Reductionism in Art and Brain Science

Pub Date: June 2018

ISBN: 9780231179638

240 Pages

Format: Paperback

Listing Toll: $22.95 £17.99

Pub Date: August 2016

ISBN: 9780231179621

240 Pages

Format: Hardcover

List Price: $29.95 £25.00

Pub Date: August 2016

ISBN: 9780231542081

240 Pages

Format: E-volume

List Price: $21.99 £xvi.99

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Are fine art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Tin they detect mutual basis? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the style we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and retentiveness in bounding main slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals.

In Reductionism in Art and Encephalon Scientific discipline, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, practical to the most complex puzzle of our time—the encephalon—has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and low-cal. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-upwardly sensory and top-downwards cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and aid u.s.a. to perceive, appreciate, and empathise great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern fine art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative fine art to the first explorations of abstruse art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to go far at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Shut, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York Schoolhouse to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and fine art and how they illuminate each other.

Eric R. Kandel seamlessly moves between the intricacies of scientific discipline and art, weaving their histories into a common narrative that illuminates both fields and shows they take more than in common than is often assumed. Information technology is a fun and informative read that anyone with a curious mind can enjoy and larn from. Joseph LeDoux, author of Broken-hearted: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Feet
Kandel's volume, with ane foot in the humanities and one pes in the sciences, stands comfortably in both. Writing in deceptively simple prose, non unlike the art he writes about, Kandel lucidly states the biological instance for how abstract fine art challenges us to look then that we can see. Jim Coddington, chief conservator, Museum of Modern Art
Words like 'genius' or 'renaissance man' are rarely used in these egalitarian times, but such descriptions wouldn't be entirely inappropriate for Kandel, who is renowned for his piece of work on memory. He has now written a remarkable volume full of poetic insights without compromising scientific rigor. 5. Southward. Ramachandran, writer of The Tell-Tale Encephalon: A Neuroscientist'due south Quest for What Makes Us Human
Aiming to lessen the gap between the cultures of art and scientific discipline, Kandel forwards new ways of because abstruse art through the model of reductionism: less is more than when it comes to stimulating the brain's artistic abilities and our aesthetic responses. Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor of Art History, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
In this engaging and vivid exploration, Kandel illuminates the beauty and power of both abstract art and the brain and mind that unravels information technology. It is a bold and exciting story about the modern revolution in fine art and brain scientific discipline that bridges the traditional chasm betwixt the civilization of the arts and sciences and helps u.s.a. understand and experience the about challenging art with the depth information technology deserves and the joy it enables. Walter Mischel, author of The Marshmallow Test
Eric Kandel'due south new book, Reductionism in Art and Brain Scientific discipline is a beautiful integration of visual art and neuroscience. The book engages C.P. Snow'southward theme of two cultures- the humanities and the sciences- and provides an artful window into the science of the listen through his xiv nicely written chapters that include elegant figures in visual art and neuroscience. While the book de-mythologizes the idea of reductionism, it also importantly provides a sense for knowing an object and the objects to be known. This is a must read for both neuroscientists and anyone interested in the visual arts and humanities. Jay Schulkin, Georgetown University
[A] fascinating survey of listen science and modern art.... Kandel presents concepts to ponder that may open up new avenues of art making and neuroscientific endeavor. Publishers Weekly
[An] intriguing treatise. Nature
Recommended for those interested in the intersection of psychology and art. Library Periodical
The endeavor to consummate this book will exist well rewarded.... C.P. Snow would be proud. Neurology Today
Unique and thought-provoking. Times Higher Education
Elegant and entertaining. Wall Street Journal
[Eric Kandel's] new book offers ane of the freshest insights into fine art history in many years. Salon
A pleasure to read FASEB Journal
The result is an intriguing, thought provoking book which will entreatment to those with pre-existing knowledge but also to those who may be unfamiliar but curious. Megan Kenny, University of Huddersfield, The British Club for Literature and Science
Kandel makes an important contribution with this volume; he lucidly describes the very agile interplay across disciplines that has taken identify with regard to exploring how data is managed and understood, and then related across artistic mediums, scientific research, and socially, through sharing of ideas and findings. PsycCritiques
Kandel'southward theory of how are our neurons burn in response to abstract art is illuminating. . . . One looks forward to hearing more from Kandel, a about inventive scholar, now that his bridge has been solidly congenital. The New Criterion

Part I: 2 Cultures Run into in the New York School
Introduction
i. The Emergence of an Abstract Schoolhouse of Fine art in New York
Role Ii: A Reductionist Approach to Brain Science
two. The Showtime of a Scientific Approach to the Perception of Art
iii. The Biology of the Beholder's Share: Visual Perception and Bottom-Up Processing in Art
iv. The Biology of Learning and Retentiveness: Superlative-Down Processing in Fine art
Part Three: A Reductionist Approach to Art
5. Reductionism in the Emergence of Abstract Fine art
6. Mondrian and the Radical Reduction of the Figurative Epitome
seven. The New York School of Painters
eight. How the Brain Processes and Perceives Abstract Images
nine. From Figuration to Color Brainchild
10. Color and the Brain
11. A Focus on Light
12. A Reductionist Influence on Figuration
Part IV: The Emerging Dialogue Betwixt Abstract Fine art and Science
13. Why Is Reductionism Successful in Art?
fourteen. A Return to the Two Cultures
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Illustration Credits
Index

  • Read an interview with Eric Kandel in The Wall Street Journal
  • Mind to an interview with Eric Kandel on Science Friday
  • Eric Kandel discusses the book on The Large Think

Commended, 2017 PROSE Award in Biomedicine and Neuroscience

About the Author

Eric R. Kandel is University Professor and Kavli Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Psychiatry at Columbia Academy. He is manager of the Kavli Institute for Encephalon Science and codirector of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Listen Brain Behavior Establish at Columbia. In 2000, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His recent books include The Age of Insight: The Quest to Sympathize the Unconscious in Art, Heed, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Nowadays (2012) and In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (2007), too as Principles of Neural Science (2012), of which he is lead coauthor.