Reductionism in Art and Brain Science Quotes

“This reductionist vision is reflected in the evolution of his work. Perhaps Mondrian also implicitly realized that by excluding certain angles and focusing only on others he might pique the beholder’s curiosity and imagination about the omissions.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“The discovery by Hubel and Wiesel of cells that respond to linear stimuli with specific axes of orientation may partly explain our response to Mondrian’s work, but it does not explain the artist’s focus on horizontal and vertical lines to the exclusion of oblique lines. Vertical”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Emotions—sexuality, aggression, pleasure, fear, and pain—are instinctive processes. They color our lives and help us confront the fundamental challenges of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. We”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“In the process, he came to understand a crucial principle of brain function: our brain takes the incomplete information about the outside world that it receives from our eyes and makes it complete.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“My central premise is that although the reductionist approaches of scientists and artists are not identical in their aims—scientists use reductionism to solve a complex problem and artists use it to elicit a new perceptual and emotional response in the beholder—they are analogous. For example,”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Vertical and horizontal lines represented for Mondrian the two opposing life forces: the positive and the negative, the dynamic and the static, the masculine and the feminine. This”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Like Picasso and Braque, Mondrian explored the influential ideas of Paul Cézanne, who greatly influenced the analytic Cubists with his idea that all natural forms can be reduced to three figural primitives: the cube, the cone, and the sphere (Loran 2006; Kandel 2014). Mondrian recognized the plastic elements in analytic Cubism, and he began to echo the Cubists’ use of geometric shapes and interlocking planes. He reduced a specific object, such as a tree, to a few lines and then connected those lines to the surrounding space (fig. 6.4), thus entangling the branches of the tree with its surroundings. Yet whereas Cubist works played with simple shapes in a complex arena of shattered space, Mondrian’s art became more reductionist. He distilled figures to their most elemental forms, eliminating altogether the sense of perspective.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“How can two mutually exclusive behaviors—mating and fighting—be mediated by the same population of neurons? Anderson found that the difference hinges on the intensity of the stimulus applied. Weak sensory stimulation, such as foreplay, activates mating, whereas stronger stimulation, such as danger, activates aggression. In 1952 Meyer Schapiro paid”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“We have seen that the region of our brain known as the amygdala orchestrates emotion and that it communicates with the hypothalamus, the region that houses the nerve cells that control instinctive behavior such as parenting, feeding, mating, fear, and fighting (chapter 3, fig. 3.5). Anderson found a nucleus, or cluster of neurons, within the hypothalamus that contains two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates mating (fig. 7.8). About 20 percent of the neurons located on the border between the two populations can be active during either mating or aggression. This suggests that the brain circuits regulating these two behaviors are intimately linked.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Woman I is considered to this day to be one of the most anxiety-producing and disturbing images of a woman in the history of art. In this painting de Kooning, who was reared by an abusive mother, creates an image that captures the divergent dimensions of the eternal woman: fertility, motherhood, aggressive sexual power, and savagery. She is at once a primitive earth mother and a femme fatale. With this image, marked by fanglike teeth and huge eyes that echo the shape of her enormous breasts, de Kooning gave birth to a new synthesis of the female. 7.6 The first known female sculpture, the Venus of Hohle Fels, circa 35,000 B.C.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (2004), biographers of de Kooning, say that he was caught up in the excitement of the American century and felt he needed to seize the day. They write: Excavation was first and foremost an excavation of desire. The body was always turning up in the paint, evocatively, but could never be held for long in the eye: the flesh could never be entirely possessed. Any more settled description of the body would have diminished the sensation of physical movement, such as the caress of the hand or a leap of the heart, that was also a vital part of desire.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Different mechanisms underlie short- and long-term memory storage. A single sensory neuron from the siphon skin connects to a motor neuron that innervates the gill. Short-term memory is produced by a single shock to the tail. This activates modulatory neurons (in blue) that cause a functional strengthening of the connections between the sensory and motor neurons. Long-term memory is produced by five repeated shocks to the tail. This activates the modulatory neurons more strongly and leads to the activation of CREB-1 genes and the growth of new synapses.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“When repeated shocks and repeated release of serotonin are paired with the firing of the sensory neuron in associative learning, a signal is sent to the nucleus of the sensory neuron. This signal activates a gene, CREB-1, which leads to the growth of new connections between the sensory and motor neuron (fig. 4.5, right) (Bailey and Chen 1983; Kandel 2001). These connections are what enable a memory to persist. So if you remember anything of what you have read here, it will be because your brain is slightly different than it was before you started to read.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“One of the great artists of this period, Barnett Newman, wrote about his response and that of his fellow artists: “We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been devices of Western European painting.” In their attempt to”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“We do not have direct access to the physical world. It may feel as if we have direct access, but this is an illusion created by our brain” (Frith 2007).”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality. (Frith 2007)”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Wilson argues that knowledge is gained and science progresses through a process of conflict and resolution.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Following the lead of Paul Cézanne and the Cubists, Greenberg saw that the distinctive feature of painting is its flatness; therefore, he thought that painting should purge itself of all illusions of depth and turn that concern over to sculpture.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“As Rothko was to say about these later works, “A painting is not a picture of an experience. It is an experience.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Rothko’s paintings consist of strong formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“My central premise is that although the reductionist approaches of scientists and artists are not identical in their aims—scientists use reductionism to solve a complex problem and artists use it to elicit a new perceptual and emotional response in the beholder—they are analogous.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“They explored the nature of visual representation by reducing images to their essential elements of form, line, color, or light.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Until the twentieth century, Western art had traditionally portrayed the world in a three-dimensional perspective, using recognizable images in a familiar way. Abstract art broke with that tradition to show us the world in a completely unfamiliar way, exploring the relationship of shapes, spaces, and colors to one another.”
― Eric R. Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures

“Kandinsky argued that, like music, art need not represent objects: the sublime aspects of the human spirit and soul can only be expressed through abstraction. Just as music moves the heart of the listener, so form and color in painting should move the heart of the beholder.”
― Eric R Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures