More than just lookin’ pretty: Art exercises your brain all over

Aug 20, 2012 | news

Semir Zeki is a professor of neuroesthetics at the University College London who’s been studying the affects of art on the brain since 1970. As it turns out, different types of art affect your brain in different ways depending on what’s being represented, turning museums into mental jungle-gyms.

Check out the nifty table I made to get the breakdown on which mental aerobics you’re doing when:

Type of art	That might look like this	Activates this part of your brain	That’s usually associated with	Exercising your brain here
Representational	Cezanne’s Still Life with Skull, 1900	Primary visual cortex & inferior temporal cortex	Object recognition, long-term memory, & emotions	Photo found here. Primary visual cortex in blue. Inferior temporal cortex follows the ventral stream down in purple
Portraits	Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait, 1889	Fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe	Facial recognition, word & number recognition, and color processing	Photo found here. Fusiform gyrus in pink
People in action	Cupid & Psyche by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. 1889	Mirror neurons in the prefrontal cortex	Muscle memory that fires when you can relate to another’s physical action	Photo found here. Prefrontal cortex
Abstract	Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1943	Parts of the visual cortex and parietal lobe	Visuospatial processing, and geometry/numbers	Photo found here. Parietal lobe
Surrealist	Vladimir Kush’s Metamorphosis	The anterior cingulate cortex & dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobe	Resolving conflicts or catching errors	Photo found here. (A) Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (blue). (B) Anterior cingulate cortex (yellow).

You can read a section of Zeki’s research for yourself here. My table was inspired by this post on Gurney Journey – and you can read a brief interview Gurney did with Zeki here as well.

In the paper linked to above, Zeki wrote, “…the overall function of art is an extension of the function of the brain,” meaning that the creation of art and even just looking at it both work as mental exercises that are only possible because of how complicated our brains are in the first place.

There was a gallery in Baltimore in 2010 that tried to play with the different ways art could exercise your brain. They showed visitors 3-D printouts of slightly altered abstract sculptures by Jean Arp – some skinnier, some wider, to see which they were most attracted to, as a way of studying “aesthetic emotion.” In 2007 the same museum experimented with a show of Courbet’s landscapes by playing classical music in the background and subtly changing the shade of the lighting every 60 seconds. Visitors ended up staying four times longer in the exhibit because of these additions.

Pieces of art deemed “beautiful” by the viewer can also increase blood flow in the brain’s emotional center in the limbic system by as much as 10% – the same increase we experience when looking at someone we love. The increase in blood flow is directly proportional to how much the viewer likes the work, so my heart starts pumping at Van Gogh and almost stops beating at Cindy Sherman. Which works make your heart race?
Read about the full results of this study done by Zeki last year in this Telegraph article.

Some art is just garbage… especially the installation coming to Chicago’s Navy Pier

Aug 9, 2012 | news

Since I’m visiting Chicago this week, I thought it would be fitting to post some art news happening here:

A previous Garbage Wall like the one to be installed. Also from the Sun-Times article.

A wall of garbage is making its debut as art next month at Chicago’s Navy Pier. Normally I don’t go for the whole everyday-items-as-art nonsense, but after going on a river cruise today and hearing all about how awfully polluted the water used to be, a public work like this might not be such a bad idea.

It’s meant as a reminder against pollution, as a way of physically showing how much waste we create without fully noticing. The Natural Resources Defense Council is the environmental group that’s bringing the exhibition to Navy Pier, and the very first “Garbage Wall” was created by Gordon Matta-Clark in New York City in 1970.

Read the full story on the Chicago Sun-Times here.

Amazing Metrocard Collages featured on HuffPost Arts

Aug 3, 2012 | news

German artist Nina Boesch has done some pretty cool stuff with something that usually just litters the streets and subway stations.

Check out more of her Metrocard collages on today’s HuffPost Arts post here, and think about all the cool stuff you could do with things that are normally just thrown away!

Coolest Cakeday Wednesday

Jul 25, 2012 | news

image via reddit

I was just going to tweet about this, but then I decided it deserved its own post.

Someone out there is a frosting master! And, this just so happens to be my very favorite Van Gogh. I’m looking at the paper version on my wall right now:)

Happy Wednesday!

Stolen Matisse found a decade later, LATimes reports

Jul 21, 2012 | news

Henri Matisse’s “Odalisque in Red Pant,” 1925 (left) and the fake used to replace it. (Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum, via Associated Press)

The Henri Matisse painting, “Odalisque in Red Pants” was stolen a decade ago from a museum in Venezuela. On Tuesday, a man and woman allegedly tried to sell the $3 million artwork for $740,000 to an undercover FBI agent in Miami. The couple has been charged with transporting and possessing stolen property, and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. 

The stolen work was replaced with a look-a-like that ended up being on view for five years before anyone noticed the original was gone. They do look similar, but I think it goes without saying that the museum curators and staff should have caught the impostor much earlier. Which I suppose just goes to show that it’s the name we pay to see, and unfortunately the subtleties of even the most renowned artists can go unnoticed by the people who supposedly know them best.

Read the whole story from the LATimes here.