Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

by Eric R. Kandel

An often-repeated episode in the history of modern art has it that Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), the Russian painter and art theorist, tried to abandon figurative painting but could not succeed completely until January 2, 1911. On that date he attended a New Year’s concert in Munich and heard for the first time Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, composed in 1906, and Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, composed in 1909. Best known as the composer who founded the Second Vienna School of Music, Schoenberg (1874–1951) introduced a new conception of harmony that had no central key, only changes in timbre and tone. This revolutionary form of composition, referred to as atonality, electrified Kandinsky. It showed him that one could reject an artistic convention—the idea of a central key in classical music—and create a more abstract approach. Kandinsky then proceeded to break free of the painterly convention of representing nature and abandoned the last vestiges of figuration.