Neuroaesthetic theory of vision

002_ilustracja_zuzanna_siara.jpg, default, Illustration: Zuzanna Siara

Neuroaesthetics is a relatively young field of research, aiming primarily to explain the phenomena that affect the perception and reception of works of art. As a science, it is situated somewhere between biological sciences, including psychology, physiology, neurobiology, but also art and aesthetics, arousing extremely strong emotions among researchers belonging to the humanities.

The article was published in the 5th issue of the art & science magazine ‚Powidoki’ tilted ‘New Media’, The Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź.

Researchers belonging to the humanities accuse the pioneers of neuroaesthetics of determinism, reductionism or lack of knowledge of the aforementioned aesthetics and history of art. However, scientists who study art on a daily basis generally seem to overlook the fact that all human activity, including creativity, results from the activity of the brain and the nervous system. This fact was already pointed out by Władysław Strzemiński, who, in developing his own theory of vision, was inspired by the latest scientific reports on the physiology of vision and the work of the brain, especially by the publications of Ivan Pavlov. He wrote:

Talking about the reception of sensations, we have to determine which parts of the human organism are involved in it and which related activities take place in them. We will then understand that the transmission of visual sensations from the eye to the brain is not an empty category of abstract logic, not some kind of perception ‘in general’, but the specific activity of chains of nerve cells extending from the eye to the brain cortex – that the whole of the nature seen is also shaped under the influence of the processes taking place in these chains.

Thus, we might conclude that Władysław Strzemiński was a Polish precursor of research that we now classify as neuroaesthetics. It is significant here that he completed his opus vitae as early as in 1947, i.e. almost half a century before attempts were made to define the new science and to establish research methods appropriate to it. The publication of the book only made an appearance in 1958 and went almost unnoticed by the domestic scientific and artistic community, not to mention the foreign environment. In her critical study of the new edition of Theory of Vision, Iwona Luba sees the reason for this in the peculiar "vulgarisation" of the language of the publication with the assumptions of Marxism-Leninism.

The birth of neuroaesthetics

The first neuroaesthetic theories did not begin to appear until the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The term "neuroaesthetics" itself was proposed in 1999 by Semir Zeki – a neuroscientist studying the areas of the cortex responsible for visual processes. He was the one who discovered the visual areas of the brain and their functional specialisations. The entire mechanism that makes up the visual process, which includes both perception and interpretation, has been referred to as the "visual brain" and is one of the key terms appearing in studies on neuroaesthetics. The discoveries made prompted Zeki to develop a study that could help answer the question, "does the activity of a specific area (or areas) of the brain accompany the experience of beauty originating from different sources?". Together with Tomohiro Ishizu, he conducted an experiment in which 21 subjects viewed photographs and listened to fragments of music, and then rated them on a scale of 1-9. This allowed the researchers to distinguish between indifferent, beautiful and ugly stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to locate the area active during the visual or auditory experience of beauty, the activity of which was directly proportional to the declared aesthetic sensation. The researchers concluded that the brain activity they discovered was related to the experience of beauty independent of the sense through which the stimulus is perceived. In this way, a neurobiological theory of beauty was conceived.

Another important point Zeki makes is the supposition that some artists consciously drew on neurobiological knowledge of perception when creating their works, before this knowledge had been thoroughly systematised and described. He cites the abstract paintings by Mondrian, Malevich and Newman as examples, as well as the kinetic art by Calder and Tinguely. These artists could also include Cézanne, whose work is analysed by Strzemiński. The painter recognised the great role of optics, including the mechanism of movement and the rhythm of vision.

Zeki formulated the basic laws of neuroaesthetics, which have been complemented with further proposals by other researchers. The first is the law of constancy, which involves looking for invariable features in perceived objects that allow their identification under changing environmental conditions. The next is the law of abstraction, where generalised features can be related to many specific features. These principles are closely linked.

Neurobiological theory of aesthetic experience

Zeki's considerations are extremely important in terms of demonstrating the possibilities of interdisciplinary art research, which has so far been limited to the reflections of art historians and aestheticians. However, they do not provide tools for interpreting works of art in a neuroaesthetic spirit. This gap is sought to be bridged by the neurobiological theory of aesthetic experience formulated by William Hirstein and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. The concept is based on the hypothesis that the artist, consciously or unconsciously, uses specific rules to stimulate the relevant visual areas in the brain cortex. Researchers list such laws as peak shift principle, perceptual grouping, isolation, contrast, symmetry, generalised viewpoint, metaphor, perceptual problem solving, order.

The first law is the principle of peak shift, i.e. a kind of highlighting of a given phenomenon, which is most often used when creating caricatures. This type of exaggeration can take place not only at the level of shapes, but also of colours and space. On the other hand, the perceptual grouping of certain elements of a work of art, so that they form interdependent relationships, is intended to evoke a sense of pleasure in the viewer, but it also has a practical significance – it allows the elements to be classified into a coherent whole. Researchers emphasise that the law of grouping was not discovered by them, but had already been used in psychology and art. Another principle – isolation – involves abstracting a single feature, such as shape or colour, which allows the viewer's attention to be directed to only one source of information. This would explain why the perception of sketches sometimes evokes more pleasure than the reception of a full-fledged work of art.

The next law is contrast, i.e. a rapid change in some characteristic, e.g. brightness, colour, texture, occurring between two elements of a work. This property is thought to enhance the signal received by the viewer's retinal cells, which react especially to edges rather than to an evenly coloured space. Researchers also emphasise the importance of symmetry, which is supposed to give aesthetic pleasure. Another principle is the generalised viewpoint. This law involves the brain's rejection of implausible elements that go beyond logical reasoning. A feeling of pleasure can also be evoked by the rejection of this principle, as exemplified by the works of Picasso.

Similar feelings would also be caused by metaphor, which, according to the researchers, on the one hand constitutes a cognitive mechanism of reality and, on the other, enables more effective communication. Another law – peek-a-boo, i.e. the perceptual problem solving – was presented on the margins of the considerations of the principle of generalised viewpoint. A separate principle was recognised by Ramachandran in a later publication written without Hirstein's contribution. It is based on the authors' conviction that an image perceived with more effort gives more pleasure, because it represents a kind of puzzle for the viewer's brain. Examples would be nudity hidden behind a see-through curtain or a picture of a Dalmatian hidden among black-and-white spots. The final, ninth law added by Ramachandran is order or regularity, which is significant in design and art. According to him, the human brain has a need for regularity, which is why it does not tolerate, for example, a crooked picture on the wall or an unclosed drawer. The principle is linked to the law of symmetry – just as this law it can be violated for aesthetic purposes.

Strzemiński's neuroaesthetics

Strzemiński's interests were influenced by his tragic life experiences. In 1916, as a result of a grenade explosion in a trench, he lost his left forearm and his right leg. His left eye was also damaged and almost completely lost its visual function. Strzemiński's comprehensive education, erudition and analytical thinking were also of considerable importance here. It is therefore not surprising that he focused his interests on the physiology of the eye, issues of conscious vision, psychological, cultural and civilisational mechanisms. As Iwona Luba writes:

He wanted to know and understand the mechanisms of the development of human cognition, and in particular visual consciousness, in order to raise the general level of artistic awareness in society, including artists. Strzemiński was aware of the inextricable link between visual consciousness and culture, education, civilisation, and therefore he wrote a work that closely linked art education with art history […].

An important element of Strzemiński's theory is the described phenomenon of Cézanne's conscious painting, in which the mechanism of movement and the rhythm of vision can be discerned. The artist completely rejected three-dimensional linear perspective, taking into account the natural muscular movements of the eye and its accommodative mechanisms. For this reason, the still lifes he painted appear "deformed". Strzemiński emphasised:

In our everyday, actual seeing, we constantly shift our sight from one object to another, constantly change the convexity of the eye, moving it from one distance to another. We move our eyes from closer objects to distant ones, and from these to medium distant objects. The eye is constantly in motion, not only changing the direction of our vision, but also the distance at which we look.

He explained the numerous transformations and displacements in Cézanne's paintings using the example of the still life "Kitchen Table". The asymmetry of the jug, and thus the representation of its right side wider than the left, is supposed to be due to the optical magnification of the part of the object that lies in the peripheral visual field. The artist's gaze must therefore have fallen on the left side of the jug, moving its right part into the peripheral area. Why there? Well, the area around the apple shows the greatest variety of shapes and an intensification of contrasts. Another deformation also results from locating the focus of vision at the point of greatest contrast accumulation, i.e. the left edge of the pot opening. The chiaroscuro contrast (light outer surface and dark inner surface) and linear contrast (straight handle and circular pot opening) focus the viewer's attention at this point. Strzemiński explains this fact by a property of the human vision: "Our eyes do not randomly stop at indefinite and unforeseen places, but are subordinated to the force of attraction exerted on the sight by the stimuli of the surrounding world".

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Illustration: Martyna Wojdat

Picture image

004_ilustracja_martyna_wojdat.jpg

It is hard not to notice the echo of the neurobiological theory of aesthetic experience in this statement. In an excerpt from an analysis of works by another outstanding impressionist – Vincent van Gogh – Strzemiński makes a surprisingly apt observation, which would be proved and described in more detail decades later by Margaret Livingstone:

The measure of realism in Impressionism is the correspondence of its vision to the data of physiology – and this is the only way to examine it. When analysing an impressionist painting, we must determine what data of the physiology of vision stand behind it and condition it. There is no other explanation.

Rhythms of vision

One of the foundations of Strzemiński's theory was the rhythms of vision. He believed that "the rhythmic vibrations that our organism is full of rhythmise our visual content". Strzemiński divided them into mechanical vibrations (e.g. pulse, breathing or body movements) and bioelectrical vibrations (connected with the functioning of the nervous system and occurring in the form of weak electric currents). He stipulated, however, that in artists there is an additional type of rhythmisation, resulting from different visual sensations and hand movements. This observation is surprisingly consistent with Zeki's views on the superiority of artists over average viewers. For artists are aware of the perception of the work, and can therefore compose it in such a way as to be able to make certain impressions on the observer.

Strzemiński bases the above considerations not on knowledge from the history of art, but on the physiology of the nervous system, thus making use of the latest research from the field of natural sciences. He thus demonstrates the necessity of revising previous views on the strict division of sciences, introducing interdisciplinary research that takes into account the necessity of combining seemingly distant fields. The accuracy of Strzemiński's observations in the context of contemporary neuroaesthetic research is astonishing:

"In reality, sensations do not pass from the eye to the brain through some immaterial void. Their conductor is the nervous system. They go from the eye to the brain in the form of very weak electrical currents, following chains of nerve cells. These nerves run through the body and are subject to all its influences. Visual sensations alone cannot be separated from the influences of the entire physiological phenomena taking place in the organism. These phenomena (through the brain and perhaps directly) exert an influence on the sensations transmitted, merging with them into a single whole".

Strzemiński illustrates his considerations with diagrams taken from publications that were up to date at the time: Boris Teplov's Psychology from 1950 (electro-biological currents in the brain cortex centres) and Jerzy Konorski's Physiological Foundations of Memory from 1948 (diagram of the intercellular connections of the nervous system).

The sources from which Strzemiński drew speak volumes about his interests, but also indicate a great artistic awareness. He tried to put the knowledge he gained into practice. Hence, among other things, his attempts to analyse impressionist paintings also in terms of their rhythmisation. An example of this type of reflections is the analysis of Vincent van Gogh's work depicting wheat fields near Auvers. In it, Strzemiński distinguishes four parallel rows, arranged horizontally, representing clouds, trees, stacks of wheat and the border of a field and a meadow, whose mutual analogy makes them rhythmic rows. Their rhythm is further reinforced by the afterimages that form as the eye moves from one row to the next. Each of these rows, however, is disrupted at the same point by the dynamic intrusion of a disturbing factor – a part of the field, which is a new, unexpected impulse. Once the impulse has ceased, there is a gradual restoration of the rhythmic rows, which we can see on the right side of the painting.

Strzemiński sees here an interesting analogy with the pattern of the formation of conditioned reflexes, and so once again refers to knowledge from the natural sciences. These considerations are accompanied by a very important observation, which shows the necessity of taking into account in the research on art not only the work itself, but also the observing subject, with all the physiological processes taking place in their organism: "The world exists, but without eyes we cannot see it. To see the world a human being who sees is needed".

Unistic artistic experiments

Strzemiński was not only a practitioner, but also tried to put his theories into practice as an artist-painter. Unistic paintings inspired by the works of Malevich, with whom he had the opportunity to collaborate during his stay in Russia, are an example of this type of works. Unism rejected all kind of illusionism, aiming to achieve a pure representation, representing a unity of forms, colours, planes and its boundaries. Created according to these principles, the drawings from the series Deportations depict the tragedy of the ghetto. They are abstract creations, made using synthetic line and colour.

Due to their simplicity and purism, they have a special power to influence the viewer. Strzemiński had a special ability to give human figures a disturbing expression, using a single line for this purpose and omitting details that usually carry great meaning, such as eyes, lips or facial features. These creative assumptions and realisations are deceptively reminiscent of the law of isolation formulated by Ramachandran, which consists in rejecting all redundant elements that interfere with the work's perception.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Illustration: Zuzanna Siara

Picture image

001_ilustracja_zuzanna_siara.jpg

It is also noteworthy that Strzemiński's theoretical and creative legacy did not remain without any echo. It found its continuation in the artistic pursuits of Strzemiński's students. In the mid-1960s, Stefan Krygier created works with which he explored the possibilities of influencing the viewer's perception. These experiments stemmed from his early works realised through the perspective of visual phenomena related to the creative process. These research-based artworks were created in the spirit of the premises of neuroaesthetics, even if Krygier was not aware of this fact.

Modern for its time, the theory of vision formulated by Strzemiński was interdisciplinary in nature. It combined a multiplicity of interests that also resulted from Strzemiński's individual, tragic experiences. It was created by an erudite and comprehensively educated visionary who was aware of the innovativeness of the author's original approach to art. In his vision, Strzemiński was almost half a century ahead of the interdisciplinary field of science that neuroaesthetics is, using some of the assumptions formulated by it. He was aware that every creative act is performed by a human being who is a complex organism in which complex physiological reactions take place. He introduced elements of the biological sciences into the study of art, recognising the abstractness and incompleteness of the tools developed by art historians and aestheticians.

In this way, he became a forerunner of neuroaesthetic research, but his theory did not have a chance to resonate properly in the international scientific discourse, partly due to the political situation in the country and the hostility of state authorities towards Strzemiński. It is only possible to speculate that the state of art research, including its relation to the physiology of the artist and his conscious efforts to control the perception of the viewer, would have been in a completely different place today. What is necessary here, however, is a certain openness to new research possibilities on the part of scientists dealing with art, so characteristic of Władysław Strzemiński.

Language English

władysław strzemiński academy of fine arts in łódź