7.15.24

Thought

A third example he discusses is art that comprises vertical and horizontal lines, like that of Piet Mondrain, or colored squares, red in Malevich’s Red Square, blue in Theo van Doesburg’s The Cow, and yellow in Josef Alber’s Homage to the Square: Yellow Climate. Art of this kind is, he argues, particularly well adapted to the visual system, because each cell in the visual brain has a receptive field. It responds, that is, to a limited part of visual space – a red square, say, or a line of particular orientation.

So there is a correspondence between art made of lines or colored squares (which Zeki dubs ‘art of the receptive field’) and the physiology of single cells in the visual brain. Moreover, cells that respond to lines of particular orientation predominate in the visual cortex, and are found in many areas of it. Physiologists consider them the building blocks that allow the nervous system to represent more complex forms.

So when Mondrian defended his use of the vertical and horizontal lines saying they ‘exist everywhere and dominate everything’, his observation was, Zeki suggests, neurobiologically correct. When we view one of his abstracts, or some of the paintings of Malevich or Barnett Newman, large numbers of cells in different visual areas of our brains will be activated.

– John Carey, What Good are the Arts?  

Quote

Philosopher Seneca on desire: 

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

Intention of the Day 

My intention is to focus on the process and not the outcome today. 

What’s your intention today?

Happy Monday,

Val