We
don't have a deep understanding of the Beholder's Response, but it's
interesting that if you put together what we know from disorders of brain
function and the normal physiology, we begin to understand an outline what the
beholder's response is.
And this is so important because in 1906 when
Freud was active and Klink, Tolkuchka and Sheely, the artists, were active,
there was a major person at the Vienna School of Artistry called Alois Riegl.
And he said that the problem with art history is, it's going to go down the
tubes because it's too anecdotal, it's too descriptive, it doesn't have enough
of a science base. It's got to become more scientific. And the science it
should relate itself to is psychology. And the key problem that it should
address right off is the beholder's share. You have a painting, that painting
is not complete until the viewer responds to it.
It's
obvious once you say it, you know, this is why it was painted in the first
place. But he pointed out; this has become more explicit in the history of art.
If you look at Renaissance art, particularly early Renaissance art, it's very
inner directed. And he points to a painting in Florence of the Trinity in Santa
Maria Novella painted by Masaccio, which has one of the early paintings to show
you a wonderful sense of perspective. You see Christ on the cross, you see Mary
and Joseph, they're turning toward him. God is above, he looks down, the two
donnas at the side, they're looking -- they're all looking at Christ. It's a
very inner directed picture and it doesn't really recruit the involvement of
the beholder dramatically. But as art evolved, particularly when you move to
Dutch art, which Riegl was very impressed with, you see that there's a
conscious attempt on the part of the painter to paint people who look at you,
who interact with you. And that made him aware of the fact of how important the
beholder was and to try to understand how does the beholder's response works.
He had
two very gifted students, Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich, and they began to put
this on a really rigorous basis. Ernst Kris said, "Great works are great
because they are ambiguous." They allow for alternative readings. So you
and I look at that Masaccio painting, we would have somewhat different
responses to it which means that the beholder's share varies for each of us
because we see somewhat different things in the painting.
Now,
what does that mean? He said, if that means that beholder's share varies, it
means you and I must be creating different images in our brain about that
particular portrait. So even though you and I are looking at the same object in
the world, we are creating slightly different visual impressions in the mind.
Emotional impressions in our mind are looking at this. And they began to
document it. First he and then Gombrich showed you how you can trick the mind
into alternate interpretations with illusions of various kinds. And they began
to realize that when you look at a painting, you're undergoing a creative
experience that is at least an outline similar to the painter. The
painter exercises a dramatic amount of creativity in doing a portrait, but you,
yourself, generate a fair amount of creativity in reconstructing it in your
head and reconstructing it in a way that is unique for you and it's slightly
different for me. This was a remarkable insight and has really given rise to
the sort of the current understanding of what goes on in our head.
The
painting, the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci is generally considered one of
the greatest masterpieces in western art. And the reason it's so great is for
the same reason we talked about before. It has a great deal of ambiguity. And
ambiguity is what brings out difference of interpretation. It makes -- it
contributes to work being great. And with her, one of the very specific points
of ambiguity is the nature of her facial expression. Is she smiling or is she
not? And there's been endless discussions about this. And we want to understand
why does that ambiguity arise? And there are two major interpretations. One is,
it's the form of painting that Leonardo used in which he purposely paints over
the edges of the mouth, a technique called Sfumato smoke. So it's a little bit
hazy and not clearly outlined, and that gives rise to the ambiguity. And Marge
Livingston has made the point, it's how you focus on it. If you focus on it
with central vision, which sees detail, you don't see the smile. If you focus
on peripheral vision, which sees the broad outlines, you do better at seeing
the smile.
Eric
Kandel
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