Joaquim Gasquet indicate he was aware of the radically revised theories about optics, vision and perception put forth by Brewster, Wheatstone and von Helmholtz. He further brings his own thoughts to the subjects. For example, Gasquet tells us Cézanne explained that: There are two things in a painter: the eye and the brain and they need to help each other, you have to work on their mutual development, but in a painter’s way: on the eye by looking at things through nature; on the brain, by the logic of organized sensations which provides the means of expression . . . The eye must concentrate, grasp the subject and the brain will find a means to express it (Gasquet 1927/1991: 222)

Cézanne’s letters repeatedly indicate that he believed any artistic style governed by fundamental principles of communicative expression was properly signified as classical. We also know he was clearly aware of scientific breakthroughs, although it is difficult to isolate exactly how this knowledge influenced his art. Nonetheless, we can surmise certain influences based on the views of his art. We can surmise that his interest in scientific facts about vision and his turn toward the classical masters of painting was not one that would combine science and art in a way that would emphasize method alone, blind imitation, or simply copying the work of earlier painters. To the contrary, Cézanne believed that artistic success came from solving technical problems and that seeking for solutions should guide the artist as he or she rendered his or her personal sensation. A perfect example of how an artistic solution to a technical problem resulted in exceptional painting would be van Eyck’s recognition of how to effectively bind oil with pigment in a way that allowed him to produce paintings unlike anything ever done earlier. Cézanne, of course, solved the technical problems he encountered in the context of his time and his artistic proclivities. According to Crary, the break with classical models of vision in the early nineteenth century was far more than simply a shift in the appearance of images and art works, or in systems of representational conventions. Instead, it was inseparable from a massive reorganization of knowledge and social practices that modified in myriad ways the productive,

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cognitive and desiring capacities of the human subject (Crary 1992, 1998). Cézanne’s work reflects this environment, despite his isolated life style. His letters suggest his acquaintance with the philosophical and scientific ideas of his time did not tempt him while developing his painting style. He also actively mirrored many others of his time in pursuing interests intended to show how an individual’s perceptual knowledge can deviate from the weight of history, learned formulae and conventional ideas. The resulting art simultaneously reveals how his context was informed by the nineteenth century climate overall and the ways in which he deviates from popular views. For example, many spoke of the value in bringing an “innocent eye” to one’s painting process. John Ruskin, a respected and popular voice, articulated his view in his 1857 book, The Elements of Drawing, writing: “The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a childish perception of [these] flat stains of colour; merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify — as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.” (Smith 1996: 28) Yet Cézanne’s success was founded on an approach quite unlike the innocent eye Ruskin praises. Cézanne used an open, yet practiced eye, a point Gasquet makes when he speaks of how Cézanne exclaimed that “the eye educates itself by contact with nature” (Gasquet 1927: 163). This education is what separated Cézanne’s eye from the “innocent eye,” or the “primitive eye” as generally understood in the nineteenth century. Cézanne’s work further demonstrates that his open yet practiced eye was a part of an active and developmental painting process. Thus while we might adopt Ruskin’s language and refer to Cézanne’s brushstrokes as “stains” on the canvas, they are more than just stains on the canvases. Cézanne’s stains, if we call them that, show how Cézanne first reaches out to capture something vital and vibrant and then expresses what he sees so that it captivates those who view his markings. Cézanne’s work also shows how he used his “open” yet “practiced” eye to aid him as he developed the techniques he needed to solve the problems that arose in translating his vision and sensation onto the flat surface the canvas provided. More important in the context of this discussion is conceptualizing that oil paint, van Eyck’s “technical solution” to his plastic goals, was a familiar technology by Cézanne’s time. In other words, while van Eyck grappled with a virtually unknown medium, nineteenth century painters built on centuries of studio use. Moreover, subsequent innovation changed how they organized tasks when approaching painting. In a world with tubed

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paints and manufactured brushes Cézanne’s solutions to technical problems, like his visual and imagistic decision-making process, were of another order entirely. What must be stressed is that the tubed paints and manufactured brushes artists turned to in the nineteenth century did not take the painter out of the painting process. To the contrary, Cézanne’s letters relate that he was very present in what he did. His letters also relate that his visual decision making process was neither abstract nor simply intuitive, a point affirmed when we look at canvases in various stages of completion and at different periods of his life. The range of completed and incomplete work clearly documents how deliberately this master painter approached his painterly problems. On the one hand, we can identify specific types of problemsolving led him to the recorded solutions we find in the completed works. We can also decipher certain tendencies that defined how he worked. One defining element we can study is the ways he carefully moved his canvases as a whole while building up the painted surface. After looking at many examples we can almost conceptualize what Cézanne meant when he told Gasquet that the eye and the brain need to work together. The unfinished compositions, however, most succinctly explain Cézanne’s technical relationship with his visual logic. They are descriptive sources that reveal him slowly building up the paint and the color relationships. Comparing incomplete and complete compositions establishes how he approached developing the forms in relation to the colors. We can also find many examples illustrating that the harmony within each finished piece emerged as he gradually moved the entire canvas toward completion. As noted, Cézanne had access to tools that freed him from tasks of the early workshop. This allowed him to explore each composition in terms of its own potentials and harmonies with fewer productive tasks. One result is that Cézanne’s deeply studied oil compositions offer a stark contrast to the spontaneous simplicity of Cézanne’s watercolors. Yet with each medium Cézanne consistently shows that his “open” eye slowly comprehended (i.e., learned) how to coordinate seeing with touching, translating what he saw and sensed onto the flat picture plane. In sum, Cézanne systemized particular elements, learned to coordinate what he saw with what his materials could do, learned to push the materials to their limits and found ways to record novel perceptual statements in paint. As a result, Cézanne’s paintings not only convey a studied visual complexity, they also record how he

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manipulated the technologies of his time, the constancy he felt within when gazing at the world he saw and his urge for full expression. Indeed his way of combining constancy with expression cannot be underplayed when reviewing his work. For example, despite the fact that he painted Mont Sainte Victoire over forty times, the constancy he expresses is not visually repetitive. Instead the freshness of each piece shows the degree to which he carefully studied his goals, brought a “new” eye to each day of painting and brought particular intentions to his painting process. 6. Cézanne’s Legacy Documents show that mid-nineteenth century debates regarding whether photography might qualify as an art used the academic model to define fine art. It was a logical choice in an environment where most respected experts chose academic art as representative of what qualified as “art”. Since most academic art acclaimed in the nineteenth century has since been rejected it is not surprising that later analysis of this century have given it a lesser role. But, on balance, we must also acknowledge that this rejection does not frame these earlier times accurately, nor does it capture the full nature of the nineteenth century. Perhaps of greatest importance when speaking of connections among disciplines, we must recall that the past and future somehow are connected within the present but these connections are not clearly defined for us. It is only in retrospect that we formulate our narratives. As Cézanne wrote in a 1905 letter to the art critic Roger Marx: “To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.” Cézanne did just this. The late Clement Greenberg, often considered the critic who first recognized that abstract art was a valid and genuine form of artistic expression explains why painters so unlike Cézanne stylistically held him in such great esteem. Briefly, evaluating Cézanne’s impact Greenberg concludes that Cézanne sought to achieve mass and volume first and deep space as their byproduct. This reflected his desire to “save the key principles of Western painting — its concern for an ample and literal rendition of stereometric space — from the effects of Impressionistic color.” (Greenberg 1961: 50) Thus, according to Greenberg, Cézanne’s approach was one that attempted to connect the Impressionistic method of registering variations of light in a way that would indicate the variations in planar directions of solid surfaces. As a result, Cézanne’s paintings show a kind of pictorial tension that had not been

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seen in the West since Late Roman mosaic art. A noteworthy element that reflects this is that Cézanne appears to have not attempted to fuse the edges of the overlapping little rectangles of pigment that define many canvases. This stereoscopic technique brought depicted form toward the surface, while the modeling and shaping performed by these same rectangles drew it back into illusionistic depth. As Greenberg notes: The Old Masters always took into account the tension between surface and illusion, between the physical facts of the medium and its figurative content — but in their need to conceal art with art, the last thing they wanted was to make an explicit point of this tension. Cézanne, in spite of himself, had been forced to make the tension explicit in his desire to rescue the tradition from — and at the same time with — Impressionistic means (Greenberg 1961: 52)

In sum, it is often noted that Cézanne remarked that he wanted to redo Poussin after nature and “make Impressionism something solid and durable like the Old Masters.” Poussin, one must remember, had pointed out that there are two ways of looking at objects: one is quite simply to see them, the other is to consider them with attention. Cézanne adopted this bias and later painters who admired Cézanne’s work were drawn to how Cézanne transformed this attentive quality into paint. For example, Picasso, who acknowledged his debt to Cézanne and who painted quite unlike Cézanne, explained Cézanne’s special touch by referring to the Poussin comment, saying: “If Cézanne is Cézanne, it’s precisely because of that: when he is before a tree he looks attentively at what he has before his eyes; he looks at it fixedly, like a hunter lining up the animal he wants to kill. If he has a leaf he doesn’t let it go. Having the leaf, he has the branch. And the tree won’t escape him.” (Ashton 1980: 53). Or, as a modern critic wrote, Cézanne painted the “treeness of a tree.” Cézanne is often called the “Father of Modern Art” and cited to speak of a trajectory from Picasso and Matisse to Pollock (and perhaps Gerhard Richter). Indeed, Matisse said “he was the father of us all.”49 When presented as if there was a linear chronology, however, we lose sight of the systemic developments that created the nineteenth century and are evident in subsequent work. More of this becomes apparent when we factor in a number of breakthroughs that

49

Long before Paul Cézanne, John Ruskin termed J.M. Turner (1775-1851) as the “Father of Modern Art.”

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modified spatial, mathematical and physical views. These are related in the following chapters.

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Chapter 8 The Nineteenth Century: Inside Out and Upside Down Dispel from your mind the thought that an understanding of the human body in every aspect of its structure can be given in words; for the more thoroughly you describe, the more you will confuse the mind of the reader and the more you will prevent him from a knowledge of the thing described; it is therefore necessary to draw as well as describe . . . I advise you not to trouble with words unless you are speaking to a blind man. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, Italian Renaissance artist, architect, and engineer

1. Modern Life A. N. Whitehead once made the remarkable observation that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was that of making inventions. But he did not point out that this remarkable invention was based in large measure in that century’s sudden realization that techniques and technologies can only be effectively described by written or printed words when demonstrative pictures accompany them (Ivins, 1978). In our age this seems bizarre in light of the degree to which the pictorial has replaced the word and networked imagery instantly connects all parts of the globe. In the nineteenth century, however, the elevation of images was just as radical within the context of their lives. Indeed, one of the extraordinary circumstances we find unfolding is an environment that needed to integrate not only a wealth of imagery, but also radical revisions of spatial, mathematical and physical assumptions. Jonathan Crary, an art historian tells us that: The nineteenth century saw the steady demolition of Kant’s transcendental standpoint and its synthetic a priori categories, detailed in his first critique . . . Once the philosophical guarantees of any a priori cognitive unity collapsed (or once the possibility of the self-imposing its unity onto the world, in post-Kantian idealism, became untenable), the problem of “reality maintenance” gradually became a function of a contingent and

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Crary’s view has significantly influenced nineteenth century visual art interpretation. After the publication of his Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Crary 1992), the journal Art Forum characterized Crary as the “historianphilosopher of our spectacle lives.” Spectacle culture is a phrase now used to designate a world in which one is an onlooker. It is a perspective very much in line with the story of modern life we associate with the French poet, translator and literary and art critic Charles Baudelaire, who offered an alternative view of the tasks he saw for the modern artist in his 1863 essay “The painter of modern life” (Baudelaire 1986). Here Baudelaire says that any adequate form of modern art had to address not merely the “eternal and immutable” but also the ephemeral and contingent. Many say that this in effect confirmed that art, as an arena, was moving away from the transcendental standpoint associated with Kant’s thought. Baudelaire also presented an extremely hostile view of photography linking the practice with mass taste and asserting that photography had contributed substantially to the destruction of the imagination and true art (Edwards 1999: 83). A tribute to his views is the tendency to sum up the entry of modernity in terms of the idea that the modern artist came to be seen as one who took on the identity of a middle class figure, wandering in the culture of the spectacle, noting down the unstable, trivial and superficial modes of the modern crowd within it’s artificially constructed environments. Many works capture this idea and the environment it expresses. For example, Manet’s 1862 Music in the Tuileries Gardens acknowledges this artist’s friendship with Baudelaire in the painting by placing the poet’s blurred profile behind the woman on the left wearing the blue hat. Retrospectively we can say this kind of notation and other commonalities led later critics to group Manet and Baudelaire with others (such as Balzac) when they characterized art of the nineteenth century. Claiming that compatibilities in the philosophical dispositions of those grouped set the tone and the agenda for what we now term modern art and literature, the characterization seems to have a logical basis. This logic, however, does not adequately define the period as a whole. Even within it’s own scope there are critical problems. While Baudelaire privately admired Manet, although with some reservations, it was Delacroix, the painter of the 1830 piece entitled Liberty Leading the People, who was Baudelaire’s touchstone for

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greatness. In fact, some modern critics have rebuked Baudelaire for not discovering Manet at a time when Baudelaire was in a position to do so. Baudelaire’s position speaks most articulately to another problem inherent in assuming photography freed painting from blindly copying nature, (i.e., the mimesis debate we can date back to the ancient Greeks). This is that the assumptions being introduced overstate the prominence of realistic and naturalistic painting in 1839, when photography was introduced — a point a painting such as Delacroix’s 1830 Liberty Leading the People illustrates. In this political painting the bare-breasted Liberty leads the charge. We also see the bold fighters contrasted with the lifeless dead casualties in the foreground. Like many nineteenth century work it is an idealized narrative not a naturalistic realism. Moreover, when we look at photography in context, as I will do shortly, we quickly see that photography’s nature, contributions and status were intensely debated throughout the nineteenth century. Four points are key here. First, many of these painters developed new techniques, using recently developed technical tools that gave them a freedom earlier artists (van Eyck, for example), did not have. Cézanne’s work, like the many who painted outdoors, explicitly documents a body of work that would have been impossible within a workshop practice where the artist had to regularly mix his colors from scratch. Second, many of the painted compositions differ formally from historical painting and history painting as well. Even those that look spontaneous show that bringing an “innocent eye” to a painting process does not mean the same thing as bringing an “eye” educated by years of work. Cézanne, for example, was not focusing on “spectacle,” as is evident when we review the work he produced over his lifetime. The work instead reveals how he developed ways of applying paint that eventually resolved some of plastic problems of interest to him. One is his use of small dabs of color to move forms toward the surface while having them appear as if they are receding as well. Third, many of these artists were influenced by scientific ideas about light and color as well as technological innovation such as photography. Indeed, many examples of impressionistic-like works that were done early in the nineteenth century, long before Manet and Baudelaire introduced the works and ideas referenced above shows that artists sought for new possibilities even before the trajectory we associate with Manet took form. The paintings done by the German painter Aldoph von Menzel (1815-1905) in the 1840s and 1850s show this well. His most alluring The Artist’s Sister with a Candle (1847) was one of many small,

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spontaneously composed paintings. Unknown while he lived, they are unlike those we associate with this man known as a court painter in his time. Exceptional impressionistic pieces he never showed nonetheless document his concern for the effects of light and the subtle modulations of tone and color. Painted at least twenty years before Manet began to produce the work that is now pointed to as the foundation of modernism and Impressionism, von Menzel’s work, like that of J. M. Turner (1775-1851), who was termed the “Father of Modern Art” by John Ruskin, does not easily fit into the modernist canon. Turner explicitly demonstrates some interest in scientific advances. He knew Michael Faraday and discussed the nature of pigments and the light effects in the sky with him. Some of these conversations might explain how he came to pieces like The Fighting Téméraire completed in 1838, a year before photography was invented and many years before the later nineteenth century Impressionists. Later writers have modeled the introduction of photography in terms of how revolutionary artists like Manet and the Impressionists produced images that challenged academic painting in the nineteenth century (Kosinski 1999). This approach tended to over-emphasize it as a tool of representation and undervalue the experimental arena. Suffice to say here, that while many late nineteenth century painters secretly used photography as an aid to their painting process, the view that their paintings posed a radical challenge to academic painting is misleading and limited. This view fails to convey the existence of the spontaneous work done by people like von Menzel and Turner, who painted before photography and are not easily placed on a modernity timeline that is defined through French painting. Nor does a timeline consider that formal qualities generally associated with modernism were being produced even before “modernism,” so to speak took root. Indeed, the generalized chronology does not reflect a number of innovations that transformed all fields. This view also mitigates the breathtaking extent to which technology influenced the nineteenth century mind. Crary’s Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (1999), a work that more fully locates Crary’s view of the emerging philosophical, social and scientific models of attention, vision and subjectivity in the nineteenth century offers some insight. This later publication concludes that the perceptual overload and fragmentation of the nineteenth century set the stage for contemporary views of attention (and attention deficit). Broadly speaking Suspensions of Perception, although still limited in scope, does relocate the problem

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of aesthetic contemplation within a broader collective encounter with the unstable nature of perception (in psychology, philosophy, neurology, early cinema and photography). This can be loosely dated to the influence of Kant’s thought. Thus Crary is among those who see Kant’s influence as an impetus toward cultural and social fragmentation. To Crary, his contributions provide us with an historical framework for understanding the current social crisis of attention amid the accelerating metamorphoses of our contemporary technological culture (Crary 1999), Others assume Kant opens a door allowing us to equate the art that touches us at the deepest level with the sublime. In my view, the argument one is likely to favor seems to depend on how one critiques the radical rearrangement of ideas and culture we can trace to the nineteenth century. There is also a middle ground, where we can look at innovations that seem to defy former boundaries and characterizations. This is where I would like to turn next. 2. The Discovery of the X-ray The X-ray, yet another nineteenth century discovery, turned all earlier ideas about mimesis and representation inside out. Today we are so accustomed to seeing pictures of bones, brains and arteries in magazines, in movies and on television that it is hard to conceptualize how strange and unexpected these images that made it possible “to see through surfaces” were in the deeply opaque Victorian world of 1896. Indeed, Victorian temperaments were simultaneously shocked and outraged to see pictures of their inner bodies taken right through their clothes (Kevles 1997). The new vision came about a few weeks before Christmas 1895 when Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a couple of smokylooking pictures while working in his laboratory. Although the X-ray was an unexpected discovery, the idea of rays piercing the body had been around for centuries. We can reference the belief that spiritual rays emanated from the body to the outside world in literature and find it portrayed in paintings (by halos around the heads of saints and religious figures). Philosophers incorporated related views. As far back as the thirteenth century the philosopher Roger Bacon had noted that no substrate is so dense that it can prevent rays from passing through. He also pointed out that the walls of a vessel of gold or brass show this when they heat up. (Kevles 1997). But nowhere did artists, scientists, mystics or philosophers suggest that any rays, whether passing from the inside or emerging from the soul out through the skin, could be reproduced in a way that would

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allow the human eye to perceive what is beneath the skin without incision. There was also no indication that images could leave a replicable visual impression on something else, like a shadow on a wall or a permanent imprint on glass or film.50 The incident responsible for the X-ray took place about on November 8th, 1895, when the German scientist Wilhelm Röntgen was conducting experiments in his laboratory on the effects of cathode rays. While doing so, he noticed something that earlier studies had not picked up. While passing current through the cathode ray, rays were given off that passed through every day materials such as wood, paper and aluminum. Röntgen also noticed that a surface he had coated with barium platinocyanide, which was placed outside of the cathode discharge tube, would give off light despite the fact that it was hidden from the light of the discharge. Designated the X-ray because Röntgen did not know what the radiation was, his conclusions after two months of careful investigation of its properties were ground breaking. Briefly, it was only in 1873, when Maxwell published his equations on electricity and magnetism (in the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Maxwell 1955) that people began to conceptualize that visible light was only one kind of electromagnetic wave. What Röntgen showed is that visible light is the only kind of light we are actually able to use to see directly with our eyes — while also offering evidence that we can map (image) the waves outside of the visible portion of the spectrum. Röntgen ascertained that a previously unknown type of radiation had passed through the air and lit up the screen. A chronology of the early days clarifies how extraordinary the initial discovery of the X-ray was and illuminates how eagerly laypeople and scientists alike sought to see the evidence of this new domain with their own eyes. The initial image was seen early in November 1895. After Christmas, Röntgen sent his preliminary report on the X-rays to the Proceedings of the Physical-Medical Society of Würzburg for publication. The article was called “On a New Kind of Rays” and was read before the Würzburg Physical and Medical 50

“What appears to be the only recorded prediction came in a talk delivered to a small group of physicians in Philadelphia in 1872 when the physician James Da Costa satirized the state of medicine by describing a future in which ‘Dr. Magent,’ who is a very accomplished physicist, steps forward: ‘If you will permit me, I will make you transparent.’ And by means of a modified, portable Ruhmkorff coil [a kind of generator] and an instrument with lenses dexterously passed into the stomach, the fair patient is really rendered transparent.” (Kevles 1997: 14)

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Society, 1895.51 The initial paper itself was noteworthy, even putting aside the transformative nature of the research. It included several radiographs and no mathematics. The following offers a glimpse of Röntgen’s line of reasoning: If one considers this observation in connection with others, namely, on the transparency of powders and on the state of the surface not being effective in altering the passage of the X-rays through a body, it leads to the probable conclusion that regular reflection does not exist, but that bodies behave to the X-rays as turbid media to light. Since I have obtained no evidence of refraction at the surface of different media, it seems probable that the X-rays move with the same velocity in all bodies and in a medium which penetrates everything and in which the molecules of bodies are embedded. The molecules obstruct the X-rays, the more effectively as the density of the body concerned is greater.

By January 31, having been translated into English, Röntgen’s description of the rays was published in Science magazine. By February 22, only three months after Röntgen first saw the unexpected image, Electrical World, a popular magazine for amateurs, inventors and engineers announced that enthusiasm for the X-ray was so great that the paraphernalia needed to set up an X-ray of one’s own could not be bought anywhere in Philadelphia. Five years later, in 1901, the Nobel Committee acknowledged the value and scope of Röntgen’s contribution by awarding him the First Nobel Prize in Physics. The surprise element of Röntgen’s image makes the story of Xrays as unique and exceptional as the image itself. X-rays were discovered one year after the world-renowned physicist Albert Michelson stated an idea that mirrored a popular view of the late nineteenth century: While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all of the phenomena which come under our notice. The future truths of Physical Science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals. (in Loevinger 1995: 19)

Röntgen’s work took place a year after Michelson’s remark and the discovery had nothing to do with the sixth place of decimals. 51

Due to the nature of modern technology, the complete text is available at . [Translated by Arthur Stanton, Nature 53, 274 (1896).]

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Unlike many scientific breakthroughs, this one initially involved neither logic nor mathematics, Moreover, it was easily explained without them. The accessible images themselves fully translated his discovery and instantly allowed all to recognize how extraordinary it was. The larger point is that Röntgen did not need to provide an abstract, mathematical or philosophical framework in order for people to comprehend what he had discovered. The shadowy maps of invisible spaces were so explicit that scientists and the public immediately understood the need to re-visit ideas about how and what we see. Each image had a uncanny expository power, and details, while useful in advancing scientific use and technological development, were superfluous in coming to the realization that “views” had radically changed. Three points are key here. First, Röntgen recognized radiation could penetrate solid substances and that it has the same effect on a photographic plate as light. He also immediately realized he had seen something that logically should not have appeared before his eyes. His decision set out to discover how this anomaly came to be present distinguishes him from others who later claimed to have observed similar events. Second, once people saw the fruits of Röntgen’s discovery it was easy to grasp that the X-ray images were momentous. Never before had anyone conceptualized we could see through opaque matter. Indeed, from a scientific vantage point, Röntgen’s 1896 radiograph images were unparalleled because they provided the very first empirically investigated examples of the use of invisible radiation to produce and record a visible image of an invisible object property (Beck 1994). With Röntgen’s discovery it became possible to nonoptically pierce through surfaces like human skin. This means that it was with the evidence that we could use technology to peer into the non-optical domain that it became possible for the avalanche of discoveries in the physical and biological sciences to extend Röntgen’s initial investigation. These extensions have shown that Xrays are electromagnetic waves that range in wavelength from about 100 nanometers down to 0.1 nanometers, which is smaller than a single atom. We also now know that the internal structures are revealed using the X-ray because bones and different tissues absorb X-rays to different degrees (Trefil & Hazen 1995). Finally it is fascinating that Frau Röntgen, seeing the skeletal image of her X-rayed hand saw the image as an omen of death. As a result, she never returned to her husband’s laboratory. Her premonition was born out many years later when the connections between X-rays and death were identified.

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3. Electromagnetic Spectrum Despite the way we refer to them, the X-ray images are not photographs of natural objects as we see them in nature so much as shadows that give form to the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is inaccessible to our eyes (see Figure 2). This is better understood if we look at the spectrum. The visible light we see is the area where we find the rainbow colors. It includes wavelengths ranging from red light (at about 700 nanometers) down to violet light (at about 400 nanometers) and is a very small portion of the spectrum. The entire electromagnetic spectrum includes all kinds of selfpropagating waves that travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. Their frequency determines whether we characterize them as radio, microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, or gamma rays. Overall, the discovery of the X-ray example illustrates that basic science can discover new horizons without a reasoned theory or mathematical model driving the plan of research. In this case, the empirical understanding of what Röntgen saw, the theories explaining the phenomenon and the mathematical derivatives that allowed for subsequent technologies to expand on his discovery came later. This is not to suggest Röntgen’s discovery is better categorized as irrational, logical, or as something that was outside of the empirical. Rather, the discovery demonstrates that when we speak of innovation and visualization we must balance what comes from “within the mind’s eye” with insights we garner though reacting to information that comes from the natural world. In Röntgen’s case, his insight did not begin as a mental image or idea, but through noticing an anomaly and asking how it was possible. Since Röntgen’s revolutionary discovery we have seen an imaging explosion. Over the last 100 years this has allowed scientists to develop the tools now used to pursue comprehensive computational research into invisible domains and processes. Culturally, however, how the images have changed human life is subtler and thus harder to define. In part this is because the non-optical images have become commonplace. To the lay eye the images no longer appear to be “exceptional,” creating some measure of confusion in our minds when we endeavor to see them through nineteenth century eyes.

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4. Changing Views of the Body Imaging technology has been on fast-forward ever since the X-ray captured the human imagination. In medicine, for example, researchers quickly added numerous systems, such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). These tools offered detailed insights into the inner workings of the body and the brain. Perhaps what is most extraordinary when we examine the imaging trajectory is the way researchers successfully perform a variety of feats unimaginable in earlier epochs. These range from studies of brain processing and imaging the effectiveness of cancer therapy to mapping when different genes get turned on during development. More extraordinary is the way we do this, all without removing tissues with a scalpel and testing it in a lab. Science is not alone in incorporating the new technologies. Artists, too, have revolutionized views of the body by incorporating knowledge of these technologies into their projects, largely re-stating ideas that are only loosely related to the concerns pursued by scientists. To some degree, all of these subsequent descriptions about physicality, nature and cognition have revised our knowledge base and captured the artistic imagination. For example, even by 1919 investigators were already surprised to find little resemblance between the positions of the stomach of a living person when seen using imaging technologies and the position shown in textbooks where the pictures had long been based on postmortem appearances. Generally vertical in the living, the stomach often became a horizontal, elegantly curved organ in the dead. Moreover, in corpses the intestine seemed to be in a fixed position, while in living subjects it could be at almost any place in the abdomen (Kevles 1997). On the other hand, twentieth century technologies also allowed us to virtually re-draw our anatomy, much as Andreas Vesalius’ (151464) seminal De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) changed how people viewed the body in the sixteenth century. The scope of this is breathtaking. While the maps of Vesalius’ contemporary Gerhardus Mercator (1512 – 1594) still strike us as a reasonable description of the world’s geography, the anatomical maps of Vesalius seem grossly incomplete. Newer anatomical maps developed through medical imaging have fostered a more comprehensive view of our inner bodies and they have done so without actually cutting through human skin and bones.

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Similarly, Leonardo’s drawings of the bone structure, human anatomy and the inner body speak to another time. Leonardo started his in-depth studies on the human body in 1508, seeking to investigate the body’s mechanical workings as well as human emotions and feelings. His impulses are encapsulated by one of his most famous drawings, Vitruvian Man, demonstrating the proportions of the human figure and showing how they fit perfectly into a square or circle. In his world, views about the body differed radically from our views today. It was not just that our plethora of anatomical images did not exist, there was also a slim historical reference base. To insure accuracy in his studies he dissected about two corpses per year, finding that his

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Optical and Electro-Optical Imaging Systems

Figure 2: [Top] The electromagnetic spectrum includes all kinds of waves that travel at the speed of light, including radio, microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Visible light is the small portion of the spectrum noted by the arrow. All of the colors of the rainbow are contained within this area, whose wavelengths range from deep red at about 700 nanometers to violet at about 400 nanometers. [Bottom] The visible world that defines so many of our ideas about communication is only a tiny segment of the electromagnetic universe.

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talents and training as a sculptor aided his research, as did his drawings. He filled cavities like the brain and the heart with wax and made plaster casts of them to establish their true shapes. Perhaps this explains why it is said that he was the first to show the correct shape of the spine and the tilt of the pelvis. We can also assume that he combined dissection of humans with his exposure to slaughterhouse operations and his imagination. For example, one of the most famous of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings is that of an unborn baby in the womb, correctly attached by the umbilical cord. An obvious mistake in the drawing, that the placenta is more appropriate for a cow than a woman, indicates that his animal dissections no doubt influenced his decision-making processes. Looking at these marvelous drawings centuries later, after the Xray has altered our view of the body, it is apparent that our sense of where to place the boundaries between the visible and the invisible has moved. Artists show this in their projects as well. Skeletal structure in a finished work prior to the twentieth-century was seen either in terms of medical illustration and anatomical drawings or as an iconographic, symbolic representation intended to speak of death, as we see in works such as Pieter Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death. Attitudes were transformed once radiation allowed us to pierce through the body without dissection and incision, or at least the politics changed. We see the re-configured vision the X-ray provides in the transparency that now becomes an artistic device. Writers were first to imaginatively engage with the power of the X-ray to see through opaque surfaces, pointing out descriptively how this might alter the mind and culture. Early painters, too, were captivated by the discovery. Prone to equate the rays with the occult and supernatural, the Cubists, for example, were keenly influenced by them. These painters did not mention X-rays explicitly, although it has been theorized extensively that their compositional choices mirror the multiplicity of reality these piercing rays suggested, as well as how ideas about time, space and reality were re-configured within the cultural context of those who had been exposed to this new technology (Henderson 1983; Miller 2001). Some postulated that ideas about reality were fractured. Equally noteworthy are that adaptations tended to be metaphorical at this time. No doubt the lack of integration of actual radiographs into artwork in a noticeable way come about due to the environment. X-rays were costly and generally kept by doctors and the hospitals that produced them. They were also quite fragile.

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More evident are adaptations compositionally that brought the idea of a transparent body into the subject matter. For example, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo used the idea of transparency to illustrate personal matters. Born in 1907, Kahlo had studied anatomy as a medical student, before her pelvis and part of her spine were shattered in an automobile accident at the age of nineteen. Even without actual radiographs within the painting, her work often integrates the idea of seeing through the body in conjunction with her knowledge of the living body. Personal and emotional paintings like The Broken Column (1944) illustrate this. Bettyann Kevles characterizes this piece as one where Kahlo “depicts her own spine as a fractured ionic pillar inside her flayed torso which is held together by a surgical brace.” (Kevles 1997: 134). Thus, according to Kevles, it is an X-ray in reverse. This is because Kahlo deliberately overturned the conventions of anatomical surface and layers by using an exoskeletal corset to hold the exposed substructure together. (Kevles 1997). Equally compelling are efforts to incorporate actual radiographs in the larger picture. Prior to the X-ray artists were part of a history of efforts to better grasp the body’s form. They illustrated the form medically and in an effort to know the inside through study. Before the twentieth century artists had difficulty in gaining access to a body’s inner structure, in part because the internal aspects could only be revealed once a body had died or an incision was made to open the opaque flesh. By the 1960s, however, radiographs were more available, as Robert Rauschenberg’s (b. 1925) Booster shows. Produced by Gemini G.E.L. (1967: 72 x 35 1/2 in), the color lithograph screenprint was printed life-size. The end-result was a selfportrait comprised of X-rays of his own body. Photographic elements, the artist’s drawing and some rubbings were added to complete the image. Known for its size and imagination, Booster is seen as a key stepping stone in the history of postwar American printmaking. Moreover, Rauchenberg’s decision to discard the small size of earlier prints is why this piece is now credited with bringing printmaking into a new era in which prints were to rival paintings in invention and size. Including life-size X-rays of his own body indisputably makes this an image of our time. In short, imaging technologies have expanded and with the availability of these images artistic goals have reached in new directions as well. Indeed, the X-ray is only one among many medical imaging technologies artists now employ in making statements about the human body, appearance and identity. For example, Mona Hatoum (b. 1952), a Palestinian artist who lives and works in London,

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produced her remarkable video installation Corps étranger in 1994, with the assistance of a surgeon. This video maps an internal and external self-portrait of the artist through such complex medical procedures as endoscopy, colonoscopy and echography. When shown publicly the video is projected on the floor within a circular booth and is accompanied by the sound of the artist’s heartbeat. Words hardly convey the physicality of this work that contains so much internality. Another artist, the Australian sculptor Justine Cooper (b. 1968), has constructed her self-portrait TRAP to raise issues related to how we experience our physical selves amidst the technological world that so defines our environment. She built a virtual three-dimensional head, accessible on any plane, from her own MRI scans. [MRI technology deploys images using the water density within the body and allows us to perceive areas other technologies fail to illuminate.] This construction is built as a “volume” and thus it is possible to view the interior, as well as the exterior simultaneously. In Cooper’s words, TRAP is “alternately vertiginous, frightening and eerily beautiful.” How different the self-portraits of these artists are from those by Rembrandt or any artist working toward a naturalistic rendering of the features, light, shadow and a readability of the form! These examples and many more could be added, demonstrate that scientific imaging radically transformed scientific research, broke into the cultural milieu almost at once and turned the body inside out. The resulting projects have aided scientific research and allowed artists to illustrate scientific ideas and to explore narrative, optical, lyrical and empirical qualities that are as easily plugged into traditional philosophical debates about images, seeing and metaphysics as they are contemporary science per se. The new forms also so easily mesh ideas about the subjective, objective, the mind, the body and other common consciousness definitions that discrete characteristics seem strikingly beside the point. 5. Inside Out and Upside Down Perceiving reality as transparent was extraordinary; reconfiguring space, however, had an equal impact. Geometry is a tool said to have arisen in response to practical problems, such as those found in surveying. Geometry itself was named from the Greek words “Earth measurement” and is one of the oldest branches of mathematics. What we now call Euclidean geometry dates back 2300 years, to Euclid’s best-known book, the Elements. Euclid flourished at Alexandria in around 300 B.C. where he established a mathematical school. His

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corpus is much larger. When art and vision are placed side-by-side, his name is likely to come up for two reasons. First, aside from extensive mathematical studies, he studied optics and his Optics is the first Greek treatise on perspective. This links him to the long-standing studies related to representation and how we in fact see the natural world. His contributions also come to mind with the Non-Euclidean geometries of the nineteenth century. These are frequently equated with the X-ray metaphysically due to the way both have challenged long-standing assumptions about how we measure space, mentally conceptualize space, actually perceive space, map space and deal with the properties of space and objects in space. Many ancient theories that had a rhetorical component included studies of vision and optics as well. In other words, before the advent of empirical sciences the line between rhetoric and data is somewhat slippery. Thus the relationship between vision and art is not only tied to geometry and mimesis, it is also abstractly interwoven with these more abstract ideas. Alberti tells us, in the first sentence of On Painting that “I will take first from the mathematics those things with which my subject is concerned.” (Alberti ~1435/1966: 43). Following this, Alberti speaks of vision in terms of a Euclidean presentation of his theory of perspective, concluding that “Nature herself demonstrates to us that this is so . . . We have talked, as much as seems necessary, of triangles, pyramids, the cross-section . . . Here I have related only the basic instructions of art.” (Alberti ~1435/1966: 88-89) As noted earlier, the theory of perspective was secondary to his promotion of istoria. Alberti was among those who promoted the science of perspective to prove that painting was as lofty as the ‘liberal arts’. Yet, the technical aspects of perspective proved less appealing to most artists in later generations, who worked after art attained the higher status. Interest turned to what could be said through drawing, color and narrative. Before turning to how the Non-Euclidean mathematics reconfigured perceptions of space representation in art (the subject of the next chapter), we must think about how it served to break down long-standing and implicit prejudices about space and how the formulation of the ideas required more than logic (see Bonola 1955; Osserman 1995; Kline 1953). Usually the Russian-born Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1792-1856) and Janos Bolyai (1802-1860), a Hungarian, are considered to be the critical figures in first formulating and posing definitive questions about Euclidean geometry. Each of these men independently chose the same alternative to the parallel

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postulate. Each also concluded that more than one line can be drawn that intersects a given point that is not on a given line. Although these lines may approach a given line as they extend to infinity, they will never intersect it. Similarly, the sum of the angles of a triangle will be less than the 180º of Euclidean geometry. The Italian mathematician Eugenio Beltrami facilitated visualization of this Lobachevsky-Bolyai geometry with the development of the “pseudosphere” in 1868. This and the publication of some of Gauss’s correspondence on non-Euclidean geometry then combined to interest young mathematicians in non-Euclidean geometries in the 1860s. Another type of non-Euclidean geometry was postulated in George Friedrich Bernhard Riemann’s (1826-1866) work. Riemann saw geometry in general as the study of manifolds of any number of dimensions and of any curvature, using differential geometry as the measure of this curvature. He was the first to point out the important distinction between unbounded space and infinite space. On the surface of a sphere, space would be unbounded and yet finite. The sphere, in fact, is the most easily understood model for the nonEuclidean geometry implied by Riemann. Once space is finite and a line cannot be extended indefinitely, (as Euclid’s parallel postulate assumes it will be), it is possible to establish that no line can be drawn parallel to a given line. Riemann’s principle is readily apparent in the geometry of the sphere where “lines” are defined as great circles and will all intersect at the “poles” of the sphere. From the analogy with spherical geometry, it is also clear that the sum of the angles will be greater than 180º. Riemann’s geometry on surfaces of constant positive curvature is thus the opposite of the Lobachevsky-Bolyai geometry of surfaces of constant negative curvature. This means that Riemann’s nonEuclidean geometry is defined not by its rejection of the parallel postulate but rather by its irregular curvature. The Riemann approach also suggested situations where curvature might vary (Henderson 1983). Morris Kline summed up the overall impact of these contributions best: The importance of non-Euclidean geometry in the general history of thought cannot be exaggerated. Like Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, Newton’s law of gravitation and Darwin’s theory of evolution, non-Euclidean geometry has radically affected science, philosophy and religion. It is fair to say that no more cataclysmic event has ever taken place in the history of all thought. (Kline 1953: 428)

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6. The Euclidean Foundation and Reverberations The revolutionary quality of the non-Euclidean mathematics is encapsulated by understanding that, up until the nineteenth century, mathematicians (and others) strongly resisted the idea that there could be non-Euclidean geometries. Euclidean geometry was easy to defend. In fact, it needed little defense, for it appeared to be based on our perception of the world around us. It is well known that Euclidean geometry leads to a view of space as flat, i.e., “Euclidean space.” The apparent logic of the simple Euclidean proofs led people to accept this view, the belief in a “flat” space and the seemingly self-evident assumptions of this geometry as a whole. The belief in the system came to be the standard and Euclid’s geometry quickly came to be an integral part of the western mind, as Alberti’s treatise makes clear. What is less understood is the degree to which the symbolic language was equated with ultimate Truth. By the 17th century, when Descartes wrote his Meditations, mathematics was firmly established as a sacred language, revealing God-created Truths. In fact, we find the symbols of geometry acknowledged as unchanging and perfect by Descartes in his Meditations (1641),52 where he writes: “I counted as the most certain the truths which I conceived clearly as regards figures, numbers and other matters which pertain to arithmetic and geometry and in general to pure and abstract mathematics.” Later, in the 18th century, as mentioned earlier, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, (1781) distinguished between synthetic and analytic judgment. Kant argued for the existence of judgments that are synthetic a priori and he offered the axioms of pure mathematics and geometry as his primary examples. Kant wrote that the axiom “That the straight line between two points is the shortest” must be a synthetic statement because its predicate is not contained in its subject (as in an analytic judgment) and it must be a priori because “[it] carries with [it] necessity, which cannot be derived from experience.” (Kant 1929: 52). It should be stressed that Kant’s definition of a priori axioms of geometry depended upon his definitions of space and experience. In other words, Kant’s Critique defines space as a pure form of sensibility that exists in the mind a priori. It is the frame in which all experience occurs. 52

I have detailed how mathematical symbols came to be seen as God-created Truths in my earlier work (see Ione 1999a, 2000d, 2002).

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Of course, by definition here, space is three-dimensional Euclidean space. Moreover, fixing the very way we have come to “know” the physical world as something contained within the mind, minds were not encouraged to question the assumption. More to the point: since most shared Kant’s view on this, it is no wonder that by 1800 educated people were more likely to swear by the theories of Euclid than by any statement in the Bible (Kline 1953). What stands out in the Kantian approach is that it is as if the Euclidean view of time and space is “hard-wired into our brains.” (Osserman 1995). From this point of view, “the Euclidean perspective becomes the very essence of how the outside world is viewed and made viewable by each of us.” (Osserman 1995: 63). The critical point here is that Kant adopted the implicit biases that kept the eighteenth century mind from even considering the very idea of alternative geometries. The tension between Kant’s sublime and art is much debated, with non-Euclidean mathematics often used as a denominator to frame it in terms of spiritual and occult systems. Yet when various mathematicians began to challenge Euclidean assumptions in the nineteenth century their debates were not spiritually motivated. Simply by demonstrating, that we can conceive of other systems of geometry, mathematicians showed that the axioms of Euclid could not be assumed to be a priori. This, in turn, posed a fundamental question that most people were reticent to even ask: What would it mean if the world we live in is not Euclidean? The larger point is that with the entry of non-Euclidean systems people were forced to re-evaluate long-standing philosophical assumptions about time, space, logic, theory and justification from another perspective.53 Let me emphasize 53 Later Gödel’s work asserted the validity of rethinking Euclidean assumptions by showing that complete sets of axioms are always inconsistent and consistent sets of axioms are always incomplete. Quantum Physics, of course, has since intensified the debates.

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that this challenge to Euclidean geometry cannot be characterized in terms of what we see or simply in terms of logic, although logic is a part of the picture. Instead, it should be stated that non-Euclidean geometry ushered in a new tradition and is a part of a tradition that can be dated back to Euclid and even Aristotle before him. People did not ask whether time and space are Euclidean so much as whether the logic of Euclid’s system covered all the possibilities. The fifth postulate, also known as the parallel postulate, was the primary and ongoing concern historically. This postulate is generally expressed by saying that through a given point can be drawn only one parallel to a given line. The fifth postulate actually states: “That if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than two right angles.” (Euclid 1956). Many mathematicians struggled to disprove this idea (Bonola 1955) and Karl Friedrich Gaus appears to have been the first to do so (in 1824). Since he never published his work, credit for the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry is generally given to Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and Janos Bolyai. The question people asked was whether the postulate actually was as selfevident as the other postulates. The problem people “sensed” did not actually become clear until it was shown that other geometries could counter this axiom. One immediate outcome of the alternative geometries was their ability to suggest that while certain mathematical notions seem to correspond to nature, as we know it, other correspondences appear to simply be the invention of creative minds (Osserman 1995). Another manifestation of the alternative geometries is that they have given twentieth century science and mathematics a rationale for beginning to deeply consider the limitations we bring into our models when we use criteria based solely on logical consistency and optical conclusions. The geometries also compelled people to ask what the concept of a priori mathematical truths offers, or fails to offer. (Kline 1953). The new geometries also provided the mathematical framework for physical theories, like relativity, that soon followed. What must be emphasized in contrasting the non-Euclidean geometries with the X-ray discovery discussed in the first section is that the alternatives to Euclidean geometry were not developed in response to a visual event like the initial discovery of the X-ray and a practical surveying problem that would relate to traditional ideas about geometry. In this case we can say that it was the abstractions of the mind’s eye that formulated this new mathematics. This offers a

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contrast to the concrete and visual X-ray image. Still, like the X-rays, these new geometries were far reaching in scope. How these geometries pierced through a barrier in our minds offers conceptual information that adds a critical counterpoint to the visual X-ray example. This counterpoint is important, for it emphasizes that X-rays did not offer the only nineteenth century challenge to long held ideas about how we “see” the world and decipher phenomenal in general. Rather, an array of challenges entered the world in the nineteenth century. 7. X-rays, Mental Geometries and Consciousness Like the X-ray, non-Euclidean mathematics illustrates that humans can bring new information into their individual minds and the communal communication process.54 This suggests that any adequate inquiry into the mind and consciousness must not lose sight of personal, objective and communal concerns. A theory of subjective consciousness fails to adequately account for the fact that Röntgen needed to see the anomaly to even begin to probe into the nature of what he saw. More intriguing is that neither the X-rays nor the alternative geometries grew out of a defined research program into a specific area of the “objective” world. In addition, neither correlates with research into areas like blindsight and memory, which use welldefined research agendas. In these cases, the realm exposed was quite unlike what was previously known. While the X-ray stretched our natural vision in inconceivable ways, the new mathematics had been rejected by our minds for centuries. Thus it is a problematic reach to 54 While it is far beyond the scope of this book to elaborate on this conclusion, it should be noted that there is a tremendous amount of literature that circles around this issue. The kinds of research skirmishes that have defined the work of Hubert Dreyfus in regard to that of Newell and Simon are indicative of some of the debate and documents some of the limitations yet to be addressed (see Dreyfus 1965, 1972, 1992; Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986; Newell & Simon 1981; Simon 1991). Others, like Baars in his Global Workspace, show how easily the issues can be conceived in terms of learning representation and use and, as a result, creativity and discovery is virtually pushed aside. (see Baars 1988, 1996). I am suggesting that the application of theories and rules cannot account for either non-Euclidean mathematics or Roentgen’s nonalgorithmic discovery. At the same time, the nature of these two discoveries does not suggest that all ideas are equal any more than the discoveries suggest that tacit knowledge, implicit cognition, implicit memory, or implicit learning need be defined as key elements in creativity and discovery. Since discoveries like these case studies defy mechanical and also heuristic modeling conventions, they perhaps point to why many are looking for better definitions of creativity and discovery.

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suggest the first X-ray image and non-Euclidean mathematics can simply be correlated with standard theories about memory, mental images and knowledge representation. These arguments adapt longstanding rationales and prejudices more than they provide legitimate explanations. This does suggest the need to emphasize how important the discovery of new tools proved to be in regard to traditional views of the invisible and optical. Despite the attraction of the non-optical domain to the spiritually inclined (Henderson 1983), the non-optical dimension revealed by science did not confirm the so-called spiritual truths recorded by psychics, mystics and others who had made forays into the “invisible” domain of “spirit” throughout history. It is better seen in light of the way synesthesia research has clarified the territory by re-presenting it with new information. Nor had the spiritualist predicted that humanly created images would one day break the optical barrier and begin to replace long-standing metaphors and “supernatural” explanations with examples capable of illustrating that metaphorical explanation is sometimes inadequate and often wrong! Yet, biological and physical studies did so by generating data that was testable, replicable and tangible. Finally, since X-rays came upon the scene, non-optical images have raised many questions about what perception and space are that have had an immeasurable impact on art, science and consciousness. Some questions, like how much do we really see and what can we actually “see” were quickly brought into the communal dialogue. It took more time for people to recognize that there were also subtle questions that needed to be addressed. For example, people slowly discovered that invisible radiation had potentially negative ramifications. This invisible element challenged ideas about perception and discovery in yet another way. Evidence slowly emerged showing that exposure to radiation could easily damage the body — and the specific nature of the damage might not be evident for years. This dangerous aspect of what had at first seemed to be a miraculous discovery was almost as startling as the rays themselves. Having been discovered at a time when science meant progress, people were especially reticent to accept that the gift of expanded vision had to be balanced with some potentially lethal repercussions. Yet, time has shown that this is so. Still, even today, having been informed of the potential for damage, many of us have some measure of difficulty comprehending how something unseen by us can have a long delayed negative effect on us.

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Similarly, we often forget that adding the computer to the mix advanced creative options. For example, when in 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, both of Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, heard a faint hiss in their measurements of the universe they turned to technologies inconceivable one hundred years earlier. The noise was eventually hypothesized to be radiation from the beginning of the universe. On April 24, 1992 this information was conveyed to the public using the COBE diagram shown in Figure 3, which reflects non-optical advances and the use of mathematical devices to map space and time. This look back in time is not a photographic rendering or an illustration of the background radiation, but the end-result of processing vast amounts of raw data collected using non-optical technologies and elaborate statistical methods.55

Figure 3: The COBE satellite was developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to measure the diffuse infrared and microwave radiation from the early universe to the limits set by our astrophysical environment. It was launched on November 18, 1989. In the image above the darker shade indicates regions that are 0.01 percent warmer. This graphic also provides information that allows us to hypothesize that the early universe was not perfectly uniform. This is, indicated by the two colors and is said to account for the present “clumpiness” of the universe. (see Trefil & Hazen 1995; http://www.nasa.gov).

What this single image fails to capture is that generating this map included solving a set of approximately 6,000 mathematical equations. Thus when we are looking at this single image we do not see the advanced mathematics and technology required for obtaining the 55

On February 11, 2003 NASA released new images updating the 1992 discovery. Details regarding this work are available from at the NASA website, see http://www.nasa.gov

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COBE pictures — the satellite, the delicate instrumentation it carried on board, the sensitive antennas on the earth for receiving the signals transmitted from the satellite and the powerful computers needed to deal with the masses of data. Nor is it obvious that the research team was confronted with the very problem that cartographers faced at the time of Columbus: how best to depict a curved space on a flat piece of paper. (Osserman 1995). It is because the COBE cartographers derived a plan for doing so that we can point to this flat image and say that the darker shade indicates regions that are 0.01 percent warmer. This map also provides information allowing us to hypothesize that the early universe was not perfectly uniform. This situation, indicated by the two colors, is said to account for the present “clumpiness” of the universe. (Trefil & Hazen 1995). 8. Conclusion In summary, it was with Röntgen’s discovery that it became possible to use technology to gather information about domains that had formerly been completely impenetrable and thus totally invisible to the human eye. The way the world was turned inside out propelled some re-evaluation of how we “perceive” the world and this parallels how non-Euclidean geometry challenged the mathematical canon.56 Juxtaposing photography with the X-ray underscores that knowledge systems are informed by new discoveries that allow us to re-examine the relationship between known and unperceived possibilities — whether they are scientific, artistic, or images that combine various forms of mapmaking. Both the X-ray and non-Euclidean geometries re-draw the boundaries. Metaphorically they suggest that all of our 56

The number of examples that illustrate the uncanny nature of mathematics to articulate patterns within the physical world can be misleading and has reinforced the questions raised by the evidence of more than one logical geometry. For example, early in the nineteenth century Neptune was first observed using equations of two mathematicians, the British mathematician John Couch Adams and Urbain-JeanJoseph Le Verrier of France. Each had independently predicted its existence and location. Yet when Le Verrier in 1855 took up the problem of explaining an unusual characteristic of the motion of Mercury and postulated a second asteroid belt inside Mercury's orbit, observations failed to confirm this. Instead, the unusual orbital motion of Mercury was explained in 1915 by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The predictions about Neptune and the planet never found between Mercury and the sun offer two examples that run counter to one another. While the planet Neptune was “discovered,” Einstein’s equations proved to be a more cogent explanation for the fluctuations in Mercury’s movement.

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boundaries are capable of shifting as we use our maps and update them on an ongoing basis. Initial boundaries, I would propose, take form to help us define what is known. Then, as we learn to know more about what we are exploring and what remains unknown, we can once again design a map to bring a tangible quality to emerging information. The beauty of this exercise of stretching our boundaries is that it shows that newly conceived maps can display quantitative and qualitative perspectives, can help shift our understanding of the boundaries and can allow us to bracket information as we inquire — over and over again. Each time we do so we perceive what is “known” and what remains “unknown.” Thus the maps are flexible forms. And, as the twentieth-first century unfolds, it is clear that human consciousness has filtered through many maps over the centuries. Our process in effect indicates that boundaries are useful, but they are not static. They also retreat and change location. The discovery of technologies that allowed us to map light our eyes cannot see offers an excellent contrast to the camera’s ability to record the visible world. The later technologies permeate surfaces photography cannot and are termed non-optical for this reason. The Non-Euclidian geometries in effect allow our minds to penetrate the world we see. When paired with the X-ray we are reminded of all that the naturalism of the early photographs omitted. Unlike the photograph, which records the surface of what we see, later technologies re-framed our ideas about the terrain invisible to our eyes and our mental predispositions about physical space as well often using a metaphor of fractured space. In summary, vision science, photography, non-Euclidean mathematics and the X-ray all transformed assumptions related to the mind, the world and human imaginations. In upcoming chapters I will outline the trajectories formed by these revolutionary breakthroughs in greater detail.

Chapter 9 Working Space Revisited: Painting But, after all, the aim of art is to create space — space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live. Frank Stella, Working Space (1986)

1. Space Representation How non-optical technologies and non-Euclidean geometries influenced twentieth century artists in conceptualizing their views of space and representation has been much discussed (Henderson 1983; Kevles 1997). One of the remarkable trajectories is the effect both events had on views of space representation, although often the connections were not explicitly stated. Looking at the work, however, we can see where the nineteenth century discoveries propelled artists to represent and think about space in novel ways. Space representation in particular has been a major concern in art throughout recorded history. Issues multiplied in the twentieth century due to the number of ways the human population redefined space. Photographic composition, for example, emphasized how much detail we miss when looking at physical reality and the degree to which cropping and time influence a reproduction of space. X-rays, on the other hand, challenged the very nature of what we see. Revealing elements we cannot see directly made it clear that inner space was more robust than the subjective/objective dichotomy formerly applied to this domain. Non-Euclidean mathematics further challenged notions of linearity and logic. Mathematical space, for example, takes the form of a noun. It might be conceived as a set of elements or points satisfying specified geometric postulates and identified in terms of Euclidean or nonEuclidean systems. Or, topologically, space might be defined as the infinite extension of the three-dimensional field in which all matter exists. As a verb, however, “to space” implies a process of organizing and arranging. Given that visual art production includes this active

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quality, it is not surprising that the contemporary visual artist Frank Stella (b. 1936) sees the creation of space as the principal goal of art (see lead quote) when writing about the developments that culminated in twentieth century modern art. Stella points out that, since painters create space, it seems ironic that twentieth century painters had to work so hard to create abstract space in paintings. Following his own dictum, Stella’s artwork often presents us with a space that is non-representational and incompatible with physical space, demonstrating that the concept of space in twentieth century art is difficult to define. Painterly space, moreover, cannot be detached from historical, cultural, metaphoric, philosophical and religious ideals. So when Plato, for example, inveighed against the illusions that “represented” reality and, by extension, the ways in which representation distorted “Truth”, he was talking about the kind of illusory space painters can present when they represent the world we see. Similarly, the murals of Pompeii attest to the fascination of the Romans for enhancing the space of their windowless rooms, while much of the power of Renaissance art grew out of its ability to use perspectival techniques to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on the walls in their villas. Simultaneous with the development of deep, illusionist space on a painted surface in the Renaissance, events moved art out of the ecclesiastical setting on several fronts. One came about in the art itself as the religious and narrative motifs were re-defined and secularized. Another is that framing images allowed art objects to become portable and thus easily moved outside of the fixed, architectural environment of the church, for the framed works could be carried from place to place. Similarly, exciting, spatial expressions were added into the humanist world of the palazzos and piazzas. Illusionistic space was also a dominant theme of ceiling decorations from the High Renaissance through the Rococo styles of the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, however, empirical information and cultural developments further re-defined painting. Scientific studies on vision and color, new scientific views of physical space, the invention of photography, chemical advances in color preparation and industrial advances in the manufacture of studio instruments were among the influences that altered visual art. Some compositional evidence that illustrates these nineteenth century responses includes photographic stereograms and optical experimentation by artists like Turner and the Impressionists. Finally, in the twentieth century, we find that new scientific discoveries concerning the physical structure of space and space-time

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set the stage for a renewed investigation of space in art. Moreover, as is well known, the twentieth century was one in which painterly explorations of space were often abstract and, as a result, paintings are as likely to offer statements related to surface, texture, color and other ways of configuring the optically perceived space of the canvas as they are to represent the world as we know it. More important, the variety of nonlinear developments that expand the concepts of representation and abstraction rely on optical impressions and an encounter with conceptual ideas. These varied explorations are the subject of this chapter. 2. The Birth of Cubism The birth of Cubism marked an eruption of styles in the twentiethcentury. Inaugurated by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1914, Cubism emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane. Adopting an approach of spatial deconstruction, these painters rejected the traditional techniques of perspective; foreshortening, modeling, chiaroscuro and the imitation of nature. Representative examples would be the Harbour in Normandy by Georges Braque (1909) and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso (1907). Overall Cubism is not easily classified. Rather and to begin with a pun, Cubism has many facets. Cubism, of course, derived its name from remarks made by the painter Henri Matisse and the critic Louis Vauxcelles with regard to Braque’s Houses at L’Estaque. They derisively described the volumes of the houses, the cylindrical forms of the trees as “composed of cubes.” Analytical Cubism, for example, took form between 1909 and 1912. The paintings executed during this period show the breaking down of surface into its constituent facets. Synthetic Cubism (after 1912) emphasized the combination or synthesis of forms in the picture, often introducing foreign materials such as newspapers and developing the technique now known as collage. Moreover, in a general sense we can say that there is a Cubism of trying to show all sides of the depicted objects simultaneously. There is a Cubism of violating the unified space of simple perspective to show each object from its canonical viewpoint, regardless of the relation to other objects. And there is a Cubism of breaking through the surface to reveal the simple essence of the objects or persons depicted . But, to begin at the beginning, we must look behind Cubism to its father, generally considered to be Paul Cézanne, discussed previously.

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Working at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Cézanne neatly straddles the start of the modern movement due to his focus on experimenting with the “look” of physical space and with the space of the canvas. Many of these experiments were extended by later artists and, in terms of space, Cézanne’s innovative contributions to Cubism are best understood when we look at the clear stylistic line that connects the texture and coloration used by Braque to Cézanne’s innovative paintings and at how Cézanne developed space throughout his career. Delineating how Cézanne initiated Cubism is a bit more complicated. With hindsight, art critics now see the seeds of the Cubist revolution in Cézanne’s struggles to break away from visual representation and his efforts to capture the sense of space that he was experiencing. The hard edges of the short brush-strokes seem to give extra depth to the elements making up the texture of the many Mont St. Victoire canvases, as he painted the mountain over and over from slightly different viewpoints. But precisely how Cézanne intended this texture to be seen is unclear from his notebooks and letters. Cézanne was temperamentally misanthropic and found it hard to express his artistic insights to the few colleagues with whom he had contact. Thus interpretations are often reliant on geometries that suggest representation forms and yet distort them. We might and many do, interpret these Cubist expressions as relating to an interplay between two, three and even four dimensions, in trying to show all sides of the depicted objects simultaneously, a view of a fourth-dimensional reality. Cézanne’s career as a whole perhaps best explains how he eventually arrived at the deconstructed forms. Many early works were crude representations, often thickly painted, palette-knife pictures. Later, influenced by Camille Pissarro and the Impressionists, his heavy, rough forms were replaced by a lightened palette as he began to experiment with rendering light and optical impressions. Then, finding the results too limited, he aspired to conceive substantial representations. Gasquet (1927) reports that Cézanne went off on his own, aiming to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of museums. We see the tension between solid form and optical sensation beginning to take hold in the paintings of the later 1870s and early 1880s. These pieces show that Cézanne had arrived at a consistent method by this time and show that he had already begun to initiate his experiments on how to represent solid, three-dimensional objects using a system he termed modulation (to distinguish it from

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modeling). In a general sense, this modulation technique was one in which he superimposed multiple strokes of color, creating both a cumulative visual effect and a reverberation that resonated throughout the canvas. What is perhaps most important in terms of twentieth century concepts of space is that Cézanne was intent on giving solid form to impressionistic goals. This means that Cézanne’s presentation recognized that form, more than color, renders the thing seen. At the same time, his use of modulation to harmonize the colors as he organized (and composed) the lines and planes on the canvas allowed him to render his sensation in a form that presents nature but is not a literal imitation of it. Indeed it is this modulation that paved the way for later non-representational painting. A dramatic painting, Lac d’Annecy, the view of Lake Annecy, expresses several of these contributions. This painting, completed in 1896, ten years before his death, is quite striking pictorially and in terms of what was to follow. The vibrant modulation seems to point toward the early twentieth century styles. The reflections in the lake are almost palpable. But why would Cézanne want to introduce a cubistic solidity into the space of the lake’s surface? To answer this question we must presume that space to a painter includes the physical space he sees, his sensation of this space and the activity of defining space in the painting. Cézanne seems to be trying to make the interplay between these aspects of space explicit in his paintings. The shimmering results reflect this perceptual struggle: he wanted to represent nature accurately but was, simultaneously, attempting to record his sensation of it. Contemplating Cézanne’s Lac d’Annecy, one may develop a sense of the space between the canvas and the lake as being simultaneously solid and transparent, like a block of ice. (This impression is less clear in a grayscale reproduction than in the original.) This evocation of space, light and air is very different from Cubism where most of the space is formally rather than optically deconstructed. As a result Cézanne’s expression is a harmony that relies upon the interplay of space, color and form. It gives form to optical impressions while vividly offering a novel interpretation of physical space. Moreover, as his letters and recorded conversations reveal, even when we see fractured space on a Cézanne canvas, a multifaceted cubism is not an accurate characterization of his goals. He was attempting to capture a new sense of space, to show that space is not an empty domain in which object and planes are separated or exist in a relative sense. Rather, his space was full of

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essence, a corpuscular space filling the distance between the eye and the reflections in the lake.57 3. Spatial Composition in Twentieth Century Painting Early in the twentieth century, when the illusionistic quality of representation was beginning to be questioned, science was also in the process of re-defining space in medicine, physics and astronomy. Some claim this environment encouraged artists to experiment with the idea of dimensions and explains why they often illustrated ideas about multiple dimensions. Within this context, many perceptual, optical and conceptual questions were posed and often related to the nature of physical space as defined in science. This was particularly evident in non-representational work, where questions were often addressed through experimentation with visual space, optical perceptions of the canvas and constructions that distort and reconfigure space. In addition, it is interesting that artists expressed their ideas not just through their painting but also through explicit conceptual analysis of the issues involved. Several intriguing ideas about spatial reconstruction in twentieth century art were proposed by artists in relation to their own work and expanded beyond painting. While we tend to group their work into schools labeled with terms like Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, Superrealism and so forth, these categories fail to express how diverse practices were (and are), especially in relation to space. The plurality of responses has been as hard to characterize as their relationship to historical art. This is an issue that Frank Stella critiques in his book Working Space, where he provides a foundation for seeing the artistic context and evaluating the scope of spatial conceptualization employed in art through the centuries. Far from defending modernism, Stella struggles with its failure to develop a form of abstraction that actualizes space in the Renaissance manner. As he notes, abstract art has been, ironically, dominated by the twodimensionality of the picture plane and even by the Cartesian rectangle of the picture frame. Stella contrasts this timidity with the 57

Given this, could it be that Cézanne was anticipating the new view of space reached by Einstein a decade later? In his early papers, Einstein proposed a quantum interpretation of space that, instead of being void, consists of a seething evanescence of particle creations and annihilations. This eventful, energetic view of space finds a resonance in the space depicted in Cézanne’s late paintings. One might even ask whether Einstein, who lived in Berne, not far from Lake Annecy, might have seen Cézanne’s work and drawn inspiration from it, but this would be sheer speculation.

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power of Caravaggio’s masterly development of pictorial space 300 years earlier, who used deep shade and bold juxtaposition of the compositional masses. He finds that much of this power is missing in the flatness of Cubist and post-Cubist abstraction. Stella then concludes that the deficiency of twentieth-century art is that it has not solved the conundrum of abstract three-dimensional composition. Removing the illusionistic quality that accompanied threedimensional narrative, Stella also concludes space was (more or less) reduced to surface. We can see some of the issues by returning to the paintings themselves. For example, even though we tend to say Pablo Picasso initiated Cubistic abstraction with Georges Braque neither was to pursue the logic of disjointed form to the abstract expressionism that was one of the later currents that might be traced back to the Cubist inspiration. The Russians, Vassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, for example, contrast sharply with Picasso. Their practice was based as much on symbolism and transcendental ideas as it was on shape and color. The compositions, as such, were intended to awaken spiritual qualities in the viewer. From a formal perspective, the work of both Malevich and Kandinsky advanced the visual syntax of the purely non-representational domain. Kandinsky, in particular, was capable of a shimmering evocation of numinous forms with a dynamism of depth that rivaled those of Caravaggio and Turner. Stella accords Kandinsky due recognition for this achievement, but seems disappointed in his later development to a collage style. The earlier works retain their freshness and vivacity and yet they have been somehow marginalized from the mainstream of twentieth century abstraction. Indeed, many critics claim the formal qualities of the later work are either too contrived or have a sort of whimsical uncenteredness that lacks the power of the later developments of the New York School of abstract impressionism. Frank Stella also describes how Kandinsky aspired to liberate modern art from the dominance of the pyramid composition, represented by the grounded stability of Raphael’s Holy Family. In fact, Stella gives the most comprehensive statement of this dominance, tying it to Cézanne’s early influence. Kandinsky was right to appreciate Cézanne. The emergence of triangularity in the Large Bathers was an unconscious step in the right direction, a step about to break through the crust of the future’s pictorial surface. However, agile and muscular as it may have been, Cézanne’s triangle could not shake the pyramid anchoring Raphael’s composition. The dogged perseverance of

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Unlike the Cubists, we see that Kandinsky replaced this formal stability with a free-floating cloud of loosely articulated forms, a theme that was to characterize all his work through many changes of iconographic style. Perhaps this freedom from the pyramidal stability became the underlying ethos of abstract expressionism for the remainder of the century. Compositional space was stretched, twisted, cut, articulated, inverted, gridded, minimalized, blocked, textured, splashed, lashed, exploded and imploded, but rarely did the classic pyramid composition reappear in abstract art. This eradication, in Stella’s view, was Kandinsky’s bequest to twentieth century art. A radically different treatment of space is found in the work of Salvador Dali. Although he began painting in the early part of the century, he is part of a second wave, being of a later generation. Trained in traditional methods of representation, at the Academy in Madrid, Dali had studied and mastered the techniques used to render classical physical space and forms. Nonetheless, like many of the early Surrealists, his work offered him a means to question rational notions of reality. As a result, his paintings offer yet another example of how the concept of space was being re-considered and explored by twentieth century artists. What is perhaps most striking when we compare Dali with other twentieth century artists is how his work demonstrates that the move toward disintegration was not confined to abstract paintings. Often narrative and conceptual ideas accompanied the spatial notions and all of these qualities influenced the art of the century that followed, often in subtle and direct ways. A vivid example of Dali’s ability to include conceptual statements in his visual expressions is provided by his double disintegration of the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954). In his most famous painting The Persistence of Memory (1931), Dali had already explored the disintegration of objects, as the watch under the surreal sky. But the space itself is classical, only the watch is undergoing a distorting influence. In the later painting, however, space itself is coming apart, revealing its constituent blocks and the void under the surface of the water. Dali explored this theme extensively in the 1950s, generating some of his most compelling works. The structural underpinnings of matter are revealed in a manner that is reminiscent of X-ray crystallography and the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, which is intimately

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related to the nature of space itself in its post-Newtonian conceptualization. A prolific artist, Dali was keenly influenced by Freudian psychology and Surrealism. Generally his work was composed in a more representational style than Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky and Malevich. As a result, we can say that, while Picasso, for example, offered a direct assault on the illusionistic Renaissance perspective and Kandinsky had presaged a disintegration of the spatial structure in the painting, Dali’s work could be viewed as “a frontal assault on Renaissance perspective” in the words of David Hockney (b. 1937) (although applied in a different context). Hockney, of course, is one of several contemporary artists who have brought a third and even a fourth wave of response to twentieth century spatial exploration. 4. Surface, Depth and the Representation of Spatial Density Others focused on abstraction devoid of an imagistic story. For example, Robert Kudielka (1969), writing on Bridget Riley’s work, pointed out that she accomplished her reconsideration of pictorial space through her transition from a primarily chromatic organization to an invocation of rippled surfaces through geometric texture. Rather than treating the surface of the canvas as a transparent window through which we view a picture, Riley emphasizes the pictorial surface itself. She refuses to let us look beyond it. Frequently she rewards us with a dramatic distortion of its flatness into dynamic rippled corrugations. The depth illusion of these simple curvilinear manipulations is compelling, lying on the boundary between art and perceptual science. Kudielka compares her approach to that of Frank Stella, who has also reconsidered pictorial space, as we have discussed. Perhaps of most importance is that Riley and Stella, both born in the 1930s, provide new directions and continual movement away from the early non-representational work. Comparing the work of these later artists we see additional reactions to the concept of space. Where Riley distorts the flatness of the canvas into rippled depth, Stella plays with a cartoonish representation of geometric depth that is as much conceptual as perceptual. More intriguing is his range. While his earlier style is avowedly limited to flat perceptual geometries, it is strikingly different from his later work that is designed to invoke an interplay of three-dimensional depth structures, while the stylized shading cues simultaneously insist that it is simply a draftsman’s illusion. Stella further includes components that physically protrude into the viewer’s space. These architectural

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elements demonstrate that Stella’s interest in expanding the exploration of the third dimension. However, in so doing, he paradoxically limits the domain, because the physical protrusion can be only a foot or two, whereas the pictorial evocation of depth can extend for many miles. A quite different response is that of Jackson Pollock, who took abstraction to its logical conclusion. His experiments, from 1947-1951 in particular, focused purely on the properties of the paint as it was dripped or hurled at the canvas without the direct intervention of the painterly brush or palette knife. At first sight, his dense overlays of paint trails might be thought of as an exploration of dynamic texture, a new approach to the surface of the canvas. But the dynamism of whiplash forms, which fully reflect the intensity of the actions that created them, may be seen as a direct extension of the free-floating forms of Kandinsky’s abstractions. Pollock’s more compelling canvases are larger than the typical Kandinsky painting and dominate our view. Pollock reactivates the more vivid depth evocation of Kandinsky’s early style, before his ideas about what abstraction should do had crystallized. In Pollock’s paintings this translates into a density of texture that deepens into a sense of impenetrable depth, resonating with our interpretation of Cézanne’s approach to space. He seems to be using the tangled thickness of the streaks of paint to explore the energetic density of space itself. Once we understand that physical space is filled with metamorphosing, interacting particles, we cannot look at Pollock’s work without being struck by the degree to which he captures this sense of active space. We are not simply viewers gazing into a scene. Like Cézanne, Pollock plays with the free-floating energy that fills our visual (and physical) space. Both the size and the density of interlaced trajectories evoke a feeling of inescapable dynamism in every direction. Although their style is at the opposite end of the representation spectrum, the Superrealists of the 1970s, such as Richard Estes may also be seen as exploring the tangibility of a perceived and embodied space through the depiction of commonplace scenes dominated by transparent layers. It is this layering that links them to the abstract expressionism of someone like Pollock. The layers are an interplay of surfaces instead of a tangle of trajectories, but we nevertheless have to work overtime to make perceptual sense of the high density of spatial levels. Instead of a fascination with refraction and reflection in objects that is characteristic of the Dutch Renaissance; the Superrealists expand to fill the image space with transparency, developing it into a comment on the essence of space itself.

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This probing of the stratification of space was amplified by David Parrish, as is evident in his Yamaha (1978). We have to work hard to resolve the full structure of the curved reflections and transparencies in this vivid evocation of the gleaming vehicle. In the Superrealist idiom, it captures much of the crystalline structure of space that we found in Cézanne. Apparently, the same sense of the density of the space confronting us motivated the Superrealists. 5. Envisioning Contemporary and Historical Space Gerhard Richter’s (b. 1932) painting style offers a contrast to the realism of Estes and Parrish. A master who shows that painters today can give space representation a contemporary feel, he firmly speaks to historical forms of representation well. For example, paintings such as his Lesendo (Reader), completed in 1994, allow the viewer to consider the degree to which technology has impacted traditional looking paintings. This realistic portrait, executed from a photograph of his wife, is often justly described as Vermeer-like, a tribute to both Richter and this seventeenth century artist. In striking contrast to many of the distorted representations we associate with modernism, Lesendo is instantly accessible, extraordinarily executed and brings the word “beautiful” to mind. Richter’s allegiance to photographic images (rather than models) does not result in photorealistic-like images, however. Instead Richter never lets the viewer forget that the work is a painting and not a realistic copy. The evidence that distinguishes painting and photography is most evident in the way Richter shifts many images out of focus, producing a somewhat blurred effect. It is as if, perhaps, the camera had moved or the hand slipped in the developing process. He has explained that the blurring effect first came about when he concluded that the copied image seemed too perfect and, as a result, not quite “right” (Storr 2002). Equally compelling are the visual qualities that span styles Richter adopts. Whether we are observing blurred rolls of toilet paper, a portrait, or an abstraction, the paintings excite our senses. His full-size works demonstrate exceptionally well the degree to which he intuitively turns to visual motifs that are frequently studied by perceptual researchers. Some of the illusions are known and can be named (e.g., several of the color charts are scintillating grids). Thus, while he explains these abstractions that evoke Mondrian and De Stijl designs as conceptual ploys, the way the carefully laid out colors dance before us can also be explained cognitively. Knowing this does not at all diminish his intention to spoof the intellectual thrust of

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narrative painting. To the contrary, the number of visual effects he has intuitively incorporated into his work while experimenting is impressive and speaks to his working practice. This linking of art and cognition does not seem to be an active consideration. At least I have found no indication that he has considered the interplay of perceptual psychology and painterly communication. Perceptual links are evident in both the successful and less successful pieces. For example, as the curator Robert Storr explains, he included a number of less well known pieces in his forty year retrospective of Richter’s work so that the audience would become more familiar with the range of his experimentation. One untitled piece, in which the mixtures of red and green appeared more bitter than alluring, demonstrated that not all of Richter’s compositions satisfy our visual sense equally, (nor should they). Richter himself has indirectly talked about this in discussing his early ruminations on what paintings are. Reflecting on his 1972 gray series he said: When I first painted a number of canvases gray all over . . . I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint . . . As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the gray surfaces — and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. (Richter 1975)

Indeed, what his paintings have taught him communicates that space can take many forms and that an artist’s working space reflects this variety. Claiming the fourth position in a recent BBC poll of the most influential people in the art world and the only painter in the top ten, this virtuoso has repeatedly asserted his commitment to painting. Perhaps it is because he views painting as a “daily practice” that his work seems to merge contemporary painting with history. His range has also compelled researchers to re-evaluate painting as his methods bring us face-to-face with how historical issues have been framed. For example, as noted above, many of his most alluring paintings are copied from photographs. Yet the resulting marks defy the idea of mimesis. Instead of appearing to be well copied, the canvases show compelling, incredibly captivating painted surfaces. Indeed Richter’s sensitivity to painterly evocation highlights that these pictures are not simply skillful reproductions. The carefully chosen photographs are generally blurred and their less than concise depictions are difficult to precisely translate, particularly when he turns to political source images.

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Slices of history, the images best articulate the tensions a painting can include. One early work introduces his Uncle Rudi (Onkel Rud, 1965) in a Nazi uniform, compelling us to think about the work from competing perspectives since his relative was a Nazi. His later news-photo-based images in the provocative series, “October 18, 1977” depicts the mysterious deaths in prison of several members of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. Black, white and blurry, these shocking pictures similarly defy easy characterization. Indeed they compel us to reconcile a reproduction’s ability to present conflicting visual, political and social overtones. Born in 1932, one year before Adolf Hitler came to power, Gerhard Richter’s childhood coincided with the rise and fall of the Third Reich. His artistic education was within the academic system of Communist East Germany, where he learned to paint murals espousing socialist themes. No doubt during this period he developed some sensitivity to the malleability of pictures, what they mean and the ways in which they can influence those who engage with them. It was a visit to Documneta II, an exhibition in Kassel (in 1959) that broadened his perspective on painting. Viewing the styles of Jackson Pollock and Bill Fontana, the young artist was opened to the ways abstraction and the ways sensitivity to surface and process can enhance a painter’s work. He escaped to Düsseldorf in 1961 where he continued his training and began to produce the paintings that we now associate with him. His writings, published interviews and tapes such as Victoria von Flemming’s Meine Bilder sind klüger als ich (My Pictures are More Clever Than I, 1992) reveal that his compulsion is and has always been, with how painting works, as matter and medium, signifier and artifact. This allows him to honor illusionistic concepts as much as abstract composition. His varied compositional results communicate his respect for the depictions of space within traditional painting and for later abstraction as well. The abstracts, in particular, have an inner intensity that speaks to his facility with layering, texture, blurring, scraping and intuitive composition. These effects serve to remind us that relationships between perception and painting go far beyond the narrative story of representational art. Clearly, Richter, now past 70, brings an unusual and varied background to his success. 6. The Deconstruction of Visual Space Since art moved out from the walls of churches to the private homes of the Renaissance princes, it was delimited with few exceptions by the convention of a frame in the form of a rectangle.

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Variation, from the wide range of vertical to horizontal aspect ratios and the occasional circular format, has been incremental until the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, on the other hand, we find strikingly noticeable breaks. These include the sporadic attempts to break free of the Cartesian hegemony of the rectangular frame, notably by Mondrian in his rift with the Stijl group that he had founded, by jumping to a diamond format Calder then built his first mobile after wondering what a Mondrian painting would look like if it could move. We also find de Chirico’s explorations of the triangular frame and those by Hans Arp, who extended exploration of panels in “biomorphic” shapes in the early and mid-twentieth century. (Arp’s response is mirrored today in the work of Elizabeth Murray.) Others have moved outside the frame completely. Early in the century this was evident in works like Duchamp’s Fountain and again in the later experiments, noted earlier, of Stella who literally abandoned the frame using sculptural, iconic structures that define their own limits by leaping off the wall onto the gallery floor. Installations now commonly do this as well, ironically bringing early Renaissance art and predellas to mind. Work of these earlier eras had long been accustomed to dealing with non-Cartesian frames in its role of decorating ecclesiastical vaults with all manner of peculiar-shaped spaces between the structural elements. The rectangular format only became common with the advent of separate canvases and the shift to secular halls and palaces. Frank Stella’s work, in particular, may be seen as an extended exploration of space representation. What do we learn from Stella’s vibrant introspection on spatial concepts? We may turn to his own paintings to see his efforts to break the deadlock of the pictorial surface. His main theme, the angularity of a self-defining canvas boundary, paradoxically emphasizes the attachment to the planar constraint. It wants to break free, but remains anchored on the gallery wall. The best examples use the power of three-dimensional evocation within the bold figures to enforce a depth ambiguity, but he always seems attached to a collinear figuration that cuts into the incipient illusionism. His square spiral line, for example, seems to want to draw us into its center, but the regular spacing of the lines forces the depth back onto the plane of the canvas. It is as though he was saying; “[t]hese are the devices that the Renaissance used to make depth illusions, but I am too advanced to partake in such trickery.” He is searching for a new mode of expression to match the power of Caravaggio through the developments of the twentieth century. Although he overpowers us with hard-edged tracks of color, the

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presence of depth is dominated by the physical structure of the medium, layered canvas or angled metal. Yet, as we move into the twenty-first century, we see that Stella’s view of working space is only one of many. Painters continue to redefine the concept of space and they continue to follow several trajectories as they do so. Even Stella’s 1986 book Working Space brings this to the fore. Fifteen years after the book was published, art forms have developed that he could not even conceive would enter the dialogue about art and space. Cyberspace and digital works, for example, have raised questions far beyond those visualized by abstract painting. Moreover, while abstraction remains a potent force in art, as I have shown, twentieth century artists continue to grapple with representational issues. Their responses show that there are issues where the term “representational” has many meanings. When Stella wrote Working Space his practice was already rejecting the flat surface of abstract art in favor of painting that added a third-dimension, although others such as David Hockney continued to engage with the flat surface. As David Hockney, points out, Stella’s move away from the flat surface may explain why his story of abstraction and space omits a key spatial tension we find in all paintings that are confined to the surface. This is that historical painters who worked on a plane often aspired to present narrative information. Stella seems to direct his historical review in a way that locates art in this narrative context, even abstract art. The subsequent flaw Hockney sees is that Stella makes “a plea for a narrative abstraction” because he does not adequately deal with how a flat surface comes to appear three-dimensional to a viewer. Stella, like many, does not address how a 2-dimensional image can appear to have depth and thus force us to see space when an artist uses paint to create depth and the illusion of space. He does not speak about how it is that the viewer activates the painting and the space of the painting. He fails to adequately reconcile how the viewer is pulled into the activities achieved by paint when looking at a piece. Hockney’s oeuvre is particularly noteworthy in terms of how the viewer activates the painting and how we defined concepts of space in twentieth-century art. Thus he offers a fertile point for closing this section. Not only has Hockney explored space from several vantage points, he has also brought an interest in how optical technologies are used by artists to render space to his experimentation with both illusionistic and relative spatial possibilities. Moreover, his curiosity and urge to experiment has been evident throughout his career, which might explain why it has been difficult to characterize his work. For

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example, one early and major change came in the 1960s when he visited Los Angeles for the first time and began to paint with the then new acrylic emulsion paints. This coincided with a shift in emphasis within his work from texture to color. In Hockney’s A Big Splash painted in 1967, Hockney diluted the acrylic medium with large quantities of water and, in this form, the paint acted like a glaze to help him create depth, form and luminosity. The vivid colors offer a striking contrast to the flattened perspective. Hockney has said the colors were blocked in first and, to do this, appropriate areas were masked with tape. Indications of the masking are evident if you look closely at areas like the diving board. Yet, the reason this piece is not about a “stripped painting,” so to speak, is that after the geometry was in place Hockney used delicate brushwork to paint details such as the splash, chair and foliage. The splash, for example, took about two weeks to paint. Mr. And Mrs. Clark and Percy, another work executed using acrylic emulsion paint, dates to 1970-71. Much of the planning for this painting involved drawing as well as photographic pre-planning. This painting also illustrates Hockney’s urge to continue to experiment with paints per se, for in this work Hockney diluted the acrylic medium with large quantities of water and, in this form, the paint acted like a glaze. This turn toward acrylics coincided with a shift in emphasis within his work from texture to color, a shift that necessitated a change in his working methods since significantly more preplanning was required when using rapidly drying acrylics rather than oils. Mr. And Mrs. Clark and Percy shows he continued to innovatively work with the medium. Here, the nature of what he aspired to convey led him to develop complicated glazing techniques, diluting the acrylic medium with large quantities of water. Since water dries quickly, learning how to produce desired effects required Hockney to develop strategies as he worked and became familiar with how to push the acrylic medium in new directions. Then, in the 1980s, Hockney began to make extensive use of photographic technology to extend the image beyond the confines of the painted canvas. The most relevant to space representation is a series of photocollages based on closely spaced snapshots taken of a scene of interest, which he may have derived from the photocollage concept developed by Paul Green-Armitage (1965). These works are also directly connected to Synthetic Cubism and the way these Cubist works asked what is reality and what is illusion in nature and painting. At first glance, Hockney’s technique seems like an arbitrary method of piecing together the image of a scene that could have been shot in a

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single photograph. Hockney, however, like the Cubists, describes the approach as a means of re-evaluating the geometry of Renaissance perspective. Comparing a standard photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge with Hockney’s photocollage version of the same structure reveals various curved distortions of the straight elements in a very unphotographic fashion. Hockney’s approach additionally forms a direct line from the spatial explorations of Leonardo da Vinci, who first defined the terms “natural” and “artificial” perspective. Natural perspective is conceived as the projective geometry in the moving eye of the observer, whereas artificial perspective is the transformation required for painting an accurate replica of a scene in the world on a flat canvas. Leonardo was the first of a long line of thinkers who saw these two forms of projection as antithetical to each other. Hockney is attempting to depict the information in natural perspective on a two-dimensional picture plane. The snapshots represent the “looks” of the eye as it surveys the bridge from a single point in space. The curved perspective results from the projection of the local geometry of each look on to the flat plane of the collage. In some sense, Hockney proves what Leonardo had intuited, that the perspective of the natural viewer introduces a curvature when projected onto a flattened surface. The result is a fascinating depiction of the perspective distortions that we experience as we look around a scene in real space. I cannot, however, forebear from noting that Hockney’s assemblages reveal that this construction is entirely synthetic, rather than natural. The projection of the straight edges is absolutely straight in any one snapshot. It is only the continuity between the snapshots that generates a synthetic tangent curve when we view the overlaid segments. We do not see straight lines as curved if we keep our eyes stationary. It is only when we move our eyes to follow the edge through space that we generate a synthetic curve of the tracking locus. What Leonardo, Vredemann de Vries (1605), Erwin Panofsky (1991), Mauritz Escher (1976), John White (1957) and Hockney saw as the curvature of natural perspective is actually a property of the synthetic perspective of the moving eye. There is no way to combine the directional snapshots into a coherent image with this curved property, unless the shots are vanishingly small, representing only a single point in the visual field. Even if they were such non-dimensional points, the only way to combine them meaningfully would be on the surface of a sphere surrounding the viewer’s eye. Hockney’s projection to a flat plane is meaningful only over a limited field of view. Had he taken the exercise to its logical conclusion, he would have been faced with

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the inevitable conundrum of the projection of the sphere to the plane, which has occupied cartographers for at least as long as the study of perspective itself. For example, what many have interpreted as “natural” perspective is, in fact, a synthetic perspective requiring a synthesis of noncongruent views as the eye looks out from a single viewing location. The true natural perspective is the progressive mapping of the projection of the world onto the curved retina of the eye, the foveadominated projection from the retina to the visual cortex, the perceptual mapping from this primary visual cortex to the subsequent cortical mappings, the operational mapping from these cortical representations into motor control space and the behavioral mapping of the motor control space out into the actions of the viewer within the world he or she inhabits. This sequence of progressive mappings has no definitive stopping point that we can regard as defining the geometry of the mapping. Even if it did, its geometry would be inherent to its own structure and not something that could be meaningfully projected onto a flat sheet of paper or art medium. The distortion of this projection is obviously an artificial structure imposed by the choice of viewing medium. What is known as “artificial perspective,” on the other hand, is the natural geometric projection of light rays onto the picture plane on which the artist is working, as viewed by a stationary eye. The key point that should be realized is that a correct projection in linear perspective will generate the identical “natural” perspective in the eye of a viewer to that of the scene itself. There is, thus, no inherent disjunction among spatial conceptions in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries or between Leonardo’s two forms of perspective. “Artificial” perspective is simply a means of generating the accurate “natural” perspective in the (single) eye of the viewer. Once at the center of projection for the perspective construction, the eye is free to look around at any part of the picture and will still get a view that is indistinguishable from the natural view of the objects depicted. A final point on this issue of space representation that pertains to the variety we see in the twentieth century is that there is no clear way to violate it — or to “soften” linear perspective so as to make it less sensitive to the viewing location. This interpretation has frequently been offered in art historical analysis, but the construction that achieves this goal has never been specified beyond saying that the convergence to vanishing points should be less accurate. In comparing the eclectic twentieth century forms with the convergence to a central vanishing point, for example, it is even harder to distinguish between

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the “artificial” and “natural” forms of perspective. Visually all types of projection geometry require straight projection of the same lines to a single central vanishing point. The main method that artists have used since the sixteenth century has been to soften perspective and to mask key elements with figures or drapery in the foreground, so as to avoid committing to other vanishing points that would define a specific viewing distance. If only one corner of a structure is shown, there are no parallel lines that specify where the convergence to a vanishing point would be located, but the sense of an architectural structure is conveyed. Often those who include figurative and representational elements still are inclined to challenge classical spatial assumptions. For example, as I discussed, Hockney has straddled both sides. He is one of many twenty and twenty-first century artists who have challenged the unified Renaissance approach to perspective in his photocollages and he has also gone beyond the photocollages to adopt a more freewheeling approach that is reminiscent of the medieval style of local, distorted and even reversed perspective renderings. The results are eye-catching and irreverent. Chairs and tables seem splayed out and idiosyncratic, as though each is making a little joke of itself. Part of the power of this approach may be to evoke a stronger sense of object identity, one in which we are stimulated by more aspects of the objects than we normally see in a single photographic view. One gets a sense of a four-dimensional view, as by a larger intelligence that can comprehend more features of the object than usual, or that we are privy to a kind of perceptual dissection of the scene before us. It is hard to capture the multifold interpretations that Hockney’s distortions elicit, but they are undoubtedly effective in an easy-going, vernacular fashion. 7. Conclusion In conclusion, the concept of space in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries is one that mirrors views of space and vision from a myriad of perspectives. Some artists have experimented with nonEuclidean geometries and frequently favored non-traditional approaches to compositional dilemmas. Others suggest that the deconstructive approach to space has taken art to a new level, that has in turn allowed traditional art to come full circle. With Hockney we travel back to the exploratory evocations of the medieval monks who first brought visual representation out of the cultural vacuum of the post-Roman interregnum. This style, as noted, could be considered

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characteristic of twentieth century art, from Picasso near the beginning of the century to the digital revolution at its close, but a broader view would see the century as embracing an eclectic array of space representation styles, from the extreme perspective accuracy of the Superrrealists, the range of Richter and through the textural haze of Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, to a world where computers present a vast array of images across spatial boundaries that even allow us to interact with these images directly. This chapter considers only a few aspects of the diverse array of styles in painting that illuminate working space. Looking beyond painting to the range of technologies that have expanded on trajectories put in place in the nineteenth century further dispels Stella’s notion that the deconstruction of space that highlighted the twentieth century art has mainly focused on the arrangement of compositional elements within the flat space of the canvas.

Chapter 10 Working Space Revisited: New Genres It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians, chemists and apothecaries, to call themselves “scientific men”, as opposed to theologians, poets and artists. They know their sphere to be a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is a science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science of Music and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyond comparison higher fields for human intellect and require accuracies of intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology. John Ruskin, Ariadne Florentina

1. What is Art Revisited? Earlier, when discussing the advent of the word scientist in the nineteenth century, I noted extensive dialogue surrounded the entry of the term. One of those who contributed to the heated debate was John Ruskin, an art critic and painter, who made the statement quoted above. Ruskin, I might add, was not simply speaking out against the idea because he was not a man of science himself. Many we now characterize as scientists rejected the term. Equally intriguing is that Ruskin’s contribution to the “scientist” debate barely made a ripple. His authority was (and undoubtedly remains) more visible when we place him into an artistic context. Indeed Ruskin continues to have a remarkable impact on contemporary art fashions. Many date an important critical trajectory to the libel suit James Abbot McNeil Whistler brought against Ruskin’s evaluation of Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (c. 1874).58 The case came about after the critic’s now notorious attack on this painting, then on display in the recently opened Grosvenor 58 One of the most intriguing legacies of the Ruskin/Whistler dispute is that people are still fascinated by this infamous libel trial. Some see it as more pertinent to the condition of art today than to the climate of the late nineteenth century (Jones 2003).

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Gallery in London. Briefly, Ruskin wrote that the “eccentricities” of art such as Whistler’s: [a]re almost always in some degree forced; and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [the owner of the Grosvenor] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the illeducated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face. (Parkes 2000: 5934; Ruskin, 1871-1884)

After these words appeared, Whistler sued Ruskin for defacing his reputation, asking damages of £1,000. The outcome of the celebrated November 1878 trial was that the jury ultimately found Ruskin guilty. Awarding Whistler contemptuous damages of one farthing without costs, it hardly seems accurate to say he won the case. Rather the evidence suggests that both men were in effect ruined by this event. More important to this discussion is that the court’s decision failed to resolve the quality issue Ruskin raised about Whistler’s art. Did Whistler simply fling a pot of paint and call it art; or was it really art?59 This point comes to mind again when looking at contemporary art. Walking through the Tate, Britain, thoughts about how media change are likely to come to mind when one stops in front of Mat Collishaw’s (b.1966) Hollow Oak (1995). This clever work is far removed from traditional painting and sculpture. Instead we find an extraordinarily subtle installation with a video image of an oak tree projected onto a glass plate in the wooden negative carrying case of a nineteenthcentury camera. One of its most appealing aspects is the way it slowly reveals itself. Initially the image appears to be a vintage photograph. Stopping to look more closely, the viewer becomes aware of the movement of the trees and perceives the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves and the gentle bleating of sheep — qualities the video adds (Myrone 2000: 139). Once the onlooker comprehends this, she also recognizes that her initial assumption that this installation was a representation depicting early photography was simply an illusion. 59

Whistler's work seems quite tame in light of some of the abstract and nonrepresentational trends that followed him. Well known work by Jackson Pollock, the esteemed master of throwing paint, quickly comes to mind.

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Collishaw’s skillful juxtaposition of different media nonverbally communicates the path from the nineteenth century camera to motion studies, film and video.60 One need not know specific historical details to enjoy his intellectual prestidigitation. The careful crafting of the object encourages the viewer to slowly recognize his tricks. Once she sees that the video creates an ambiguous and slightly transparent relationship between representation and reality she immediately is aware of her own complicity in transforming the moving image into a “still” photograph and then back again. In part it is this realization of the juxtaposed perspectives within Collishaw’s deception that allows the installation to work so well. Collishaw’s work is subtly engaged. As we move closer, nuances enlarge what we see. All in all they underscore how a visual statement might seamlessly engage the viewer, allowing her to acknowledge more than one perspective while becoming acquainted with a work. In this case, the tension between the perception of a static image and the movement the video adds might appeal more to those who are aware of the historical trajectory from the still photograph to the moving video, although one does not need to have an in-depth knowledge of the details to warm to the piece. Regardless of whether one’s knowledge base includes some recognition of the connectedness of innovative breakthroughs on display, the installation is convincing because of its ability to flawlessly manipulate the way we connect to the world Collishaw contrives. Catherine Wagner’s work provides an alternative narrative. She brings to mind the range of light waves, as well as the distinctions between traditional photographic methods and non-optical technologies. Working with both photography and medical technologies such as MRI and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), she has manipulated both surfaces and interiors in crafting a variety of 60

Sources for more information about the evolution from still photography (of the nineteenth century) to the twentieth century invention of video include: Braun, Marta. Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne Jules Marey, 1830-1904. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; Lumière, Louis. “The Lumière Connection.” SMPTE Journal 27, no. November 1936 (1936); Muybridge, Eadweard. Animal and Human Locomotion, 3 Vols. New York: Dover Press, 1979 (reprint); Parkinson, David. History of Film. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995; Prodger, Philip and Tom Gunning. Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Wyver, John. The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television and Video. London: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1989. (Prodger 2003; Wyver 1989; Parkinson 1995; Braun 1992; Muybridge 1979 (reprint); Lumière 1936).

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images that raise questions related to how contemporary scientific research impacts our culture socially, spiritually and physically. Like philosophers, artists, ethicists, architects and social scientists she sees these questions as revolving around two central ideas: Who are we? and, Who will we become? Her work is self-described as revealing the systems people create. Less discussed is her appreciation of her statements relating to the craft behind them. What is particularly thought provoking is that, while it isn’t an element she needs to dwell on in speaking about her work (because it is powerful enough to essentially speak for itself), practical considerations have educated her to the differences. Her Cross Sections exhibition, for example, displayed pieces conceived using scientific equipment and medical research findings. These beautiful and provocative images examine life from the inside-out. Wagner’s compelling renditions of the interior of organic matter are produced utilizing the MRI and SEM. These images of fruits, vegetables, cells and skeletal structures highlight aesthetic qualities in a way that expands her conceptual ideas. Her Pomegranate Wall, an 8 x 40 foot curved arc composed of backlit duratrans remind us that artists use tools to make their unique statements. In Wagner’s case, the result serves to beautifully illuminate a series of interior images of a pomegranate. Photographs documenting her engagement with the Human Genome Project, on the other hand, reminds us that the invisible and visible combine on many levels. Wagner has said that when she began reading about this research she was struck by the intent to determine a “genetic blueprint,” first by mapping chromosomes and then by sequencing the entire gene structure of the human race. Having gained access to some of the laboratories of the Human Genome Project in the early 1990s she was able to examine and photograph freezers containing frost-covered test tubes, storage boxes and labeled tissue cultures. These images, which reveal the activity of managing and controlling the data of project, also comment on the process of archiving and storing specimens. Wagner’s recent projects are rooted in work from earlier in her career (e.g. she took photographs of the San Francisco Moscone Convention Center construction from 1979 to 1981 and has documented institutions of learning that ranged from classrooms to scientific laboratories). In summary, we can say that she not only moved her eye toward scientific tools that have given us knowledge of the inner workings of our body and life itself, she clearly expanded her toolbox while doing so. Wagner’s luscious and yet thought-

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provoking images created with the MRI and SEM represent quite a different intention than those we associate with the COBE investigation or Jan van Eyck. They exist on their own terms offering a viable entry into contemporary connections between social and philosophical issues that reflect our time. 2. Painting Revisited: Jan van Eyck The beauty of Wagner’s work has a timeless quality that brings to mind the unanswerable question of what is beauty and where it comes from. Introducing these questions is not to suggest I have a novel response to them. Rather my intention in doing so is to point out that the elusive quality of this question is one reason art is frequently equated with divine inspiration. Yet hiding behind the shadow of the divinely inspired creative person often subsumes the intricacies of art practice. Wagner, for example, has frequently acknowledged the collaborations that have made her work possible. How, given this, can we reconcile practice with the difficulty in defining innovative art, a reality that reminds us anew of creativity’s potency? Perhaps contrasting different time periods aids in bracketing options and the scope of our minds. For example, while an artist today using modern paints could no doubt make a credible copy of one of van Eyck’s paintings, a quite different approach would be required with digital technologies. Putting aside whether or not each is really a van Eyck, in the most general sense, there is a basic difference between the two. The basic technical distinction is that a painting or a photograph is defined as an analog representation because it varies continuously both spatially and tonally. A digital image, on the other hand, is encoded by subdividing the picture plane into pixels that can be stored in a computer’s memory, electronically transmitted, displayed, printed and manipulated on an ongoing basis. W. J. Mitchell explains how to use computer algorithms to reconstruct van Eyck’s Double Portrait. As he explains, the pixels are markings on a finite Cartesian grid of cells. Color and shape are defined by specific assignment and a resulting two-dimensional array of integers (the raster grid) results. What is key here is that while the resulting digital image is machine generated, it does not have the continuity of color and shape as defined in a photographic image, where details and curves are smoothly interfaced. To the contrary, a digital image offers an approximation of continuity that is mapped by breaking up the components of the image into discrete steps, discrete shapes and discrete colors. Since we now know that the brain fuses

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what our eyes see, the analog/digital distinction is perhaps best conceptualized by first considering that digital pixels can reproduce a painting and then recognizing we have more than one option here. In other words, scanning, the obvious approach to replication is only one approach to duplicating the image. We can also re-create the work by using computer algorithms. Stylistic elements surrounding a recreated image, however, are more complex. Overall, replicating the character of the representational scenes includes re-defining the complex combinations of diffuse and specular effects we find in the double portrait. In the painting we see the faces and figures of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami are gently modeled by a flood of light from the top left so that every nuance of surface curvature is brought out — particularly on Giovanna’s swelling body as she stares into the light. We also see soft shadows on the floor plane, a diffuse wash of window light across the plane of the wall behind them and an interior space unified by careful attention to the subtleties of diffuse interreflection. There is also a sharply defined patch of luminous sky visible through the window. In addition, a striking feature is the central axis dividing man and wife that is occupied by specular effects: metallic highlights on the candleholder, distorted reflections on the convex mirror, the smooth glossiness of outstretched palms and the wiry, shiny coat of the little terrier. According to Mitchell, we can render this kind of scene effectively (and at considerable computational expense) by a two-pass process. One would use radiosity to divide the surface in the scene independent of the observer position and thus compute diffuse effects in the Double Portrait. The radiosity procedures begin by dividing the surfaces in the scene, rather than the picture plane, into small discrete elements independent of observer position. The method assumes that light energy is conserved in a closed environment and an attempt is made to account accurately for the way in which light emitted or reflected from each surface element is reflected from or absorbed by other surface elements. For complex scenes computation of the form factors is a massive task. In nondiffuse environments, however, radiosity calculations become much more complex and timeconsuming to carry out because the energy-balance equations become more complicated when directional reflection must be considered and partly because smaller surface patches must be used to achieve satisfactory results. Ray tracing would be the procedure used to create an adequate perspective by matching shapes and colors on the picture plane to compute the specular effects. Ray tracing is an elegant systematization

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and extrapolation of an idea that goes back at least to Brunelleschi’s early perspective studies. The idea is that you can create an accurate perspective view by painting on a transparent screen interposed between the eye and the scene and matching shapes and colors on the picture plane to shapes and colors in the scene beyond.. Summing the results of these two procedures produces the final image, a digital version of the painter’s strategy of employing a multipass process. In other words, the painter might include the underpainting, scumbling, glazing and so on. The questions of whether the computer image will be as robust an image and whether the image is art are complicated ones this book will not address directly. This example has been introduced largely to offer a means to compare our options with those of earlier eras. In this case we find that Renaissance ideas about mathematical perspective are like a digital framework and the invention of oil paint added an analog-like quality. One could say that perspective was the ray tracing and oil provided the radiosity. The larger point is that oil paint and perspective, like the computer and the camera, challenged longstanding ideas about representation, perception and seeing. This is important to note since the oil paint technology and perspective were both areas that Western artists began to develop in tandem. In other words, our chronology is incomplete if it fails to consider that the earlier developments are not simply narrative differences but also include imaging innovations that visually informed how the viewer perceived the finished object. Results of different historical periods as such speak to how scientific technologies and visual models both informed artistic practice. It is also important to remember that practices and cultural influences differ significantly from time to time and from culture to culture. The details in van Eyck’s painted images bring the small illuminated manuscripts to mind. Whereas debates about representation go back to Plato, the “oil” quality of representation associated with van Eyck was an addition to the painter’s vocabulary. Similarly, the pixel was added to the artistic toolbox. When evaluating van Eyck’s development of the oil technology in light of his body of work, the analysis should not lose sight of the fact that Italian art is generally used as the “standard” in discussions of Western art history, with Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) as key figures in developing the foundation. Finally, Jan van Eyck reminds us that while Dutch art began to move toward secular realism, Italian painting continued to elevate istoria and religious refrains. This creates some anomalies in

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our thinking about art. For example, seventeenth century Dutch realism is commonly dismissed, while the quite similar looking nineteenth century French still life work is applauded. Moreover, although the Netherlandish and Italian styles are equally beguiling, the elevation of narrative, history painting by the Southern artists obscures the interest in the natural world so pronounced in the Northern work. This said, it is useful to recall the many projects explored in earlier chapters that speak to the interplay of individual insight and collaborative impulses. For example, the extraordinary experiments with recording dynamic movement that challenged the nineteenth century mind. The most representative figure, Eadweard Muybridge, collaborated with Leland Stanford (1824-1893). Among other things, their work together shows it is difficult to define who contributes what in a collaborative effort, which may explain why we often miss connections that occur. In 1872, when Stanford first approached Eadweard Muybridge with a request that he use photography to study the gait of galloping horses, Muybridge declared himself “perfectly amazed at the boldness and originality of the proposition.” Although their relationship deteriorated after ten years of turbulent collaboration, Stanford’s publication of a lithographic compendium, The Horse in Motion, challenged others of this generation to experiment with movement and visual dynamics. When Stanford listed Muybridge as one of the many technicians involved with the project, the photographer sued his former patron, lost his case in court, severed his ties with his old collaborator and launched an independent career in Philadelphia where he worked as a guest of the University of Pennsylvania. Here he found new collaborators as he continued to analyze and study how one might freeze rapid action photographically. All of Muybridge’s experiments delineating ability to capture stop-action movement have linked his name with the trajectory that led to the invention of cinema, video and virtual reality as well. Contrasting these works with those of his nineteenth century peers we might say that he grew out of one tradition while creating a foundation for another. Similarly, the early studies of binocularity and vision have morphed into contemporary technologies that use binocularity to simulate and replicate life and space. Visualization of a static project would formerly be completed within the mind, using our imagination. Now we can find these static images projected in real time, although the cinematic illusion of motion when the works were created was not in moving time. Our experience of the world allows us to inhabit a

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space far beyond the re-creation of the discrete moments that Muybridge and others labored to capture photographically. 3.

Art and Illusion

The above examples offer only a small segment of possibility. Paintings are often viewed from a distance and are likely to strike us as objects. On the other hand, works that emerged out of the photography/film/video trajectory are more likely to offer a dynamic and often somatic sense of space. Contemporary art within our pluralistic world fulfills both goals. In doing so, artists rejuvenate questions that have long reverberated around art. To a greater degree than static works, new media and digital projects encourage us to ask “what is art?” and “Can we specify specific themes that link art and consciousness?” Perhaps what sets contemporary technologies apart is the way in which they broaden our ability to see distinctions and commonalities between art and science that resonate with theories of consciousness. In his book Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau traces depictions of illusionary visual space back to antiquity. Skillfully describing a number of projects (e.g., the frescoes in the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii, the gardens of the Villa Livia near Primaporta, Renaissance and Baroque illusion spaces and panoramas), Grau proposes that we can establish historical precedents for the contemporary virtual reality through the case studies his book examines. Of particular interest are the CAVE projects that are included in the book as an example of the reach of virtual reality today. In their article “A Room with a View,” Sandin, DeFanti and CruzNeira tell us that “the Greek philosopher explored the ideas of perception, reality and illusion using the analogy of a person facing the back of a cave alive with shadows that are his only basis for his ideas of what real objects are” (Sandin 2001: 268). Their summation suggests Plato’s intention was to characterize human perception; completely ignoring that Plato is more concerned with social values, ethics and education. It is with the nature of the community in mind that Plato rails against the kinds of illusions artists create, voicing objections to the kind of immersive experience the CAVE claims to offer. According to Plato, all-encompassing illusions, compel strong and decadent emotions, arousing passions rather than reason. Banning

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artists from the (Republic 398a),61 noting that it is possible to make a representation of something without having knowledge of the thing represented (Republic 595-601) and speaking of the long quarrel between poetry and philosophy (Republic 607b), the Cave metaphor (Republic 514a-521b) is one of many devices Plato employs to imply that (among other things) artists mistake the fire for the sun. In an earlier chapter I spoke of Plato’s ironic position. Clearly he was an artist, but no doubt one without a proper home by today’s standards. Indeed, those who reject the argument that he was critical of artistic motivations point to his poetic style and use of metaphor to outline the philosophical positions they argue (Elias 1984; Oates 1972). No doubt his ability to craft thought-provoking analogies allowed his arguments to entice minds for centuries. Yet to debate them in terms of what we call art today obscures the degree to which his writing was intended to further knowledge, ethics, politics and socially productive values. As Havelock (1988), Dissanayake (1988) and Ione (2002) point out and as I discussed in detail in Chapter 2, in Homeric Greece, as in prehistoric societies generally, political and social institutions were necessarily transmitted and preserved in an oral tradition, or a memorized “encyclopedia.” This oral education passed on the key information about society and its values. This transmission was essential for the perpetuation of the group. The problem, with the Homeric tradition in Plato’s view, was that the social code was kept in place through the repeated oral performances of the repetitive poems, which fostered identification with the ideas they developed. When Plato spoke out against the ancient tragedies he was referencing an emotional involvement that came about despite the lack of graphic content so much a part of projects today. Staging was subtle, requiring audience imagination. Presentations began as a conversation between a single actor and a chorus and eventually added additional actors, with the chorus continuing to serve as a musical device. It is presumed that one reason this was effective is because the sounds and the words connected the audience with the staged myth most watching would know well. Surviving writings allow us to discern that when Plato spoke out emphatically against the mimetic elements of tragedy his references are more likely referring to the way the audience was induced to feel certain emotions, not simulations of reality.

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See the first chapter (Prelude) for more details on Plato’s banning of the artists from The Republic.

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Similarly we know that painting had a role in the performances. Indeed some of the earliest mentions of visual art by Plato were provoked by the dramatic use of perspective in the scenery for the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. One innovative scene painter, Agatharchus, even wrote a commentary on his use of convergent perspective, whose effects had inspired several contemporary Greek geometers to analyze the projective transform (we associate with perspective drawing) mathematically. No examples of Greek perspective paintings survive. We can perhaps glean a sense of their technique from Roman copies (probably by Greek painters) from the ruins of Pompeii in the first century AD. Aristotle, who was less outspoken, in effect makes this point when he speaks of the plot as the soul of tragedy. To his mind, words were a key device in tragedy and the plot was communicated to the audience primarily by means of words. Words, moreover, were not only devices used to stir up audience involvement with the plot. Scenic elements and events that were difficult to stage in the open-air auditoriums the Greeks used also depended on descriptive explanation. Other factors additionally distinguish their performances from our own. First, lighting at night was not yet possible so all performances were staged during the day and key characteristics of scenes had to be identified by the actors or the chorus. Those in the audience, upon receiving these verbal cues, had to imagine the setting. The chorus, in fact, had several roles. Situated in the orchestra, it engaged in dialogue with characters; sang and danced choral songs that allowed them to comment (in its song) in a general way on all that had been said and/or done in the preceding scene. This musical component added something to each scene, although we have only fragmentary descriptions now so we can only speculate. 4. Mimesis to Virtual Reality When we turn to contemporary culture we are reminded of Plato’s admonition that art can only flatter and deceive the senses. His fear that artists create illusions that seduce the mind to feed on phantoms seems to suggest the homage he receives is one he would reject. In popular culture the distance is more obvious. Since its 1999 release, the film The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski 1999) has extensively been compared to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.62 This work offers yet 62

The web is the best resource for this commentary. Particularly noteworthy is John Partridge's page, which my commentary draws on extensively (Partridge 2003).

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another perspective on the relevance of Plato today, particularly in light of how it integrates virtual reality technology, such as the CAVE discussed above. Presented as a parable in the Republic (Book VII), Plato presents the allegory when he has Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a dark, subterranean prison in which humans are bound by their necks to a single place from childhood. They cannot move and can only see before them, being prevented by chains from turning their heads around. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way, with a low wall built along the way. This setup operates like a screen. Shadows of all of the activity along the way are projected onto the wall the prisoners see, showing all that passes in front of the fire. They perceive people who walk along this path carrying all sorts of vessels, statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials. Those bound can converse and are able to name and identify the forms of these shadows on the Cave’s wall. Plato makes his point by asking what would happen if one of those chained escaped the Cave and returned to tell others about the world of the sun he discovered outside the Cave. Since none of his comrades, who only knew the world of the Cave would have a context to relate to all he discovered, it is unlikely they would believe him. This leads Plato to conclude that the prison-house of the Cave is the deceptive world of sight where we are likely to presume the light of the fire is the sun. The journey upwards to the world for the sun is equated to taking the path to knowledge, which only appears after an effort. In Plato’s view, the knowledge gained is “the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. [517c]. Plato also goes on to ask whether it is surprising that it is difficult for those who have seen beyond the shadow to return to the Cave, where “he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?” [517d,e]. Concluding: Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds and arise from two His essay is part of a philosophy section on the Matrix Reloaded page, launched by Warner Brothers in November 2002. They collected essays from eight different contributors, who discuss various philosophical, technological and religious aspects of the film (2003). Issues surrounding views of art, however, are largely neglected here by most of the commentators.

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causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark. [518a, b]

After The Matrix was released in 1999, commentators began to compare this cinematic adventure with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, seeing a philosophic marriage. In the film Neo, the character we learn is destined to save the human race, is similarly released from his prison. Successfully overcoming events that could have destroyed him, he eventually grasps who he is. These incidents also educate him about the matrix world. While reminiscent of the escape Plato narrates, the two proposals are not equivalent. For Plato, education has a power to awaken us and move us to a higher level, whereas in The Matrix the awakening is intended to highlight that we cannot presume that what we see is real. If there is a “higher level” suggested by Neo’s awakening the matrix reality, it is denoted through the way the film portrays him as a Savior. Still, his experience does not introduce him to a higher reality so much as one that is parallel to his previous state. Perhaps the most important divergence between the two stories is foundational. The Matrix plot centers around the idea that after humans perfected artificial intelligence, the machines came to realize that they could live off human “bio-energy.” Eventually the mechanized intelligence began to harvest humans to sustain their existence. The humans, being cogs of the machinery, blindly exist. In Plato’s Cave, on the other hand, our speaking and thinking is not meaningless. Plato acknowledges that some of our opinions are true, in spite of our ignorance of the deeper causes of things. His point is more pronounced. One perceives the illusory world/the shadows on the wall with one’s senses (especially sight) and it is only on leaving the Cave that the mind’s eye is able to perceive a higher level of reality. Plato, in effect, rejects the sensory experience in favor of something higher while still accepting that it equates with our educational experience. In essence Plato’s Cave represents the physical world as an untrustworthy illusory reality and his philosophy adopts the idea that the body is inferior. While The Matrix to some degree plays with a similar idea when it represents an illusory reality, its reality is an entirely nonphysical world that rests on the concept of virtual reality. Unlike the Platonic rejection of the body, it is the body that connects

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the two in the film. Viewers are left with the impression that one does not even use one’s senses at all until one leaves the matrix that creates the theme of this story. Then one does not embody a higher knowledge. Instead within the matrix images are fed directly into the brain, contriving a vastly different relationship between the senses and reality (or virtual reality) and the body thus provides a connection between the two realms. These variations in the mind/body positioning highlight two views with differing epistemological and ontological systems. Plato’s focus on education is directed at social issues of his time more than the religious overtones that are given to the role of the Savior-hero (Neo) in The Matrix. Neo is introduced into the small cadre who enter the virtual reality world of the matrix, and discern the nature of this reality. His role in waking up other people to show them that they are living in an illusion differs significantly from Plato’s prisoner who is dragged out and compelled to understand the relationship between the prison and outside. The question is whether Neo achieves a knowledge that supercedes the imperfect shadowy representations he knew previously, which in Plato’s Cave are defined as inferior copies of a reality now fully grasped in the mind, is perhaps open to debate. More thought provoking is how each story presents its views. Viewers of The Matrix are invited into the plot through the senses. A fastmoving script and special effects are contrived to touch the emotions. We are encouraged to cheer for Neo and his comrades. This seems to go against the grain of Plato’s intention, particularly when we grapple with his views on art. According to his writings, art leads people emotionally and turns them away from the higher questions philosophy can answer. A further re-evaluation of the borders between the base and the beautiful within contemporary culture demonstrates that the questions Plato raised so long ago continue to endure, yet in a new form. As painting, poetry, music and theatre blend into virtual reality and multimedia presentations, scholarly research has been hard pressed to keep up with the pace of changing technologies. To be sure, as the nature of art changes so does the texture of our lives. In this respect, Plato remains relevant today. The evidence that people continue to turn to his work to debate ideas about beauty, truth, art and knowledge using his ideas as a touchstone show that his views, whether one supports them or not, remain relevant today. Plato feared the way art could arouse emotions and entice the population to view an illusion as reality. Scientific uses of this technology (such as walking a doctor through surgery) are more likely to pass muster with Plato than the

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work of artists. Both, however, show that the path of art has been a meandering one, drawing on old sources even when traveling novel roads. 5. The CAVE CAVE projects are particularly rich sources for framing contemporary and historical themes and technologies. In the CAVE the user is the viewer and the experience is, by definition, an interactive one. This is not “spectacle” art, where the viewer is an onlooker. Although the CAVE acronym was chosen to allude to Plato’s Cave as used today it is not precisely representative of Plato’s view. What I find intriguing about the CAVE work is that Plato would have had to re-think some of his ideas in light of the empirical research and experiential involvement of the cave in furthering contemporary understanding of the world and in furthering growth. Now used for everything from medical training to scientific experimentation, CAVE technology has radically transfigured scientific views regarding how reality and applied knowledge are connected. Virtual brains, for example, are used for study and to simulate brain surgery. In addition, many major scientific organizations, NASA being an excellent example, integrate CAVE technologies into their cosmological investigations and use the technology as an aid in communicating scientific findings to the public-at-large. In other words, today’s CAVE is a multi-purpose virtual reality, a digital three-dimensional dynamic representation of an environment or object that facilitates exploration, interaction and investigation. Extraordinary graphics define the experience and its appeal to artistic sensitivities. Its virtuality has proved invaluable to scientists because it is the active viewer, the user, who controls the environment. The system updates the stereo graphics and sound according to the perspective of the participant, who wears these tracking glasses and manipulates a “wand,” a type of 3D mouse programmed to start, navigate and alter the images. The display transmutes in real time with the motion of the head and hand positions triggering events that are based on the program’s output. Unlike a static photograph, where an image is created, presented and observed, the CAVE offers a multidimensional space the active viewer can enter, so to speak. Most computer environments, such as desktops or 2D interfaces, have icons or pull-down menus that represent a direction or a goal. Virtual environments, on the other hand, allow the objects to become

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the direction or the goal. The environment is a series of experiential exercises signaling the next event and — to inhabit each virtual space is to transform the projection. This requires an active and reactive decision-making interpolation of sights, sounds and our senses, for the total immersion simulates a newly created space and time, one in which all perspectives are calculated from the point of view of the user and mediated through the stereo glasses. In the CAVE the user/participant is equipped with stereo glasses and communication comes about through the stereo projection thrown onto the walls of the space. A user manipulates a wand (or similar device), a type of three-dimensional mouse, programmed to jump-start with the images. As the user interacts with stereographic computer graphics the images allow the user to also be a participant. Thus, unlike a viewer of an art object, the viewer has a dual role that comes about due to the way user actions continually update the graphics. When many CAVE users come together, in what is called a CAVERN, multiple users can interactively share an experience. The CAVE has offered a means to experientially re-think ideas about art. As noted, all perspectives are calculated from the point of view of the user. This means the very nature of this interactive environment belies the idea of “works of art, in and of themselves.” What the viewer “sees” in this environment cannot be translated into the historical equation. Viewing cannot be equated with a unique, fixed object. Instead it is a complex environment. Each visual observation has a flavor that comes about based precisely on how the user’s activity combines with the images that are mediated through the stereo glasses. In other words, just as it becomes increasingly more difficult to apply historical definitions about art to CAVE projects, the contemporary use of stereo glasses in using and designing CAVE technology demonstrates that nineteenth century binocular studies have evolved in perceptible and scientifically useful ways. Interactive aspects found in CAVE work also demonstrate how the traditions of a discipline merge the past with the present. Exciting CAVE art might include a narrative that brings to mind statements of artists of earlier eras. One artist who demonstrates that even revolutionary art can successfully blend narrative with innovation is Margaret Dolinsky, an artist and professor at Indiana University. She strives for effects that allow the spectator to abandon the act of mere viewing, transcend simple narrative participation and become actively engaged with this revolutionary arena. For example, her Blue Window Pane stages a virtual environment as a performance and a projective construction. Translated, the nonlinear, non-hierarchical structure is

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much like a theater in which participants navigate and grapple with symbolic events and alternative worlds. One pane, for example, celebrates Man Ray and the Surrealists who were known for realizing dream worlds and exploring levels of consciousness. Another we can enter hums the whispers and ramblings of the conscience and leads to a room with a spiral stairs, staring faces and pulsating sound activated graphics. The only way out is to rise above it by climbing the spiral stairs to the top, to an inner sanctum and an icon on one of the CAVE walls transmits us there. The object has a shelf that holds a golden key and by touching the key with the navigation wand the icon swells open to become a life-size arched passageway to this sanctuary. 6. Earth, Space and Light Other interactive work is harder to place. The diversity of styles allows more of a play with technology, installation and environmental work than a precise relationship with the trajectory, as James Turrell’s work shows. Born in 1943, he became interested in art while an undergrad in experimental psychology. After graduation Turrell decided to enroll in the graduate program at the University of California at Irvine. Here he created his first light piece, Afrum-Proto, in which light projected into the corner of a room seemed to form a three-dimensional, illuminated floating cube that resolved itself into flat planes of light only upon close inspection. This first light piece was completed in 1966 and was the first of several "corner projection" installations he developed in the 1960s. It is conceived by aiming the light from a slide projector through a template. The resulting projection is a floating optical illusion in the corner of a room, as you can see. As the viewer moves around the gallery, he or she will find an optimal vantage point where the rectangle of light will resemble a three-dimensional white cube. The viewer also finds that the closer one approaches the corner, the less the illusion holds, until the cube is transformed back into an ordinary projection of light. What makes the piece particularly exciting is the mysterious illusion that complement’s the visual illusion of a three-dimensional solid conceived out of light. This conjunction, which ultimately depends on where the viewer is standing, allows Turrell to connect energy, matter, a human perception and the mind as well. I include the mind to emphasize that, surprisingly, although the artist leaves the mechanisms of this illusion in plain sight, it is no less mysterious or believable. To the contrary, the surprise of seeing the cube emerge

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from the wall offers a fascination that makes a large and lasting impression. Indeed, like all of Turrell's corner projections, the endresult is all-the-more convincing because the viewer can marvel at it despite viewing it with a knowledge of how the illusion is made. Early in the 1970s he briefly collaborated with Robert Irwin, another Southern California artist. Both are among a group of artists from this area who were drawn to space and light projects in the 1960s. Turrell and Irwin worked in conjunction with the Art and Technology Project organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a project that matched more than seventy-six major artists with a larger number of scientists, mathematicians, technicians and engineers from major corporations and industries based in the greater Los Angeles area. Initially Maurice Tuchman of the museum contacted Irwin, who brought Turrell on board. The two artists were then paired with Edward Wortz, a physiological psychologist who was also involved with training astronauts for space travel. According to Jane Livingstone, who wrote of their work in the exhibition’s catalog; Turrell, who had a degree in experimental psychology, had a greater understanding of experimental methodology than did Irwin. Irwin, on the other hand, had for years been intuitively dealing with certain subtle aspects of the psychology of perception through the process of creating his work. Almost at once, Turrell, Irwin and Wortz began an intense dialogue. All believed it had extraordinary potential and their synergy led to experimentation with sensory deprivation in soundproof chambers, as well as with Ganzfelds-controlled environments. These environments are filled with an undifferentiated, homogeneous light that removes all visual clues to where you are. Indeed it seemed that the artists saw one another as complementary sources of information. Then, inexplicably, Turrell defected. According to Irwin, he just disappeared without even saying goodbye, an action that confused both him and Wortz. Several years after this Turrell explained to a critic that, to his mind, the situation became difficult. Irwin had a New York gallery, so Turrell felt that he could immediately bring his ideas to the marketplace. On the other hand, Turrell did not have a gallery, so he thought it was best for him to withdraw for his own protection (Tomkins 2003). Perhaps what is most noteworthy is that although this project produced no objects and the relationship between Irwin and Turrell was abruptly terminated, it had a profound effect on all involved. Edward Wortz, the psychologist, changed careers, moving into studies of meditation and Zen Buddhism. Irwin ceased to create objects and began to pursue work that was ephemeral and somewhat

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invisible. Turrell dropped out of sight altogether for a time. Once he returned to an active practice, however, Turrell’s interactive work quickly began to integrate state of the art science and technology in compelling, eclectic and personal ways. These allow us to ask how we might include revolutionary and visually innovative art forms in our models. They also offer some elements worth considering in terms of consciousness. This is particularly evident in terms of his interest in perceptual experience and the way his work integrates diverse technical, artistic and scientific frames of reference. In terms of art, Turrell turned to environments he could build and place within museums, as well as his Roden Crater project. The monumental scale and conception of this non-traditional project is exemplary for several reasons. One is that it is a form embedded in a natural setting that does not commemorate a historical event, or a distinct achievement — other than his own. Another is that it will be a monument to human perception on several levels. In addition, despite the way the form brings ancient wonders like Egyptian pyramids to mind, it is very much a product of our time. Thinking in terms of how innovation alters cultural reality suggests it is important to emphasize that it was Turrell’s training as a pilot that enabled him to scout for this space when he aspired to find an environment where he could control the shape of the space. After logging more than 500 hours of air time and a seven month search, he located Roden with its saddleshaped dish. The aerial photographs often shown to allow us to see what the crater looks like from the air also serve as an acknowledgement of the degree to which technology has aided in disseminating the nature of this work, as it does the nature of the work artists now do in general. Turrell’s Perceptual Cell projects are among his moveable works, designed to allow the viewer to have a personal experience and in this respect are strikingly unlike the shared environment of a sky space when viewers look at the changing natural arena in tandem. These moveable works have also allowed Turrell to experiment with light and perception, although in these projects he draws more on his background in perceptual psychology and his knowledge of how light affects our visual experience. Perhaps this explains how sharply the perceptual cell spaces differ from the sky space environments. Gasworks (1993) is shaped like a gas tank. The viewer lies in a bed and is inserted into the interior of the spherical container lined with rows of colored light. A technician manipulates the lights, using instructions provided by Turrell. As the scripted colors are projected and modified the viewer sees melting hues, flashing kaleidoscopic

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patterns and her entire body enveloped by the spectral variations. This symphony of indescribable color and pattern, according to Turrell, is not something that reveals. Instead, the experience itself is the revelation (Brown 1985). His Sensing Spaces heighten the viewer’s experience by virtue of how he conveys form, depth and mass with the light we see. Unlike the viewing experience of the sky space where natural light and the environment interact, the sensing spaces, like the Perceptual Cell projects, use artificial light to engage the viewer. His earlier Catso, Red (1967), for instance, demonstrates how light within a corner space might project the illusion of a physically present sculpted cube. The image was projected across a corner in such a way that from a distance there appears to be a cube floating off the floor, yet in some manner attached to the corner of the space. Actually there is no cube present, only light. The blue Fargo (1967) installation is an example of how Turrell uses light to dematerialize a wall and to change the viewer’s relationship to physical space. Contemplating the number of ways Turrell manipulates light, one can’t help but be struck by how this artist relates his use of light as a medium to heighten one’s experience with the rituals of older cultures and to pre-modern ideas about light and revelation. For example, the way he manipulates natural light in his constructed environments brings to mind edifices such as the Roman Pantheon with its oculus in the ceiling. The Pantheon was a building used for pagan rituals before the birth of Christ. Turrell’s work with artificial light also brings to mind how light was used to enhance the viewing of objects like the Wilton Diptych, a small, personal medieval altarpiece. While the narrative story one brings to this gilded work is far removed from Turrell’s strategy, there is a striking similarity between this small religious piece and Turrell’s work when we look at how this unknown artist integrated candlelight into the viewer’s experience. Viewing the altarpiece by candlelight one can observe that this artist appreciated all that the light would add to — and subtract from — the viewer’s experience with this object intended for personal devotion. Turrell does as well. I would propose that it is important to reflect on the role of the qualities that distinguish Turrell’s projects from those put forth by earlier peoples. These include his use of electricity, his use of contemporary technology and his use of contemporary scientific knowledge of vision and perception. According to Turrell, these differences should not obscure that he aims to facilitate higher levels of experience and that this goal, to his mind, in effect creates a bond

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between his work and practices of earlier societies. As he has explained, although he often uses state-of-the-art science and state-ofthe-art technology, his goals are not scientific. In his words: I have an interest in the invisible light, the light perceptible only in the mind. A light which seems to be undimmed by entering of the senses. I want to address the light that we see in dreams and make spaces that seem to come from those dreams and which are familiar to those who inhabit those places. Light has a regular power for me. What takes place in viewing a space is wordless thought. (Brown 1985)

7. Conclusion Interestingly, contemporary projects both stimulate and simulate reality. As a result, they allow us experientially to learn from reality, to question the reality we know and to interact with realities we often lose sight of on a day-to-day basis. Turrell attempts to make us more aware of how we perceive our world, while the CAVE environment changes all of the rules. In both the viewer is brought into an evolving experience through the use of technologies designed to bring an alternative world into existence. When the artists integrate historical, philosophical and artistic references they once again establish that we can explore art history from a variety of vantage points. Turrell aims to create a bond between his work and practices of earlier societies. In doing so he strives to intensify and heighten the viewer’s subjective experience, much as religious work did in the past. The CAVE attempts to be sensitive to how the viewer responds and, in doing this, expands on work begun in the nineteenth century when photographers and visual scientists collaborated on explorations of stereovision and sequential motion. Many of these trajectories correspond to research evident in science laboratories. For example, neurologically we can explore this relationship in terms of artistic cognition. We can compare the artist’s brain processes with the formal work, an aspect that I deal with in the next chapter. We can also study the brain processes of participants. Proposing that we look at neurological data, I might add, is not to infer we can derive a one-to-one correspondence. Rather, what is of utmost importance is that whatever the motivation is that brings the artist to create and motivations vary significantly, all art shares one characteristic: the artist’s motivations must be given form if there is to be any art (or artists) for us to evaluate at all.

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The cognitive processes that accompany the development and appreciation of art inform how (and whether) an art object or process is successful, although success is not generally defined by applying the kind of criteria required to validate a scientific experiment. The rubrics, in my experience, are more pluralistic. While beauty might be an important quality for some artists, others incline to social commentary, religious ideas, sexual arousal, marketable genre, or products that will shock, horrify or disgust viewers. This variety underlines that, while individual artists might characterize their work as emotionally, spiritually, or formally driven, there is no overall agreement. Only that a form is produced is indisputable. As a result, while laws such as grouping, binding, contrast extraction, allocation of attention, symmetry, etc. are useful in scientifically understanding perception, even an artist’s perception in a general sense, we lose a great deal neurologically if we push aside what the artist’s experience as an artist is.

Chapter 11 Perception, Visual Art and the Brain The notion of experimental art, therefore, is meaningless. All art is experimental or it isn’t art. Art is research, whereas entertainment is a game or conflict. Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema

Stories abound throughout history explaining the difficulty in characterizing what creativity is and where it comes from. One legend relates that the Greek painter Protogenes, in painting a depiction of Ialysos (the eponymous founder of a city on Rhodes) had so much difficulty rendering the foam on the dog’s mouth that he threw his sponge at the picture. The sponge struck the area in which he had labored in vain and as a result of his emotional reaction, he achieved exactly the effect he wanted. This kind of tale is one of the many myths we can point to when pondering the varieties of conclusions that surround the mystery of art. In some cases, particularly before the ease of reproduction provided by photography, thinkers who had little or no visual knowledge of the art they discussed contrived views about art and aesthetics. Others, who were familiar with the objects they studied, adopted rhetorical techniques and theories following the academic norm. Both approaches contrast with artists themselves, who are as unlikely to distinguish theory from praxis as they are to produce theoretical statements to explain their work. Thus, as a whole, the composite reveals the difficulty in defining art in a singular fashion. In addition, as is explained in the chapter on synesthesia, connections among the arts confuse the issues further. In that chapter I noted that researchers have found that visual, musical and language-based functions are processed in different areas of the brain. This highlights yet another concern: characterizing processing in terms of localization or specific modalities such as visual art, music and language-based projects still leaves us with a rather narrow focus and yet not all art is media specific. Robust conclusions need to incorporate specific modalities as well as the evidence that art is expansive. In other

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words, studies that distinguish language, music and visual art aid us most in understanding work that has an easily characterized foundation. Yet, much of the work now being done by contemporary artists, particularly those using novel technologies, offers a sharp contrast to historical categories. Virtual reality, intermedia and multimedia projects are among those that tend to stimulate all of our sensory modalities. We must acknowledge that the exciting results of these projects come about when the artist (or team) translate music into images, images into dynamic forms, or attempt to move one who engages with the art into a space in which the person cannot differentiate between sensory modalities. The effectiveness of the various experiments in encouraging a cross-modal sensory experience both within an artist and in those who engage with the art points to the question of how we define art. I see this as a particularly potent question in light of the new scientific studies being conducted on art, the brain and how the brain and art praxis are connected. Given this, I’d like to introduce specific examples and to place recent empirical studies within a broader historical framework. This includes distinguishing praxis from theory and examining the difficulty in bracketing subjective and objective components within an experimental framework. 1. Historical Background The earliest description of the cerebral cortex comes from Edward Smith’s surgical papyrus, written about 1700 BCE. It is said to be a copy of an older surgical treatise dating back to the thirtieth century BCE when this author systematically describes medical treatments. Indeed, the word for the brain comes up in several cases and is underlined at least once (Gross 1998). Still the Egyptians, like many early thinkers in Mesopotamia, Babylon and India, considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body, the seat of the mind and the center of intellectual activities (Gross 1998). It is likely that the Greek medical writer and philosopher-scientist Alcmaeon of Croton (fl. 450) first identified the brain as the site of cognition and aimed to distinguish it from perception, although not all followed his line of thought. Plato did to some degree. Nonetheless, the teleological nature of his writing is hardly compelling in terms of science. Plato’s theory, primarily contained in the Timaeus, concludes that the soul, which he sees as prior to the body, is divine and comes from the soul of the universe. Plato divides the soul into three parts, designating reason (or intellect) as the highest component. Seeing it as

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immortal, Plato designates it as the controller of the rest of the body. The mortal soul includes the higher division, which lies in the heart and a lower division that Plato places in the liver. One fascinating element is Plato’s use of the neck as a separator of the heart and the brain, to insure that the brain is not polluted. Overall Plato’s rejection of biology in favor of teleology offers an interesting contrast to Aristotle’s elevation of the heart over the brain. Although more empirical than Plato in most cases, with regard to cognition, Aristotle systematically denied the controlling role of the brain in sensation and movement. In neither case do we find a clinical approach. The ideas of Alcmaeon and Hippocrates heralding the dominance of the brain in mental life, ultimately prevailed (more or less), although debates over heart versus mind continued. Both instigators were practicing physicians and although they recognized the role of the brain through clinical studies, they provided no evidence of systematic experiments. Instead the accidents of nature provided their information about brain functions. Actual studies on the brain and nervous systems appear with Galen in the second century. These ideas about the brain as the seat of cognition were transmitted to the Arab world, medieval thinkers and Renaissance Europe through Plato’s Timaeus. These ideas, however, continued to exist alongside Aristotle’s view of the hegemony of the heart. 2. Mapping the Artistic Brain The use of diagrams and illustrations to advance study is evident in many historical documents. Publications like Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), an early anatomical publication presents both detailed studies of the brain and human anatomy. Published the same year as On the Revolutions (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium) by Copernicus, when he lay on his deathbed; the two contemporaries are often paired in historical surveys. The Willis brain, drawn by English architect Christopher Wren in 1664, further shows the use of images to advance research. More recently, the neuroanatomical drawings of Ramón y Cajal’s have accompanied his extraordinary research. Here too we see how representations might aid comprehension. Perhaps the artist we are most likely to associate with the brain is Leonardo da Vinci. His interest in the structure of the eye, brain and nervous system is well documented, as is his fascination with visual phenomena that related to his work as a painter (illusions, contrast, color). Indeed his conclusion that painting was the highest art can

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easily be related to these studies. His drawings, while not generally termed medical illustrations, can be seen in this light. These studies show that Leonardo’s talents came together in all of his work and his breathtaking achievements remind us of how this advanced thinker was also a man of his time. For example, his thinking about the brain shows the impact of historical discussions designating the heart as the source of the “vital spirit.” The idea was that it heated the blood that then flowed through the body and carried the “vital spirit.” The mythology surrounding this view was great and the idea that it was just another muscle was never considered. Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of his anatomical drawings is the harmony we find displayed among his many concerns. They highlight his extraordinary artistic talent, his technical precision and a mind seeking knowledge on its own terms. Each is exquisite as a drawing, but yet tells us so much more. Some of this is conveyed by Leonardo’s goals. We can see his depth when comparing one of his best-known anatomical drawings, of the right vagus of an old man, with his description of his subject: And this old man, a few hours before his death told me that he had passed one hundred years and that he found nothing wrong with his body other than weakness. And thus while sitting upon a bed in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, without any movement or other sign of any mishap he passed out of his life. And I made an anatomy of him in order to see the cause of so sweet a death. This I found to be a fainting away through lack of blood to the artery that nourishes the heart and other parts below it, which I found very dry, thin and withered. This anatomy I described very diligently and with great care owing to the absence of fat and tumors, which greatly hinder the recognition of the parts. (Gross 1998: 107-109)

Of course, anatomy had a low position in the medieval hierarchy and dissection was long condemned. The tide began to turn around in the sixteenth century, when Leonardo worked and medicine, like art, began to aspire for a definition that would elevate the profession. We know that Leonardo performed about two dissections a year and often visited the slaughterhouse in an effort to better comprehend how the internal structure lent itself to the body’s form. By the seventeenth century we have many prints and paintings of public dissections such as Rembrandt’s (1632) Anatomy Lesson Of Professor Nicolaes Tulp and Anatomy of Dr Deijman (1656). The Dr. Deijman piece is particularly intriguing due to the creative license in the composition. While it appears the doctor is lifting the brain out of

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a natural looking cadaver we now know that Rembrandt used enormous creative license with the figure. A member of the team who researched the painting, Garey, explains that “To show the feet and brain in the same dimensional image is a work of genius but physically impossible. As our photographer discovered, the only way to record them together in the same shot was to stand on a ladder above the body.” (Reed 2000) Overall this study found that Rembrandt had eliminated at least a cubic meter of space between the patient’s head and feet while the anatomist holding the falx, or scythe (the membrane which separates the two hemispheres of the brain) had twisted it to face the audience and make it appear attached. Although it is physically impossible for the body to fit together as Rembrandt constructs it, the scene appears correct to the eye when we view it. What is breathtaking is that research now shows that the artist first created the work in his head in two halves. It was not an accurate representation of surgical anatomy. The liberties Rembrandt takes with this image to some degree can be conceived as representative of a climate in which artists in general were becoming increasingly expressive. 3. Neurology and Consciousness The Rembrandt piece further reminds us that, since people have known of consciousness, they have wondered if consciousness depends on the function of the brain or the heart. Dr. Diejman also reminds us of the definitions of consciousness, which range from the levels of cultural awareness to the idea of regaining consciousness when coming out of a coma. Indeed research has advanced a number of correlations between states of consciousness and functions of the brain. This domain includes defining how wide-awake consciousness contrasts with different attitudes of mind and sleep patterns, perception, synesthesia and more specialized functions of integrating patterns of sensory experience and organizing motor patterns. All of these examples also bring to mind that the relationship between consciousness and creativity is a subtle one. As repeatedly noted, Plato, who disdained the arts, nonetheless saw creativity as divinely inspired. Others have closely linked the praxis of art with that of science. For example, George K. York (2004), a neurologist, has pointed out that “thinking neurologically is a creative act in the same way that thinking artistically, musically or scientifically is creative . . . neurologists may not be able to say where the artistic process is located in the brain, but they can at least have the pleasure of knowing

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what it is to be creative.” Equally fascinating are the many neurologists who combine art and the brain in their work. Charles Bell, for example was best known as an anatomist, physiologist and neurologist, yet his skills as an artist had a major impact on medicine and anatomical training in art. Indeed, his success in illustrating the body and offering medical descriptions communicated information that would have otherwise been hard to capture when he lived, before the advent of photography (Gardner-Thorpe 2004). More recently, we can find commonalities expressed in the drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the neuroanatomist who shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Camillo Golgi, “in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.” His memoirs (Recollections of My Life: My Childhood and Youth) speak of how he had a natural impulse toward painting and drawing from a young age, although his father urged him to choose another occupation: I was eight or nine years old when I already had the irresistible mania of staining papers, smearing the village’s recently rendered walls, doors and facades with all kind of doodles . . . but as I could not draw at home, because my parents considered painting a heinous distraction . . . I used to go the country . . . and I copied carts, horses, villagers and as many landscape features as I considered interesting . . . which I treasured them as if they were gold dust . . . and translating my fantasies to drawings, with my pencil as a magic wand, I created the world I wished, inhabited by all those things that nurtured my dreams . . . everything passed through my restless pencil, which did not dwell much in local custom scenes . . . terrible military incidents were my specialty and thus, in no time at all, I covered the sank boats’ walls, of saved shipwrecked people in a board, of ancient heroes covered with shiny armors and protected by plumed helmets, of catapults, walls, ditches, horses and cavalrymen.

Cajal’s opus Textura del Sistema Nervioso del Hombre y los Vertebrados (1894-1904),63 which provided the foundation of modern neuroanatomy, offered a detailed description of nerve cell organization in the central and peripheral nervous system of many different animal species. It was illustrated by Cajal’s renowned 63

This book made available to the international scientific community in its French translation, Histologie du Système Nerveux de l’Homme et des Vertébrés, (translated by L. Azoulay, published in 1911 by Maloine, Paris; the English translation, by N. and L.W. Swanson, was published in 1994 by Oxford University Press).

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drawings, which for decades (and even nowadays) are reproduced in neuroscience textbooks. His scientific drawings include an aesthetic that enhances their significance and reminds us of his love of art. We can additionally identify a number of neurological references and misconceptions within the literature. For example, it is often claimed that the disease depicted in Masaccio’s St. Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow is polio. Yet this is one of several instances where the polio label is probably unlikely since the first known epidemic of this disease dates to the eighteenth century. This is not to say it was impossible since there is a consensus that cases of polio, if not sporadic epidemics, pre-date recorded history. As evidence of the early existence of poliomyelitis, Paul (1971) and other writers offer an Egyptian stele (stone carving) dating between 1580 and 1350 B.C. that shows a young man with an atrophied leg, which looks like a limb deformity that might have been caused by polio. However, it was not until the late 1700's, however, that the existence of polio was described with any degree of certainty. After numerous 18th century outbreaks, a British physician named Michael Underwood provided the first clinical description, referring to polio as "debility of the lower extremities" (Paul, 1971, p. 23). Similarly, there are so many stories surrounding van Gogh that separating the reality from the mythology is an art in itself. F. Clifford Rose’s careful analysis offers an outline of possible diagnosis of his aberrant behavior (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, substance abuse, etc.) (2004b). It is illuminating to see the spectrum of responses people have brought to this artist’s colorful life. On the other hand, some neurological research has captivated artists. Many have reached far beyond the theoretical and metaphorical arguments that predominate in the consciousness and humanities literature. Arthur Van Gehuchten (1861-1914), a pioneer in the use of cinematography for documenting clinical neurology, has provided source material for artistic work by the Belgium composer Renaud De Putter and others (Aubert, 2004). Other examples remind us of how easily biases become entrenched. Innumerable sources have suggested that El Greco suffered from astigmatism (which would have caused his retinal images to be taller and narrower than they should be). The astigmatism argument was long cited to account for the elongation of his painted saints. Perceptual laboratory experiments, however, have documented the fallacy in this argument. Anstis (2002), for example, studied the problem by turning his students into “artificial El Grecos,” fitting them with a special lens that stretched the visual scene

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horizontally. When asked to draw a freehand square, they drew a tall, thin El Greco rectangle. However, when asked to copy a square, they copied it perfectly. He concluded that if El Greco were astigmatic, he would have seen a distorted world for years, not minutes, so by persuading a volunteer to wear the El Greco lens for two days and make frequent drawings he was able to see that her copied squares were always perfect copies. Her freehand squares were at first tall, thin rectangles, but they gradually became squarer as she adapted to the lens and after two days her freehand squares were perfectly square despite the lens. His conclusion was that even if El Greco were astigmatic, this would not have affected his paintings. The distortions arose from an artistic choice, not from a visual defect. J. R. Heron offers an alternative scientific explanation to El Greco’s elongated style when he asks about “El Greco and muscular dystrophy?” in his article by this name. He argues that the distortions in El Greco’s paintings might not be artistic license so much as deriving from the neuromuscular disorders of the in-patients of St. James Hospital, Toledo. The examples include the dystrophic facial muscles of San Sebastian, the hand wasting of Santiago el Mayor, the pes cavus of the angel in The Crucifixion, the peroneal muscular atrophy of St John in The Baptism of Christ and the facioscapulohumeral dystrophy in Adoration of the Shepherds. There are also complex cases that show that interpreting an artist’s work in terms of the fashions of his time may fit well with the trends we see within, but are as easily explained by the realities of an artist’s life. This is the case when we look at an artist like Edward Degas. It is frequently said that the looser and coarser style he developed reflects the influence of Impressionism on his practice. An alternative is proposed in Michael Marmor’s Degas Through His Own Eyes (2002), which shows how this artist’s visual acuity changed as he matured. Marmor, an ophthalmologist, reminds us that it is generally agreed that Edward Degas had a condition called retinopathy. His study of Degas’ condition convincingly refutes the artist’s heart-felt personal conviction that the differences in vision are of no importance to the artist. As Marmor explains, despite Degas’ assertion that inner vision determined the nature of an artist’s work, this artist’s decreasing visual acuity resulted in precisely the kind of crudeness in composition clinically associated with retinopathy. This is particularly evident when we compare the flawless rendering of his early work with the grotesque figures he painted at the end of his life. One mature painting Marmor discusses at length is Madame Alexis Rouart and Her Children. Despite many modeling sessions, the faces of the

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figures in the painting look deformed in the finished painting. Marmor uses computer simulations to evaluate the idea that the images might have looked quite correct to the painter. 4. The Artist’s Brain It has only been since the end of the 20th century that we have had the tools to even coarsely consider the objective and subjective in terms of the brain. One particularly relevant case study is Jonathan I., the color-blind artist who has become well known through the writings of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, earlier introduced in the section on synesthesia. Looking in more detail, we see that his history as an artist and that the history of an individual has a tremendous impact on how the brain develops (Sacks 1995). Moreover, although Jonathan I. was not an artist who worked with state-of-the-art technologies, it was due to the state-of-the-art technological advances in brain research that it was possible for scientists to learn about his brain as well as how a life-altering event affected his art and his brain. As explained earlier, Jonathan I. had been a painter who had always relished color and the paintings were done before an automobile accident left him unable to see color at all. After his accident he moved into a new artistic phase, as strong and productive as anything in his long artistic career. The black-and-white paintings produced at this time were highly successful and people commented on his creative renewal when seeing this new “phase” he had “evolved” into. His success is perhaps most meaningful when we reflect on the fact that very few people knew that this new phase was anything other than an expression of his artistic development. They failed to recognize that it was brought about by a calamitous loss (Sacks 1995). But the road to renewal was not a simple affair. After the accident, Mr. I.’s first impulse was to paint in color anyway and with his achromic vision he produced some rather unintelligible results. As Sacks explains, Mr. I.’s initial sense of helplessness gave way to a sense of resolution to live and paint in a black and white world as fully as he could. Sacks further explains that Mr. I.’s resolution was strengthened by a singular experience about five weeks after his accident. Sacks reports that Mr. I conveyed that he was driving to his studio one morning and, saw the sunrise over the highway, the blazing reds all turned into black. Mr. I. explained; “The sun rose like a bomb, like some enormous nuclear explosion,” and he asked himself “Had anyone ever seen a sunrise in this way before?”

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Inspired by the sunrise, Mr. I started painting again. He started, indeed, with a black and white painting that he called Nuclear Sunrise. Mr. I later explained this first painting by saying; “I felt if I couldn’t go on painting, I wouldn’t want to go on at all.” (Sacks 1995: 14) Once Jonathan I. resumed painting, his early black and white painterly efforts were filled with emotion. Then he turned to representational themes, although he had not worked in this mode for many years. Sometimes he attempted to show his black and white world to others, as his picture of fruit that look leaden illustrates. At other times Mr. I. performed tasks. These tasks allowed others to compare his way of seeing with work composed by people with normal color vision and drawings of red-green color-blind subjects. He even experimented with deliberately bringing color he could not see into specific areas of his non-representational work. What needs to be stressed is that, since he continued to paint, researchers were able to use his brain to explore how a brain could adapt to radically new modes of expression and new ways of seeing. Mr. I.’s commitment to painting after his small stroke is also a part of the stories of others. More recently, while conducting a class critique in May 1997, the Berkeley artist and professor, Katherine Sherwood was struck suddenly with a searing headache. Thirty seconds later, the right half of her body was paralyzed. A thin-walled collection of arteries in the left side of her brain had collapsed and she suffered a massive stroke. Only 44 years old at the time, Sherwood was determined to return to painting and has done so. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Sherwood’s story is the degree to which she, like Mr. I., was resolute in her determination to continue her artistic activities. In this case she did so despite finding her painting hand was paralyzed. Eventually she returned to teaching as well. Sherwood now claims that, although her stroke erased some skills, it also led her to learn new ones, imparting a new objectivity to her work. Other research has compared novice and expert skills. Her prestroke paintings show a somewhat linear approach to artmaking and, what is perhaps rather extraordinary, a strong interest in scientific images of other people’s brains. After her stroke, images of her own angiograms became a major force in her work. She has spoken of how she fell in love with the angiograms on seeing them, asked for them and began to incorporate these images into her paintings. Learning to paint with her left-hand and working with a rolling chair on wheels, Sherwood like Mr. I. was resolute in her determination to continue painting. When she returned to her studio, moreover, she tackled unfinished paintings, caring most about simply

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completing them. Sherwood has said that “It didn’t even matter what they looked like,” for she knew how much she wanted to resume painting and ultimately resume teaching. Looking at her paintings in terms of her life history, we can conclude that when she painted with her right hand her work was more controlled and that her left hand provides her with “a freer painting hand.” Visually, we can also see her palette has shifted. Finally, it is important to note that she claims her stroke erased some skills, but she also believes it led her to learn new ones, such as a new objectivity about her work. Chuck Close is a third artist who adapted to an event that could have ended his career. Close calls it the “thirty minutes that changed his life.” Briefly, shortly before Christmas in 1988 Close was stricken with intense chest pains. Then a convulsion left him paralyzed from the neck down. After six weeks in intensive care, he began a program of rehabilitation during which Alex II was the first painting he completed. To do this, he worked from a Polaroid of his friend, the painter Alex Katz, which he had shot two years earlier. During an interview, Close confided that the photograph itself was not particularly sad, but the resultant painting ended up expressing the kind of conflicting emotions that he himself was feeling. One aspect of Close’s story that particularly stands out is that he has said, unlike many he met in rehabilitation, he was lucky that he had a profession he passionately wanted to return to as quickly as possible. It wasn’t a question of whether he could paint, but how to get back to painting. Yet, as his work shows best, his achievements since he came face-toface with debilitating paralysis follow a trajectory of his earlier work. As a result, it is as easy to speak of his later work in terms of stylistic development, as to relate it to the traumatic event that left him a quadriplegic. Broadly speaking, Close continues to explore frontal portraiture. Like Jonathan I. and Katherine Sherwood, he sought solutions that would allow him to continue painting. While the life-altering event in Close’s life was due to a rare spinal artery collapse, not a neurological event, he, too, was determined to continue practicing art and pursuing his career. In Close’s case we find that the loss of motor skills underscores the degree to which the brain, the nervous system and our emotional life are connected. His case also speaks to one of the ways in which artmaking is very much a practice in which the mind and the body are connected. Finally, it is important we not lose sight of what we learn when we explore the cognitive processes of artists who have not been challenged by a physically life-altering event. Earlier, when

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considering synesthesia, I discussed why it is important that cognitive theories recognize the degree to which we have re-defined traditional, media-specific characterizations of art. It is important to add that technology has also enhanced our ability to study artists who continue to perfect their work in a chosen medium. For example, studies have shown how brain processing of artists and non-artists compare when performing the same task. To date, this research has offered preliminary information about brain plasticity, intuition, intelligence, brain structure in relation to art practice and how the brain of both the artist and the viewer respond to art. Examining these studies has allowed us to theorize about how the eye, for example, evaluates and captures as the artist produces, as well as how the hand coordinates with the processes of the eye and brain. One particularly noteworthy study was conducted on the British portrait painter Humphrey Ocean. In this case, researchers used movement sensors and PET and fMRI mappings to track the interactions of the eye, hand and brain.64 Such scans show the nonartist is activating more of the visual area while Ocean has a greater activation in the right middle frontal area of the brain. This part of the brain is usually related with more complex association and manipulation of visual forms as well as planning the fine motor responses of the hand (Riding 1999; Solso 1999). Let me emphasize that this study is quite preliminary, since only one artist was used and, in this sense, the results are more informative than conclusive. Nonetheless the study, particularly when combined with other research, does suggest that experimentally discoverable distinctions between artists and non-artists exist and that additional research could offer a tangible basis for expanding our knowledge of

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Positron Emission Tomography (PET) was developed in the mid-1970s. It was the first scanning method to give functional information about the brain. The technology does this through measuring the emission of positrons from the brain after a small amount of radioactive isotopes, or tracers, have been injected into the blood stream. The result is a three-dimensional map with the brain activity represented by colors. This technique has proven extremely useful in finding out just how we think and it is used in research on brain functioning. The fMRI, on the other hand, is a technique for determining which parts of the brain are activated by different types of physical sensation or activity, such as sight, sound or the movement of a subject's fingers. This method of “brain mapping” is achieved by setting up an advanced MRI scanner so that the increased blood flow to the activated areas of the brain shows up on Functional MRI scans. Often the PET and fMRI are combined in order to bring a picture of both structural form and process to the analysis.

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how an artist’s creative interests inform brain development over the course of a creative lifetime. 5. Varieties of Analyses When Degas credits his art to his inner vision despite the clinically documented problems with his visual acuity, he reminds us of the problems often raised when subjective data is elevated in consciousness discussions. Different ways of seeing are frequently characterized in terms of optical images, as the well-known vase/profile illusion. Yet the tension between the vase and the profile we see here does not accommodate the kind of change that takes us beyond the options that are available given what we have been able to study with the tools available to us. For example, as explained in the earlier treatment of synesthesia, contemporary tools have allowed us to move beyond former theoretical assumptions about this modality in ways not thought possible in the debates of earlier eras. Indeed, contemporary brain research is doing much more than the synesthesia studies alone suggest. Extensive experimentation is providing new frames of reference we can biologically link to complex tasks such as visual attentional control, memory storage and language interpretation. This data is useful in light of how these technologies now allow us to map human cortical processing with millimeter and millisecond resolution and follow chemical processes in normal individuals. Recent technological advances have also made it feasible to create pictures of our brains as we think, learn, read and visualize. As a result and for the first time, scientists are able to render certain aspects of thought visible, by recording the physical effects of brain activity. These images can generate descriptions of mental processes, show active and dormant areas of the brain and show that component operations can be precisely and visually specified. The fact that the images are formed over time by an orderly set of operations that includes, for example, placing the parts of the images in their proper relationship and scanning the content for specific features (Posner & Raichle, 1997) gives the images some reach. More subtle realities are still beyond our definitional reach. For example, we cannot identify why or how the discovery of X-rays made it possible for researchers to see a domain not accounted for in earlier philosophical, religious and scientific investigations. This idea of emergence is extensively debated within Consciousness Studies and is a catch-all term used to speak of this type of advancement. In a

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larger sense, the debates surrounding the concept of emergence raise the question of whether it is possible to design an experiment that can in fact generate a plan capable of mapping, cataloging and characterizing possibilities not even imagined. On the counterside, the X-rays led to the discovery of the various datadriven, non-optical technologies Figure 4: The Rubin vase/profile illusion is an ambiguous researchers now depend on to figure/ground illusion. This is map and study the brain. This because it can be perceived either use of the technology to map as two black faces looking at each and monitor our brains indicates other, in front of a white that even if we can not quantify background, or as a white vase on how the technology emerged a black background. The although once we developed a vase/profile illusion was made famous by Danish psychologist new means to access data, it Edgar Rubin in 1915. Its pedigree, was possible for logic and however, is much older. Examples intelligent problem-solving to can be found in 18th century creatively extend how we know French prints, in which the and use available information. portraits not only define a vase, In other words, cognitive usually in a naturalistic setting, but the profiles themselves differ, each insight is hard to explain. Even representing a particular person. examples that explain how a cognitive insight can include both the parallel processing we associate with the vase/profile illusion (see Figure 4) and something that emerges are difficult to capture in concrete terms. In an earlier chapter, I introduced Sir Charles Wheatstone’s work with binocularity in the nineteenth century. As mentioned, he provided the empirical grounds for rejecting the then-prevalent notion of binocular combination when he introduced his stereoscope to show that our eyes can accurately merge two slightly different paired drawings into a singular form. With this instrument, which was designed to replicate the measurable distance between our two eyes, he was able to convincingly demonstrate that a viewer could have a visual experience of seeing a three-dimensional form when actually looking at two slightly different paired drawings on a flat surface. This technology

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evolved and is now incorporated into devices used in virtual reality and other forms. We also find the concept in art literature and a continued interest in scientific research with stereovision. Many thinkers have examined Wheatstone’s stereoscope in terms of popular entertainment (Crary 1992, 1999), in effect losing sight of his influence on providing a firm basis through which visual studies could proceed. Similarly, today we find interpretive conclusions of the scientific literature that blur technical distinctions. Without retaining a sense of how incremental changes within experimental science that add to our understanding differ from one another, we easily confuse the slow pace of scientific clarification. For example, Beyond Geometry: Experimental Form 1940-70, an exhibition catalog for a recent show, compares a painting by François Morellet, Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using the Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory with Béla Julesz’s random-dot stereogram, both created in 1960 (Peternák 2004). As Peternák’s essay points out, the superficial similarity between the two images belies significant differences. Morellet was concerned with a systematic method of image making. He consistently employs this method and is interested in the results. Julesz, on the other hand, is after an image that clarifies our process of visual perception. Until we observe the picture surface in the correct way we cannot decipher it. By using uniform, randomly distributed dots, Julesz eliminated the depth cues that are inherent in recognizable images. Essentially what he did was to first create a rectangle of randomly arranged dots. Using a selection of dots that make up a small shape, he then created a new rectangle identical to the original rectangle, shifting the small shape to the left to introduce a binocular disparity cue. When we view the two rectangles together as a stereo pair, the image of the circle appears to float above the background. In 1979 Christopher W. Tyler discovered how to apply the offset scheme incorporated into a single image. This was the birth of the black and white, single-image, random-dot stereogram. These computer-generated images are most commonly done as random dot patterns and well known due to the popularity of the “Magic Eye” pictures that were developed in 1991 by the programmer Tom Baccei and artist Cheri Smith, with the help of programmer Bob Salitsky. The charm of autostereograms tends to mask their experimental value. In essence, this is that an embedded image can be discovered only when the eyes can be controlled to find the state in which pattern can be fused by the brain. More specifically, the random-dot stereogram speaks to the kind of active seeing discussed in terms of

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artistic process. Earlier I introduced Hambourg’s comments on the concept of active seeing when commenting on the exceptional visual quality in Carleton Watkins’ photography of what Americans call the “Old West”. To reiterate, it is the kind of visual concentration that one assumes allowed van Eyck to find his way to oil paint. It is also comparable to the experimental visual quality that Cézanne brought to his daily practice of painting. In the case of the stereogram, however, the task requiring active seeing takes another form. With the autostereogram the viewer must fuse a pattern that has no tangible image within it in order to see an embedded image that comes to the fore due to the algorithmic equation used to generate the pattern. Although most people with normal vision can eventually perceive the image, one cannot have success as a passive viewer. Christopher Tyler, the inventor of the autostereogram, explains that the information from each eye has to be connected so as to provide a fused representation in the brain of a single region in space and that one must dissociate convergence (the lines of sight coming together from different directions) and accommodation (the taughtness of the lenses) to do this (Tyler 1991). His point is that each eye must look independently of the other. Another key here is that patience is generally required to “see” the image embedded in the random dot pattern since the embedded image can only be seen when each eye sends the information to the brain in a form that allows the brain to construct a means for one to visualize the image we then see. The evidence of the eye/brain relationship is one of the most revolutionary aspects of the random-dot stereogram and the beauty of the discovery is that it empirically explained that neither eye alone can perceive the form because neither eye alone contains any hint of the stereoscopic form. This is not to say that we cannot advance beyond the Random Dot Stereogram (RDS). It was designed to eliminate all monocular depth cues and yet, as Tyler notes, one depth cue remains and is easily overlooked. This is the textural density, which is uniform and seems to indicate that no depth changes are occurring across the surface of the stereogram. However, in order to perceive the stereoscopic information appropriately the visual system must conclude that the texture densities on the nearer surfaces are finer than on the further surfaces. This is why the 3-dimensional image can be identified (Tyler 1991). An interesting and related element is that to demonstrate depth perception unambiguously, one must ask the observer whether the cyclopean figure appears in front or behind the surround for a series of different stereograms, rather than merely asking what form is visible.

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Interestingly enough, the autostereogram underlined a limitation embedded in a long-standing academic technique in art education. Teaching students to draw what one sees has long included the exercise of closing one eye and pointing a finger to help define forms and relationships. This has been a common exercise, despite the fact that we can easily show that we do not see this way at all. The simple experiment that offers us this knowledge only requires an individual to point a finger at a spot with one eye closed. Then open the closed eye and close the open one without moving the finger. The viewer quickly sees the finger is no longer pointing at the original spot. Likewise, with the autostereogram, we find that closing either eye does nothing to clarify the hidden result. It is only our eventual perception of the embedded image that indicates that we do not see the form per se with our eyes superficially. Given how the image is constructed, it is impossible to fake the perception for it is our brains that create the fused representation we eventually see when we fuse the slightly different strips that were used to create the random dot pattern (Tyler 1991: 41). Of course, the autostereogram is only one example of how an image can be used to update our knowledge base. I have introduced this example basically to offer a framework for thinking about some of the questions surrounding seeing, perception, narrative and theory today. Briefly, as discussed throughout this book, both the technological innovations and the philosophical paradoxes that surround seeing and perceiving have led me to stress the need to see that visual intersections of science and art have been a part of the cultural narrative in all periods. We may conclude by framing this in terms of the vast array and pluralistic nature of the literary and artistic forms that excite contemporary working artists, writers and theorists today. In summary, cognitive science research does not prove that a particular theory of perception should be applied to art. To the contrary, emerging information continues to broaden our understanding of visual cognition as well as artistic cognition. Cognitive science is a field that has effectively produced a coalition of disciplines primarily focused on furthering our understanding on the nature of the mind. While it is common knowledge that this quest to understand the nature of the mind is an old one, dating back to the philosophers of antiquity, there has been some measure of difficulty historically in defining how art and visual thinking are best positioned in relation to the nature of the mind. This difficulty, to my mind, has plagued the field of Consciousness Studies as well.

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6. Consciousness and the Brain The above examples accentuate that artists and brain studies have probed consciousness from a number of perspectives. As a psychological condition, consciousness is not easily placed. Artists themselves show that the subjective relationship they have with their work is incomplete without the physical activity they perform in doing the work. This experiential element is in part a relationship with materials they use in physical reality. Even still, the roots of consciousness as something subjective as opposed to objective run deep. First defined by the seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke as the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind, the concept of consciousness is (and was) variously considered. Some philosophers speak of it as a kind of substance, or “mental stuff,” quite different from the material substance of the physical world. Others are concerned with it as an attribute characterized by sensation and voluntary movement. There is also the tendency to equate it with spiritual ideas. All forms of questions arise within the debates. Are animals and men lower than a higher, spiritual reality? Is there a difference between the normal waking state of animals and men and their condition when asleep, in a coma, or under anesthesia? Is consciousness an act of the mind toward objects in nature, a continuous field or stream of essentially mental “sense data,” a modality we know through introspection, or something else entirely?65 Most early writers correlated observing consciousness with introspection, looking within one’s own mind to discover the laws of its operation. The limitations of the method became apparent when it was found that, because of differing preconceptions, trained observers in the laboratory often could not agree on fundamental observations. Indeed, the trajectory that is generally adopted as the boilerplate of the field explains that failure of introspection to reveal consistent laws led to the rejection of all mental states as proper subjects of scientific study. In behaviorist psychology, derived primarily from work of the American psychologist John B. Watson in the early 1900s, the concept of consciousness was irrelevant to the objective investigation of human behavior and was doctrinally ignored in research. With the idea that we now have tools capable of studying consciousness, many things changed. Still, I would assert that the early assumptions about 65

These modalities and the complex questions related to them are detailed more fully in my Nature Exposed to our Method of Questioning (Ione 2002).

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the mind and consciousness had already toned theories about art. Thus, for example, new studies have largely failed to fully consider how the consciousness of an artist might factor into her working process. By extension, the limited framework too often adopted was unable to ferret out how artistic consciousness might find its very nature changed by the art process itself. To continue to plug into the historical boilerplate, without acknowledging key theoretical weaknesses and oversights, would be to lose an opportunity to move beyond dualities that prevent the development of a more effective basis for understanding. As already emphasized, contemporary scholars must reckon with how to bring fields ranging from art, literature, music and philosophy together with neuroscience, psychophysics, robotics, linguistics and all of the other disciplines that are now included within the consciousness literature. The varied accounts of human modalities (rationality, perception, emotion and spirit) are strikingly contradictory and hypothetical as well. Throughout this book I have paired questions that have defined the dialogue between art, science, technology and consciousness with scientific research and technological advances that have aided in firming up some of our biases and resolving some long-standing philosophical conundrums. Among the biases discussed, the urge to speak about art in terms of rhetorical and philosophical methodologies seems most effectively to stymie efforts to re-evaluate historical theories. The vastness of what lies outside of the well-worn paths brings to mind W. J. T. Mitchell’s answer to the question; “What, after all, can fit inside the domain of visual studies?” He concludes: Not just art history and aesthetics, but scientific and technical imaging, film, television and digital media, as well as philosophical inquiries into the epistemology of vision, semiotic studies of images and visual signs, psychoanalytic investigation of the scopic drive, phenomenological, physiological and cognitive studies of the visual process, sociological studies of spectatorship and display, visual anthropology, physical optics and animal vision and so forth and so on. (Mitchell 2002: 167, my italics)

It is not just that we live in a time quite unlike that of Alberti, Jan van Eyck or even Cézanne. We must also recall that their stories are often told in a way that reflects the degree to which western art has been associated with mimesis, representation and rhetoric. Mitchell’s words, too, highlight that we now work with forms of communication that would be totally foreign to these men. In our world of film, television and digital media we have created a global pluralism that

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began to circulate on a large scale with the entrance of photography. Its ability to record (and romanticize) distant places co-exists with the way these images challenge historical conclusions. Although trends changed the relationship between text and image before this, the powers of observation and training that mark the work from the fifteenth century onward can benefit greatly when we look at some recent research that aids in understanding art and the brain. In doing so, the alignment of the theoretical model with some kind of search for an overriding truth clarifies neither the amorphous nature of art or consciousness. The range of artists surveyed in this chapter serves to remind us that artistic projects and the artistic mind is broadly based. These artists, each of whom offers a perspective on art and the brain, also demonstrate that artistic consciousness is not fully addressed when we translate consciousness into an introspective scenario. Both the internal and the external offer information about the art and the artist. It is with the question of how we can gain better information about the viewer and the artistic process that I turn to conservation and restoration studies. Here we find the artistic mind revealed and cultural variables clarified as well.

Chapter 12 Viewing the Past: Conservation and Restoration Studies The history of painting is the history of visual ideas expressed in material form . . . Physical transformation begins the moment a painting is completed. Changes result from interaction of the artist’s materials, from exposure to light and ordinary atmospheric conditions, such as seasonal humidity changes, as well as from extraordinary conditions such as fire and floods. Human intervention causes other significant changes, as when offensive subject matter is removed or obscured; artworks are reworked in an updated style; ensembles are disassembled, as with altarpieces; canvases are cut down; and works are restored, even with the best intentions. Andrea Kirsh and Rustin S. Levinsen, Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies

In the first chapter I suggested that a visit to an art conservation laboratory would quickly expose a history hard to decipher from our first impression of a work. Here trained practitioners preserve artifacts that might range from paintings and woodcuts to photographs and projects constructed using pixels or video. Efforts to maintain these products, our human heritage, rely on tools that remind us that many technologies of recent origin allow us to look beneath the surface appearance of these objects. Moreover, technological advances can place us in a number of eras, as the range of apparatus artists use show. In the conservator’s laboratory we find instruments like infrared cameras as well as mortars, pestles and ground pigments. This variety allows us to envision the tantalizing ways in which the technologies of old now meet those of today. 1. Conservation and Preservation In the introduction to this book I wrote about how differently people might respond when visiting a conservation laboratory. All that an examination of X-ray images brings to light might fascinate an

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artist. Looking beneath the surface paint at the underdrawings of masters would tell us more about how a selection of artists planned and prepared their paintings. Studying their markings would establish where an historical painter changed his or her mind and how a virtuoso used layers of pigment to contrive striking effects. Art historians looking at the same data might notice errors in long established iconographic narratives. Equally thought provoking are the scientific experiments exposing pigments on an artist’s work that actually post-date that artist’s life. Discrepancies of this kind raise questions about authenticity and urge us to ask whether cultural fashions and tastes led to object alterations after a painter died, for example, or point to outright forgery. Contemporary communication options like the World Wide Web might then take us outside the laboratory and into distant collections, allowing us to further acquaint ourselves with related works found throughout the world. Although a “click of a mouse” visual does not reveal the aura of the actual work, a pictorial representation is more likely to acquaint us with the impact of a work as a whole than a linear sequence of descriptive words. Comparing the text with the image also gives us insight into proposed theories, often pointing out that the (often contradictory) definitions of art have fluctuated over time. The nuances would in turn remind us the art we admire when we see it within a museum or an exhibition space that has a long and complicated history. To respond to it as we see with a momentary glance is likely to lead to an evaluation divorced from the actual life of the piece. Knowledge of its history, moreover, is likely put to rest the idea that the aesthetic we see expresses a “time-honored truth.” While the aesthetic impact of a work is real, no doubt a first impression is unlikely to offer enough information to allow for the degree to which our artifacts are changing objects. In other words, compositional ideas are frequently altered as a work is developed. In addition, a finished piece is subject to change from the moment of completion. Natural aging, light, heat, humidity, accidental damage, ill-conceived conservation efforts and intrusive actions show this. The range of problems that relate to the maintenance and restoration of artwork are so vast that conservators need to have a versatile knowledge base and some awareness of matters related to both science and art. Indeed, collaborative efforts bring art practice, art history, physics, chemistry and other disciplines into the field as these experts allow us to both reach back into history with new eyes and develop tools to accommodate the preservation of forms unknown in historical time frames.

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Earlier I also pointed out that consciousness is an amorphous term, one that in the broadest sense includes: (a) the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself; (b) the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact, and; (c) awareness; especially: concern for some social or political cause. Conservation and restoration studies allow us to think of art in terms of all of these qualities. Providing a view of art’s “inside,” the conservator allows us to study artistic consciousness at work. One of the most exciting aspects of this field is that professional conservators are trained to think in terms of both innovation and preservation. Speaking broadly, they engage with the long history of artistic innovation. We know, for example, that the earliest artists, the first cave painters, mixed pigments they took from the earth with animal fat to make them stick to surfaces. Later, with the invention of oil paint, we see painters intuitively developing the capacity to present more optical effects. Oil’s increased brilliance, translucence and the intensity of color that resulted from an understanding of how to suspend the pigments in a layer of oil that also trapped light accounted for this shift, although pictorial interpretations were more likely to follow cultural trends. Printing technologies similarly have evolved. The advances from the woodcut and lithography to photography and the computer underscore a breadth of technological innovation. Video, intermedia and virtual reality are only now beginning to enter the conservationist laboratory. Creative minds, however, continue to reach beyond the feats of those who created before them. 2. Color Theory All of an artist’s materials, no matter how carefully used, are vulnerable to change over time. For example, pigment, the coloring agent in paint, has been prepared and bound in a number of ways through the centuries. In the early Middle Ages scribes, illuminators, painters and others ground their own pigments, perhaps with the aid of an assistant or workshop. The rise of experimental science and trade in the fourteenth century added colors to the palette and increased the production of synthetically manufactured paints (e.g., mercury-based vermilion and copper blues) and imports. Today we can identify pigments through chemical analysis and date them as well. Other techniques of analysis (e.g., radiospectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence reconstruction) also aid in identifying medieval recipes and distinguishing them from paints developed in later eras.

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Many painters who buy their tubed paints off the shelf today have little exposure to how artists prior to the nineteenth century worked with the finely ground minerals that were pulled from the earth and used for pigment. Although recent authors, (Philip Ball’s Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color is a good example), have expanded public awareness of studio procedures and factors of concern to historical artists, we still have a long way to go to integrate this information into views of art. Ball, for example, summarizes the nature of pigment in the ancient and medieval world, explaining that barely a dozen natural dyestuffs proved stable enough to be useful in the periods. This is remarkable when compared to the more than four thousand synthetic dyes that now bring color to our industrialized world. For example, Tyrian purple was drawn out of shellfish, blue indigo was the frothy extract of a weed, madder red came from a root, cochineal from an insect. With color so available and abundant today, even those within the art community have only a superficial awareness of what color is in painting, photography, synthetic pigments, digital displays and other areas in which technology and color have grown hand-in-hand. Art history and the public at large has also under-investigated relations between theories of mind and scientific views in relation to art practice and technological innovation. Painting was only raised to the status of a liberal art when people were convinced that this practice was not simply a craft; a technical and manual skill. The transition to the view that painting was an activity of the mind, which happened around the fourteenth and fifteenth century, occurred at a time when chemistry (then known as alchemy) found itself in a position similar to painting. Alchemists, too, were fighting the view that they were merely involved in a practical or technical art. When chemistry was recognized as a “full” science, (in the eighteenth century), both practical and theoretical approaches to art had already, in effect, lost sight of the degree to which some knowledge of chemistry aided artists. Ball, who is a chemist, offers a particularly refreshing revision of what has become the standard view of the relationship of alchemy and art. As he explains, alchemy’s principle influence on art is not as a source of cryptic symbolism. It is not the metaphysics of alchemy but the practical craft that had the greatest impact. Indeed, alchemy provided a theoretical framework that enabled experimenters to make some sense of the changes that the agencies of fire, water, air, vapors and time wrought on materials. This discussion is most welcome in light of the way the prevailing literature invariably stresses the symbolic and metaphysical elements

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of alchemy with little room for scientific understanding of materials and the learning of a craft. Moreover, the standard focus on layers of meaning and the narratives that support each layer, while easily fit into the tradition in which the mind is (and was) elevated, obscures the degree to which scientific knowledge, technological innovation and the ability to work materials effectively are equal partners in art as well as the effective use of color. Color theory, moreover, is one area that has been affected by new research into materials, although theory per se is not a subject of conservation and restoration. It seems that in the past many chemists who worked with color were inclined to advance color theories. One nineteenth century chemist who influenced the development of art immensely was the Frenchman, Michel Eugène Chevreul (17861889). In 1824 he was appointed Director of Gobelin, the famous carpet manufacturer, where he concentrated on the problems of dyeing. When evaluating why some blacks appeared stronger than others he discerned that they were chemically the same. This led him to conclude that the problem was related to optics, not the chemical properties of the pigments. His theories on how neighboring color tones influence one another was published his 1939, De la loi du contrast simultané des couleurs, a comprehensive attempt at providing a systematic basis to seeing colors. The work dealt with the so-called “simultaneous contrast” of colors and contained Chevreul’s famous law: “Two adjacent colors, when seen by the eye, will appear as dissimilar as possible.” This work later influenced Impressionism, Neoimpressionism and Orphic Cubism, with Robert Delaunay (18851941) using colored “simultaneous discs” in his paintings. Although theoretical, his ideas about colors and how artists might use them influenced artists such a Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) and Georges Seurat (1859-1891). During the twentieth century the German Chemist Nobel Laureate Wilhelm Ostwald worked with the German paint industry. His theory of color was hotly debated at the Bauhaus, where Klee and Kandinsky taught. Rather than relying on a philosophical hierarchy we benefit from bringing to light a number of implicit and metaphysical assumptions that have long been inscribed in art theory, as well as biases handed down to us from earlier authors. For example, oil paint is an older technology that is frequently left out of contemporary debates on art, science and technology. It does, however, allow us to recall that it was in the fifteenth century that this then novel technology captured the attention of artists. Jan van Eyck’s skill in handling the medium was a cognitive response that allowed for a technological advance and

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marked a turning point in European art, which no doubt accounts for Vasari crediting him with the invention of oil painting in his Lives of Artists (Vasari 1967). 3. Jan van Eyck Oil paint is a highly flexible medium. Countless types of brushstrokes are possible with this paint that is used as a thick impasto and for fine details. It tendency to dry slowly allows for careful blending and more easily suggests the shadow of three-dimensionality than mediums like egg tempera. These properties also allow the medium to communicate the reflective properties of different surfaces, from polished marble to dazzling jewels, from soft velvet to luminous highlights on hard metal plates. The medium of egg tempera, popular before oil painting was perfected, requires a different type of approach technically because the egg dries quickly. The results limit rendition of light, shade and color. As a result the paint is most suitable for bright colors and must be applied thinly in short, hatched strokes. Artists who worked with the matte egg tempera were immediately drawn to the medium’s ability to realistically model form, graduate tone and catch sheen. Both painters and art consumers were likewise enthralled by the visual evidence that oil-bound pigments could capture life-like qualities and add a life-like vitality to paintings. It was as if viewers could suddenly see, touch and feel texture, light, reflection and colors, as Jan van Eyck’s work of the fifteenth century shows particularly well. Details from paintings such as the Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432, where you see the emperor’s hand holding a clear, crystal wand or the convex mirror in the Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait, completed in 1434, are among the many that highlight his expertise. Although Jan van Eyck’s mastery of the oil technology led early art historians to credit him with the invention of oil paint, as mentioned above, we now know this was not the case (Dunkerton et al 1991; Roy 2000; White 2000). Indeed, the evidence that his legacy is part of a larger picture demonstrates the influence of innovation on art practice is in no way specific to our time. Innovative technologies emerged prior to oil paint and they continue to emerge today. Moreover, as history shows, artists are prone to employ materials new to them, in all periods, and driven to manipulate their tools, perhaps by nature, as they aspire to turn aspirations, inspirations, possibilities and ideas into forms of communication.

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In an earlier chapter I spoke of Jan van Eyck’s place in history and how early writers on art (Mander 1994: 54-57; Vasari 1967: 106-107) described oil painting as a sudden technical innovation that was discovered by Jan van Eyck after much experimentation. As I further explained, extensive documentation has since established that many painters were experimenting with oils, even as far back as the 8th century (Dunkerton et al 1991). Much of the evidence that documents that the invention of oil painting was a discovery that took place over a long period of time was not possible until recent conservation and restorative research had the means to expand formal analysis and thus add contextual information to our study of historical objects. Analysis exposed technique and, in the case of van Eyck, investigations have shown underdrawings that provide insight into how he thought through a work as he developed the final piece. When we look at Arnolfini’s raised hand in the double portrait with our eyes we do not see the many location changes the underpainting reveals. These details, invisible on the surface, clarify that van Eyck often made adjustments as he worked. Yet, it was only possible to hypothesize compositional changes by analyzing the surface. In van Eyck’s case, the Arnolfini Double Portrait does provide some information since the paint has faded in spots. One of the most noticeable alterations is found in the shadows we see in the area around Arnolfini’s foot. Evaluating the markings, it is apparent that other positions were considered for the foot as well as the hand. On the other hand, the delightfully painted and detailed little terrier (bottom center) was probably done freehand since there is no evidence of a dog under the painted surface. It also seems that Jan van Eyck made no adjustments after the initial painting. Other infrared studies of van Eyck’s work allow us to further look over his shoulder. The Annunciation in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC reveals a detailed sketch of the initial conception and several changes between the preliminary floor design and the painted one. Clearly, the rich decorations with the Old Testament references we now see on the floor were not his initial conception (Gifford 1999). What is particularly noteworthy is the way conservation and restorative research has simultaneously expanded formal analysis and added contextual information to our studies. They expose how works of art change during production and over the course of time will demonstrate a number of ways state-of-the-art tools allow interdisciplinary teams to probe the life of visual objects. The discussion explains that finished art is subject to environmental

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influences, purposeful change and accidental damage. Thus the reason for including this chapter is to show that contemporary visual crosscurrents are also evident in contemporary studies of how earlier people, including those we would term innovators, used the tools of their day. 4. Rembrandt and Night Watch Infrared technologies have shown with some specificity how working artists achieved their compositional goals. Jan van Eyck, Vermeer, Manet and Rembrandt are among the many well known painters examined by conservators to date. The evidentiary data allows academicians and art enthusiasts to look over an artist’s shoulder when discussing how particular objects were contrived. Compositional changes include (but are not limited to) a greater certainty of when an artist (1) added (or deleted) a figure, object, compositional device, etc., (2) re-defined a gesture or (3) adjusted the overall size of a work. On occasion cultural events stimulated research teams to study both an artist’s approach and cultural interventions. This was the case in the 1940s. Research had already shown that Rembrandt’s Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) had been misnamed Night Watch due to several earlier (and abrasive) applications of dark varnish. After the painting was damaged by a knife attack in 1975, restoration work was necessary. The close scrutiny needed to restore this gigantic canvas further broadened our understanding of Rembrandt’s pictorial goals and techniques. This data in turn permitted scholars to reassess their analysis of his painting practice. Briefly, twentieth century ideas about the older Rembrandt’s painting technique were largely determined by the ideas of Max Doerner, whose Malmaterial und seine Verwendung im Bilde, first published in 1922, influenced thought about technical materials in painting (Doerner 1984; Wetering 2000). Doerner’s analysis of master painters (e.g., van Eyck, Titian, Ruebens and Rembrandt) is highly convincing and was unverifiable when he published this book. Doerner founded his research on what he was able to observe on the painted surface. He also drew conclusions from painted copies he turned to in order to sharpen his eye and his sensitivity toward techniques used to achieve what the artist presented. While this kind of reconstructive research is valuable to some degree, scientific and technological advances now show us that direct observation of this sort can also mislead us.

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In terms of Rembrandt, Doerner proposed that this seventeenth century painter worked on a monochrome underpainting, a skeleton on which the final result was based, building up the optical impact of the painting. What this means is that the tonal structure consists mainly of transparent layers of paint and the translucency of these layers was due to Rembrandt’s use of a resinous binding medium. Debates about conservation are likely to center around what is removed during a cleaning process and, in Rembrandt’s case, many feared that removing varnish to clean a work also was likely to dissolve the resinous glazes. “One might say that Doerner, with regard to Rembrandt, gave birth to a ‘glazing-myth,’ which to this day has so obstinately persisted in many circles” (Wetering 2000: 195). Another factor that slowed the cleaning process was the idea many held that old paintings should be brown, after all they were old. An opportunity to test this thesis came about in 1975; the year a knife attack damaged the work. Since the damage required a complete restoration, it was decided to undertake it in concord with an earlier decision to remove layers of varnish that had lost much of their transparency and to evaluate his technique in the painting as well. “Fine fissuring had occurred within and between the old, brittle layers of varnish, scattering the light in such a way that, particularly in the darker parts of the painting, the three-dimensional effect and with it the experience of the painting as a whole, was seriously impaired.” (Wetering 2000:195). Indeed the yellowed condition of this masterpiece accounted for its misleading name, Night Watch. Research quickly revealed that over twenty-five “conservation” treatments had taken place since the painting was conceived, that many were abrasive and that had there been glazes of the type assumed by Doerner, they would have disappeared by the time he proposed his theory. Using microscopic analysis, the study of crosssections of paint samples and X-ray photographs illuminated his method of working during different steps. Thus, it was possible to establish how Rembrandt approached his goals. This refuted Doerner’s ideas, despite the evidence that the glazes had disappeared before Doerner’s proposal and well before the restoration.66 We can conclude that the use of glazes did not in any way constitute the essence of Rembrandt’s technique for differentiating color. Rembrandt’s monochrome underpainting, it seems, functioned quite unlike Doerner thought. Rather than using glazing, he used dead-color 66

2000).

Technical details are available in Rembrandt: The Painter at Work (Wetering

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stages as a basis for developing the painting from the background forwards. 5. Cultural Fashions Conservation and restoration studies also reveal where others have altered an artist’s intentions. Revisions executed after the completion of a work are, overall, less obvious than the widespread Victorian addition of fig leaves to cover naked figures. This kind of pictorial modification generally comes about due to changes in ownership, improper conservation techniques and altered cultural tastes. For example, the National Gallery London purchased the Portrait of Alexander Mornauer by an unknown artist (now thought to have lived in the 15th century) thinking it would enhance their early 16th century collection. Testing the painting to restore a damaged area, the scientists first found a Prussian blue background that must have been added long after the artist finished the painting since the pigment was only invented in the early 1700s. Removing this pigment further exposed that the sitter’s hat had also been enlarged long after the artist’s death, perhaps to make the work more saleable in a market where tastes had changed. Since conservation efforts exposed the mystery of the painting, its history has been further investigated. We now know that the sitter was town clerk of Landshut in Bavaria between 1464 and 1488. The letter he holds, which is addressed to him identifies him as the sitter. On his ring is the device of a moor’s head, which may be a pun on the first syllable of his name. The background against which the sitter is shown is a wood grain. Other examples are more elaborate. The restoration of Bartommeo Bonghi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is striking compositionally as well as culturally (Hale 1994). The portrait by Giovanni Battista Moroni (c. 1524-1578), the leading Lombard painter of the third quarter of the sixteenth century came into the museum’s collection with an inscription and coat of arms painted after the artist’s death. These additions altered the painting’s composition leading the painting and conservation departments to jointly agree on the removal of these sections. Their decision was based on aesthetic, historical and technical issues. It is now believed that Moroni conceived the painting between 1553 and 1563. The sitter, a member of a prominent Bergamesque family, was a doctor of canon and civil law and a noted jurist, who held several ecclesiastic positions and served from 1552 to 1553 as rector of the University of Pavia. The book he holds in his hand is by

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one of his university colleagues, who dedicated the publication to him in 1553, which is why some date the painting to this year. Seated in front of an open window, the unrestored work includes an inscription dated 1584, by which time Moroni had been dead for six years. It is believed his family added it and the coat of arts (behind the sitter) to memorialize his name and achievement. It reads: “Bartholomevs Bongvs. I.V.D / Canvs. et Primicervs. Cath[edralis]. Berg[omi]. / Prothonot[arivs]. Ap[osto]licvs. Comes et Aeques / Anno. D[omi]ni. MDLXXXIV (Bartolommeo Bonghi, doctor of laws, canon and dean of the cathedral of Bergamo, apostolic prothonotary, count and knight, in the year of Our Lord 1584). In order to create the wall space needed for the inscription, the lower part of the window frame was painted over. A contemporary copy of the portrait, painted by a follower of Moroni, Enea Talpino (called Salmeggia), shows the painting prior to the additions including a deeply sloping window ledge. (It is now at the National Gallery, Prague.) An x-radiograph of the New York painting further confirms this, showing a ledge similar to the Prague copy. During the Renaissance, portraits were prized as commemorative as well as biographical records and it was not uncommon for inscriptions to be included. In most cases, however, they are incidental to the composition. This was not the case in Bartolommeo Bonghi. Adding the inscription required the loss of a large, light, rectilinear architectural element. Compositionally, this area played against the dark, curving forms and various textures of the seated figure (his dark beard and hair, the soft fur trim, the dark cloth of his robe and the arm of the chair). While the addition no doubt conformed to the original, over time the two sections aged unevenly accentuating the discrepancy between the two areas. The coat of arms, while less intrusive, still interrupts the composition. It could be argued that the additions were acceptable in this particular painting. The inscription and coat of arms were probably commissioned by the sitter’s family and are now of historical interest. We can conclude the family was responsible since the additions identify and commemorate him. On the other hand, they significantly alter the painter’s compositional aesthetic. Several elements drove the decision to return the painting to its original composition. The museum curators and conservators agreed the alteration detracted from the original composition. In addition, through X-rays they were able to see that the original paint was still in good condition.

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6. Conclusion With all of these examples in mind, it seems clear that conservation studies have allowed us to decode artistic objects in a way never before possible. With the addition of tools that allow us to look beneath opaque surfaces we can identify how artists work to a greater degree, even when sketches documenting the process do not exist. We are also able to identify an original surface and deconstruct what cultural tastes may have added later.

Chapter 13 Conclusion: Entering the Twenty-first century But the relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. It is not that words are imperfect, or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say. And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying; the space where they achieve their splendour is not that deployed by our eyes but that defined by the sequential elements of syntax. Michel Foucault, on Las Meninas in The Order of Things

Reflecting on consciousness debates it is tempting to say that the kind of integration many aspire to brings to mind a structure first defined within the medieval European university. Here the liberal arts were characterized in terms of the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The traditional Trivium included language, rhetoric and logic. Language was seen in terms of grammar, the study of meaning in written expression. Rhetoric was defined as a comprehension of verbal and written discourse. Logic refers to argumentative discourse for discovering truth. The Quadrivium included Arithmetic, the understanding numbers; Geometry, the quantification of space; Music, the study of number in time; and Astronomy: laws of the planets and stars. On the other hand, this kind of characterization is strikingly out of date. It fails to acknowledge the impact of empirical study, the way in which knowledge proliferated with the arrival of the scientific revolution and the formation of the Romantic framework that now infuses so many of the ideas about art culturally. Thus the question remains, is there a framework that serves us optimally when coupling art and consciousness? As I have tried to show, humanities scholarship repeatedly demonstrates that the integrative ideal remains and that it coexists with the move toward specialization. On the other hand, scientists are using emerging tools to study venues long inaccessible and allowing us to re-examine questions we could only define philosophically earlier. Although the

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new concrete, empirical information does not solve the questions of art, life, or consciousness as this book has discussed. The information does allow us to question our views once again. A close reading of the literature developed over time often shows that both art theory and Consciousness Studies as a whole are likely to adopt foundational tenets that are orthogonal to much of art practice. Art, on the one hand, is closely associated with the rhetorical tradition. This provides a means to approach information that obscures the special characteristics of visual art. Consciousness, on the other hand, is difficult to separate from characteristics like subjective and objective that have dogged the debates for centuries. As a result, art and consciousness theories are apt to appear superficial in modalities in which the two work closely. Nonetheless and perhaps ironically, it seems that interdisciplinary fields such as Consciousness Studies are best equipped to re-think long-standing biases about art. The disparate research agenda allows discussants to establish areas of commonality across a range of disciplines from which enthusiasts can potentially better address what we mean by art, what we mean by consciousness and how we might compare and contrast the practices of the artist, the appreciation of the art audience and scientific investigations. How our answers are integrated into the material about consciousness overall is not a small point. Currently consciousness is a field that relies heavily on scientific research and humanistic methodologies when building the philosophical models scholars use to structure themes. Integration is no doubt the primary challenge. Throughout this book I have attempted to convey that I relish the ambiguous nature of this challenge. Admittedly consciousness, although somewhat removed from the nuts and bolts of art, does fit nicely with the segments of philosophy that are directly concerned with some aspects of art (e.g., aesthetics). It also nicely interfaces with philosophy’s long history in probing hard to define concepts such as meaning, emotion and other elusive modes, all of which are useful in providing well-honed categories for bracketing themes of interest to consciousness scholars. Furthermore, extensive commentary from our time and other eras complements the consciousness schools of thought, all of which come into play during the lively discussions on metaphor, interpretation, subjectivity, language and history. Thus, researchers can identify a theory’s relationship to historical styles as they locate their position in terms of contemporary philosophical fashions. We can also identify a number of issues raised in the earlier centuries that help frame contextual debates not yet resolved.

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What I believe we now need to add to the discussion is the kind of information that examines how human consciousness, art, science and technology work in tandem. This book attempts to chart some underexplored areas I see as worthy of consideration. The degree to which we can compare and contrast historical forms of communications with life’s creative promise speaks to our ability to capture the sense of the excitement artists bring to their best work. Whether speaking about innovative space representation, an extraordinary scientific discovery, or an interactive art installation, this kind of enthusiasm is infectious. As I have indicated, in many respects the literature integrating art and consciousness to date often disappoints when it comes to introducing key distinctions. On the other hand, as with any experimental project, we learn to comprehend the nature of the task as we define our methodology. Or, in the oft quoted words of the Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa, “Those who explore an unknown world are travelers without a map; the map is the result of the exploration. The position of their destination is not known to them and the direct path that leads to it is not yet made.”

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Notes on Chapter Title Quotes 1.

Introduction: Two Cultures: (Hughes 1964: 6)

2.

Prelude: (Murray 1955, p. 60)

3.

Art and Consciousness: (Stafford 2001: 139)

4.

Polyphonic Chords, Chromatic Synesthesia: (Youngblood 1970:50)

5.

Books, Rhetoric and Visual Art

6.

Theory : Innovation: Practice: (Panofsky 1971: 182)

7.

Painting, Photography and Vision Science: (Talbot 1962)

8.

Inside Out / Upside Down (attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, Italian Renaissance artist, architect, and engineer)

9.

Working Space Revisited: Painting (Stella1986: 6)

10.

Working Space Revisited: New Genres (Bolter 1996: 264)

11.

Perception, Visual Art and the Brain 1970:65)

12.

Conservation and Restoration (Kirsh & Levenson)

13.

Art and the Brain: (McMurrich, J. P. 1930; Gross 1998: 105)

14.

Conclusion: (Foucault 1970: 9)

Painting

and

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Index Achilles, 26, 28-30, 85; shield of, 7576 Adams, John Couch, 153, 235 Advertising, 14 Aeneid, 84-85, 261 Aeschylus, 185 Aesthetics, aesthetic theory, 11, 12, 14, 33, 41, 43, 227, 237, 238, 241, 243, 251, 253 Affresco, 92 Agatharchus, 185 Aidos, 29 Ainsworth, Marian, 100, 235, 239 Alberti, Leon Battista, 76, 87-94, 145, 147, 181-182, 215, 226, 235, 245, 259 Alchemist, 220, 253 Alchemy, 98, 220, 221, 241 Alcmaeon of Croton, 198, 199 Allegory of the Cave, see Plato Ames-Lewis, Francis, 18, 235 Analogy, 30, 37-44, 95, 260 Anaxagoras, 23 Anaximander, 26, 249, 258 Anstis, Stuart, 203, 235 Archaeology, 11 Arista, 34 Aristotle, 16, 21, 26, 43, 50, 52, 53, 56-57, 69, 92, 95, 149, 185, 199, 235, 236, 245, 254 Arp, Hans, 168 Art, technique, 81-84 Art, what is art?, 13-15, 175-177 Ashberry, John, 76, 247 Ashton, Dore, 128, 236 Áte, 27 Aubert, Geneviève, 203, 236 Autostereogram, 211-213 Baars, Bernard, 150, 236 Babylon, 198 Baccei, Tom, 211 Bacon, Roger, 135 Bacon, Francis, 17, 236

Ball, Philip, 122, 220, 236 Baron-Cohen, Simon, 56, 62, 63, 236, 243 Baroque, 37, 183 Bartommeo Bonghi, 226 Baudelaire, Charles, 56, 132-133, 237 Bauhaus, 64, 221 Baumgarten, Alexander, 43-44, 106107, 237 BBC, 166, 252 Beck, James, 92, 237 Beck, Robert, 138, 237 Beethoven, Ludwig, 63 Bell Laboratories, 152 Bell, Charles, 57, 202, 237, 244 Bell, Clive, 44 Beltrami, Eugenio, 146 Binocular vision, 110-111, 261 Blake, William, 50-51, 237 Bleuler Eugene, 58, 238 Blue Rider Group, 64 Bolyai, Janos, 145, 146, 149 Bosanquet, Bernard, 84, 238 Botticelli, Sandro, 50 Bowman, Alan, 24, 238 Brahe, Tycho, 105 Braque, Georges, 157-158, 161, 163 Brewster, Sir David, 112, 124, 262 Bruegel, Pieter, 142 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 89, 91, 181, 251 Burckhardt, Jacob, 88, 239 Cajal, Ramón y. 199, 202, 239 Calder, Alexander, 168 Calotypes, 116 Cameron, Julia Margaret, 115, 116 Caravaggio, 161, 168 Carter, Rita, 47, 239 Cartesian grid, 179 CAVE, 189-191, 195, 257 Cennini, Cennino, 18, 88, 239 Cézanne, Paul, 63, 115, 123-129, 133, 157-160, 161, 165, 212, 215, 219,

266 235, 239, 242, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 262 Chalmers, David, 42, 239 Cheetham, Mark, 107, 239 Chevreul, Michel Eugéne, 221 China, 5, 12, 79 Chirico, Giorgio de, 168 Christian, 7, 8, 27, 76, 78, 92 Christiansen, Keith, 100, 235, 239 Chronophotography, 119, 120 Cicero, 40, 80, 239 Close, Chuck, 207-208 COBE, 152-153 Codex Urbinas, 95 Collingwood, R.G., 44, 239 Collini, Stefan, 15, 16, 239 Collinshaw, Mat 176-177 Color-blind, 60-61, 205-206, 208 Color Theory, 219-222 Consciousness and Cognition, 43 Consciousness, defined, 42 Conservation (and restoration), 13, 216, 217-228, 238, 243, 245, 259 Cooper, Justine, 144 Copernicus, Nicolas, 146, 199, 240 Cornford, F.M., 26, 239 Costa, James Da, 136 Crary, Jonathan, 115, 124, 125, 131132, 134-135, 211, 240 Cruz-Neira, Carolina, 183 Cubism, 142, 157-160, 161, 162, 170171, 221 Cyberspace, 169 Cytowic, Richard, 53, 55, 62, 69, 70, 240 Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mande, 113, 116 Dali, Salvador, 162-163 Dante, 44-45, 46, 49-51, 76, 92 Danto, Arthur, 107, 240 Dark Ages, 39 De Stijl, 165, 168 DeFanti, Thomas, 183 Degas, Edward, 204, 209, 250, 252 Delacroix, Eugene, 132, 133, 221 Delaunay, Robert, 221 Descartes, René, 147, 240, 241

Index Diamond Sutra, 12 Digital Muybridge, 119 Dissanayake, Ellen, 184, 241 Divine Comedy, 49, 50, 76, 235, 237, 238, 245 Dodds, E.R., 7-8, 29, 241 Doerner, Max, 224-225, 241 Dolinsky, Margaret, 190-191 Donatus, Aelius, 79 Dreyfus, Hubert, 150 Drypoint, 79 Dualism, 42 Duchamp, Marcel, 119, 168, 241, 253 Düchting, Hajo, 64, 66, 67, 242 Dunkerton, Jill, 98, 104, 222, 223, 242 East, 9, 10 Egg tempera, 82, 88, 97, 100, 101, 222 Egyptians, 193, 198, 203 Eikasia, 32 Einstein, Albert, 153, 160 Ekphrasis, 75-76 El Greco, 203-204 Electromagnetic Spectrum, 139, 141 Electro-Optical Imaging Systems, 141 Elias, Julius A., 184 Engraving, 11, 79, 80, 84 Episteme, 33 Escher, Mauritz, 171, 242 Etching, 79 Euclid, 141, 144-145, 148, 243 Eyck, Jan van 77, 87, 97-105, 123, 125, 133, 179-182, 215, 221-222, 222-224, 224, 235, 239, 243, 244, 246, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263 Farady, Michael, 134 Feminism, 14 Fenton, Roger, 117 Feynman, Richard, 56, 243 fMRI, 208, 259 Foucault, Michel, 229 Frankenthaler, Helen, 174 Freeland, Cynthia, 44, 73, 243 Freeman, Anthony, 43, 243 Frith, Christoper D., 58-60, 243

Index Futurism, 160 Gablik, Suzi, 25, 243 Galen, 199 Galileo, 94 Gasquet, Joaquim, 124, 125, 126, 158, 243 Gaus, Karl Friedrich, 146, 149 Gehuchten, Arthur van, 203 Gemini G.E.L., 143 Geometry, 144-153; Euclidean geometry, 141, 144, 145-149, 155, 173; Fifth Postulate (parallel postulate) 149; LobachevskyBolyai geometry, 146; NonEuclidean geometry, 146, 173174; Non-Euclidean mathematics, 109, 145-150, 151, 153, 154, 155156, 238, 239, 247 Gibson, James J. 72 Giotto, 40, 90 Gobelin, 221 Gödel, Kurt, 148 Gogh, Vincent van, 203 Golgi, Camillo, 202 Gombrich, E.H., 20, 39-41, 80, 107, 244 Goodman, Nelson, 80-81, 244 Grafton, Anthony, 87-90, 245 Grau, Oliver, 183, 245 Graves, Gary, 51, 245 Gray, Gustave Le, 117 Greeks, 19-22, 24, 69, 98 Green-Armitage, Paul, 170 Greenaway, Peter, 51 Greenberg, Clement, 107, 127-128, 129, 240, 245 Greenfield, Susan, 47, 245 Grisaille, 103 Gross, Charles, 200-201, 245 Gutenberg, Johannes, 12 Haftmann, Werner, 64-66, 245 Halpern, Andrea, 48, 246 Halverson, John, 24, 246 Hambourg, Maria Morris, 114-115, 212 Hamel, Christopher de, 78, 246

267 Harrison, John, 52, 55, 60, 62, 246 Hatoum, Mona, 143-144 Havelock, Eric 23-24, 184, 246 Helmholtz, Heinrich von, 124, 247 Henderson, Linda, 142, 146, 151, 155, 247 Heron, J. R., 204, 247 Herschel, John, 115-116 Hippocrates, 199 Hockney, David, 56, 169-173, 247 Homer and Homeric World, 23-30, 75, 84-95, 184, 247 Horace, 95, 247 Hubbard, Edward, 56, 62 Hughes, H. Stuart, 11, 21, 233, 247 Huizinga, Johan, 12, 77, 248 Hume, David, 44 Hunt, Harry T., 70, 248 Huxley, Thomas, 17, 248 Iliad, 28, 29 Impressionists, 122, 134, 156, 158, 242 India, 10, 198 Intaglio process, 79 Intellectual history, British, 15 Intermedia, 71, 198, 219 Ione, 24, 26, 46, 72, 147, 184, 248; Nature Exposed to Our Method of Questioning, 7, 9, 10, 21, 31, 35 68, 70, 214 Irwin, Robert, 192 Istoria, 89-90, 94, 145, 181 Ivins, William M. Jr., 11-12, 122-131, 248 Jaeger, Werner, 26, 249 James, William, 9, 10, 249 Jonathan I., 60-61, 205-206, 208 Journal of Consciousness Studies, 43 Judeo-Christian, 7 Julesz, Béla, 211 Kahlo, Frida, 143 Kandinsky, Nina, 64 Kandinsky, Vassily, 63-69, 161, 222, 249

268 Kant, Immanuel, 44, 48, 69-70, 107108, 147-148, 249-250 Katz, Alex, 207 Kepler, Johannes, 105 Kevles, Bettyann, 135, 140, 142, 155, 250 Kirsh, Andrea, 217, 250 Klee, Paul, 63-69, 221 Kline, Morris, 145, 146, 148, 149, 250 Kosinski, Dorothy, 134, 250 Kudielka, Robert 163, 251 Lebvre, Lucien, 73, 251 Lehmann, K., 58 Leonardo, 91, 93, 105, 131, 141, 171, 172, 199-200 Lessing, Gotthold, 84-85, 251 Levinsen, Rustin, S. 217, 250 Levy, Ellen, 46, 251 Lithography, 79 Livingston, Margaret, 73, 251 Lobachevsky, Nikolai Ivanovich, 145 Locke, John, 214 Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 69 MacGregor, Neil, 82, 101, 252 Malevich, Kasmir, 161, 163 Man Ray, 191 Mander, Carel van, 97-98, 101, 223, 224, 252 Manet, Edward, 132-133, 224 Manuscripts (and Printing), 76-80; illuminated, 78 Marc, Franz, 64 Marey, Étienne-Jules, 121, 177 Marks, Lawrence, 63, 69, 70, 204, 252 Martin, A., 59, 252 Martin, Henri-Jean, 73, 251 Marxism, 14 Masaccio, 203 Matisse, Henri, 128-129 Maur, Karin von, 66, 252 Maxwell, James Clerk, 136 McLuhan, Marshall, 23, 253 McMahon, Jennifer, 46, 253 Medieval Art, 40

Index Menzel, Aldoph von, 133-134 Mercator, Gerhadus, 140 Mesopotamia, 198 Messiaen, Oliver, 56 Metaphor, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 38, 40, 55, 58, 62, 63, 71, 142, 151, 153, 154, 156, 184, 203, 229, 230 Michelangelo, 44-45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 91, 95; Comments on Flemish artists, 96 Michelson, Albert, 137 Middle Ages, 12, 15, 77, 82, 219 Miller, Arthur, 142, 253 Mills, C.B., 63, 253 Mimesis, 30, 185-189 Mitchell, W.J.T., 12, 179-181, 215, 253; fear of images, 12 Mondrian, Piet, 165 Monet, Claude, 122 Monism, 42 Morellet, François, 211 Moroni, Giovanni Battista, 226-227 Mozart, Wolfgang 66 MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), 140, 144, 177, 178 Müller, Johannes, 57, 254 Multi-media, 198 Murdoch, Iris, 32, 254 Murray, Elizabeth, 168 Murray, Gilbert, 23, 254 Music, 80; Musical brain, 48 Muybridge, Eadweard, 118-119, 177, 182-183 Nabokov, Vladimir, 56 Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), 117, 120 NASA, 152 Nash, John, 46, 254 Natural philosophy, 16, 17, 33 Newell, Allen, 150, 254 Niepce, Joseph Nicéphore de, 113, 116 Nobel Prize, 137, 202, Oates, Whitney Jennings, 184, 254 Ocean, Humphrey, 208 Optical Imaging Systems, 141

Index Osserman, Robert, 145, 148, 255 Ox, Jack, 74 Panofsky, Erwin, 98-99, 171, 255 Pantex, Christo, 48, 255 Paragone, 94-96 Pattern book, 80 Paulesu, E., 58-60, 243, 255 Penzias, Arno, 152 Peretz, Isabelle, 48 Perspective, 145, 148, 170-173 PET (Positron Emission Tomogrpahy), 140, 208 Peternák, Miklós, 211, 255 Phenomenology, 14 Phillips, Tom, 51, 255 Photography, 112-117, 154, 156, 165 Piaget, Jean, 25, 255 Picasso, Pablo, 128, 157, 163, 174 Pissarro, Camille, 122 Plato, 19-22, 30-34, 43, 48, 50, 80, 92, 93, 96, 109, 183, 184-189, 198-199, 201, 256; Allegory of the Cave, 30-31, 185-189 Pliny, 40 Plotinus (and Neoplatonism), 20, 21, 80, 108, 256 Poetry, 80, 84 Pollock, Jackson, 164 Pompei, 156, 183 Pop Culture, 14 Posner, Michael I. 209, 256 Postmodern, 14 Praxis, 33-34, 197-198 Pre-Platonic, 25 Preziosi, Donald, 91, 123 Printed book, 81 Printing press, 12, 80, 97 Printmaking, 79-80 Prodger, Philip, 177, 256 Protogenes, 197 PSYCHE, 43 Purkinje,Johannes, 58 Putter, Renaud de, 203 Quadrivium, 229 Quantum Theory, 43

269 Raichle, Marcus E., 209, 256 Ramachandran, V.S., 56, 62, 63, 71, 256 Rand, John, 122 Random Dot Stereogram, 211-213 Raphael, 91, 93 Rauschenberg, Robert, 143 Rejlander, Oscar Gustave, 117 Rembrandt, 51-52, 200-201, 224-226 Renaissance, 15, 76, 79, 80, 81, 87, 90, 93, 156, 164, 167, 181, 183, 199 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 122 Rhetoric, 229 Richard II, 82-83 Richter, Gerhard, 128, 165-167, 174 Riding, Alan, 208, 257 Riegl, Alois, 39 Riemann, George Friedrich Bernhard, 146 Riley, Bridget, 163-164 Rimbaud, Arthur, 56 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, 55, 56 Ringbom, Sexton, 65, 257 Roden Crater, 193-194 Romanticism, 16, 37, 58, 229 Röntgen, Frau, 138 Röntgen, Wilhem, 135-138, 153, 257 Rose, F. Clifford, 203, 257 Ross, Sydney, 16, 257 Rothko, Mark, 174 Roy, Ashok, 222, 257 Rubin, Edgar, 210 Rubens, Peter Paul, 224 Ruskin, John, 125, 134, 175-176, 257 Sachs, G.T.I., 57, 257 Sacks, Oliver, 60-61, 205-206, 257 Salitsky, Bob, 211 Sandin, Daniel, 183, 258 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 48 Scientia, 33 Scriabin, Alexander, 55, 56 Seidel, Linda, 104, 258 SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), 177, 178 Senefelder, Alois, 79 Sherwood, Katherine, 206-207, 208

270 Shortess, George K., 46, 259 Siebers, Tobin, 107, 259 Simon, Hubert, 150, 259 Sisley, Alfred, 122 Smith, Cheri, 211 Smith, Edward, 198 Smith, Kiki, 120-121 Smith, Pamela H., 18-19, 33-34, 259 Snell, Bruno, 26, 259 Snow, C. P., 15, 259 Solso, Robert, 49, 208, 259 Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 7-8, 10, 185 Space-time, 156-157 Stafford, Barbara M. 37-39, 41, 75, 259-260 Stanford, Leland, 118, 182 Stanza della Segnatura, 92 Stella, Frank, 155, 156, 160, 161-164, 168, 169, 174, 233, 260 Stereogram, 113, 117, 156 Stereoscope, 111-112, 113 Stokstad, Marilyn, 40, 260 Storr, Robert, 166, 260 Street, Brian, 24, 260 Structuralism, 14 Superrealism, 160, 164, 176 Suprematism, 160 Surrealists, 191 Suzuki Method, 48 Synesthesia, 53, 55-74, 197 Talbot, William Henry Fox, 109, 113, 260 Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 115 Thales, 26 The Matrix, 185-189 Titian, 224 Torrentino, Lorenzo___ Trivum, 229 “Tubed paint”, 122, 220 Tuchman, Maurice, 192, 260-261 Turner, J. M. , 134, 156, 161 Turrell, James, 191-195 Two Cultures, 11-22 Tyler, Christopher W., 52-53, 72, 211-213, 261 Varchi, Bennedetto, 94-95

Index Vasari, Giorgio, 40, 76, 87-94, 97, 101, 181-182, 223 Vermeer, Jan, 224 Verrier, Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le, 153 Vesalius, Andreas, 140, 199, 261 Video, 13, 217 Virgil, 76, 84-85, 261 Virtual Reality, 185-189, 198 Visible light, 139, 141 Vision science, 109-112, 154 Visual space, 167 “Vital spirit”, 200 Vries, Vredemann de, 171, 262 Wachowski, Andy, 185, 262 Wachowski, Larry, 185, 262 Wade, Nicholas, 112, 262 Wagner, Catherine, 177-179 Wagner, Richard, 44-45, 46, 49, 52, 92 Warburton, Nigel, 44, 73, 262 Watkins, Carleton, 114-115, 262 Watson, John B., 214 West, 9, 10, 12, 19, 20, 29, 35, 41, 46, 69, 75, 91, 92, 93, 96, 102, 106, 111, 115, 122, 123, 127, 128, 147, 181, 215, 244, 250, 251 Wetering, Ernst van de, 225, 262 Wheatstone, Sir Charles, 110-112, 124, 210-211. 262 Whewell, William, 16-17, 109, 262 Whistler, James Abbot McNeil, 175176 White, John, 171, 262 White, Raymond, 222 Whitehead, A.N., 19, 131, 262 Williams, Robert, 18, 263 Wilson, George Washington, 117 Wilton Diptych, 82-83, 194 Winckelmann, Johann, 84 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 44 Woodcuts, 13 World Wide Web, 13, 218 Wortz, Edward, 192 Wundt, William, 58 X-ray, 135, 138, 150, 151, 162, 210, 217, 227

Index

271

Xylography, 79 Yeo, Richard, 16, 263 York, George K. 201, 263 Youngblood, Gene, 55, 197, 263 Yukawa, Hideki, 231

Zandt, Thomas Kirby van, 118 Zatorre, Robert, 48, 263 Zeki, Semir, 44-54, 73, 75, 76, 92, 96, 263 Zoöpraxiscope, 118-119, 121