Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find
common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose
remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique
perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a
work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how
reductionism--the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic
concepts into smaller, more tractable components--has been used by
scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws
on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological
underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the
complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals.
In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this
radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of
our time--the brain--has been employed by modern artists who distill
their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates
through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science
can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to
perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of
the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism
to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in
artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from
figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in
the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel
explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis,
Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their
abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built
upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and
minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside
full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out
the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each
other.
