Monthly Archive for December, 2011

(Credit: Leif Parsons)

From Alva Noë at The New York Times, The Opinion Pages…

What is art? What does art reveal about human nature? The trend these days is to approach such questions in the key of neuroscience.

“Neuroaesthetics” is a term that has been coined to refer to the project of studying art using the methods of neuroscience. It would be fair to say that neuroaesthetics has become a hot field. It is not unusual for leading scientists and distinguished theorists of art to collaborate on papers that find their way into top scientific journals.

Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist at University College London, likes to say that art is governed by the laws of the brain. It is brains, he says, that see art and it is brains that make art. Champions of the new brain-based approach to art sometimes think of themselves as fighting a battle with scholars in the humanities who may lack the courage (in the words of the art historian John Onians) to acknowledge the ways in which biology constrains cultural activity. Strikingly, it hasn’t been much of a battle. Students of culture, like so many of us, seem all too glad to join in the general enthusiasm for neural approaches to just about everything. More…

(Nigel Roddis/Reuters)

From Carol Vogel at The New York Times…

Martin Boyce, an artist known for creating sculptural installations that pay homage to Modernist design, has won this year’s prestigious Turner Prize. The winning entry from Mr. Boyce, 44, was an installation that looks like both an interior space and a municipal park, with trees crafted of geometric aluminum leaves along with a desk, based on a library table by the French modernist designer Jean Prouvé. The desk has letters scratched into its surface, as though they were the carvings of a naughty school child.

Mr. Boyce beat out the installation sculptor Karla Black, the video artist Hilary Lloyd and the painter George Shaw. The five-person jury, led by Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, said “his work uses his knowledge of historic design to create distinctive sculptural installations.’’ The prize, which was established in 1984 and named after the 19th-century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, is given annually to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the 12 months before April 4, 2011. The winner gets £25,000 (about $39,000). Previous winners have included Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry and Mark Wallinger. More…