CENTER for
ADVANCED
STUDY
in the
BEHAVIORAL
SCIENCES

THE ARTFUL MIND

The Artful Mind:
Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity

Mark Turner, Editor

© Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 2006.

Images and links to accompany the volume:

Art and Evolution
  • Merlin Donald: Art and Cognitive Evolution. No additional images.
  • Terrence Deacon: The Aesthetic Faculty. Images.
Art and Feeling Art and the Way We Think
  • Mark Turner: The Art of Compression. Images.
  • Lawrence Zbikowski: The Cognitive Tango. No additional images.
  • Shirley Brice Heath: Dynamics of Completion. No additional images.
Art, Meaning, and Form Art and Sacred Belief
  • Robert Scott: Making Relics Work. No additional images.
  • Gloria Ferrari: Architectural Space as Metaphor. Images and Further Links.
Art and Ambiguity

A Special Project at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 2001-2002

The year-long CASBS Special Project on The Artful Mind is supported by a grant from the J. Paul Getty Grant Program, a division of the J. Paul Getty Trust

The Group includes year-long Fellows, short-term Visitors, and Speakers.
  • Members may click here to see private information, including audio recordings of the talks.
  • Anyone may click here for a schedule of past talks and events at CASBS related to the special project.

Fellows

Per Aage Brandt

Web page

Shirley Brice Heath

Web page

Gloria Ferrari Pinney

Web page

Robert A. Scott

 

Mark Turner

Web page

   

Visitors

 

Antonio Damasio

Web page

Hanna Damasio

Web page
Terrence Deacon Web page
Marc De Mey Web page

Merlin Donald

Web page

Gilles Fauconnier

Web page

David Freedberg

Web page

Stephen Murray

Web page

V. S. Ramachandran

Web page

Francis Steen

Web page

Lawrence Zbikowski

Web page

Semir Zeki

Web page
   

Speakers

 

Steven Pinker

Web page
Stephanie Rayner  
Anna Maria Busse Berger  
Shweta Narayan  
Terrence Smith  
Teenie Matlock  
Ilavenil Subbiah  

Related news and events:

• First International Conference on Neuroesthetics, exploring "The Pleasure of Art as Sensed by the Brain," on
Saturday, January 12, 2002, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Art and Cognition: Winter Symposium 2001
• 2002-2003 Fellowship Program in Art and Cognition at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America


Talks and Events:

Introductory Informal Gathering: Monday, 3 September, 2pm, Café Borrone. Use this map.
(Do not be fooled by other maps on the web, which give the wrong location for 1010 El Camino Real.)
Café Borrone is in the southeast corner of the intersection of Santa Cruz Avenue and El Camino Real in Menlo Park,
south of Oak Grove Avenue and north of Menlo Avenue,
next to Kepler's Books, and close to both the Menlo Park Caltrain station and the Menlo Park library.
1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (650) 327-0830.

5 September, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Francis Steen. "An adaptationist framework for a cognitive theory of art." Followed by discussion at lunch.
Steen offers a preprint of a related article on the web:
Steen & Owens. In press. "Evolution's Pedagogy." Culture and Cognition.

6 September, Thursday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Stephen Murray. "Looking at The Cathedral." Followed by discussion at lunch.

12 September, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Per Aage Brandt. "Art, Language, and Evolution." Followed by discussion at lunch.

18 September, Tuesday, noon, Lunch meeting with Marc Perlman, a scholar at the Stanford Humanities Center.

19 September, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Francis Steen. "Part II: Cognitive Functions of Paleolithic Art." Followed by discussion at lunch.

21 September, Friday, noon. Lunch meeting for members of the group.

15 October, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Marc De Mey. "Exploring the Mind of Jan Van Eyck." Followed by discussion at lunch.

19 October, Thursday, 3:00pm-4:30, main meeting room.
Marc De Mey. "Exploring the Mind of Jan Van Eyck. Part two: Beyond the Ghent Altarpiece."

13 November, Tuesday, 11:00am-noon, main meeting room.
Terrence Deacon. "Symbols, virtual computation, and abduction: speculations about a semiotic neuroscience."

12 January 2002, Saturday, 8am-6pm,UC Berkeley.
First International Conference on Neuroesthetics, exploring "The Pleasure of Art as Sensed by the Brain."

18 January 2002, Friday, 11am-1pm.
Meeting of members and visitors with two guests, Marco Casonato from the University of Milan and Edward Slingerland from USC.

29 January 2002, Tuesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Semir Zeki. "Neural concept formation in art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner."

31 January 2002, Thursday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Art viewed in the context of human prehistory."

4 February 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Semir Zeki. "The neurology of suprematism."

11 February 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Art and cognitive engineering." Followed by discussion at lunch.

13 February 2002, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Stephanie Rayner. "The Eden Contract." Followed by discussion at lunch.

4 March 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Bob Scott. "How relics work: Force dynamics in the Medieval cult of saints."

5 March 2002, Tuesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
V. S. Ramachandran. "Neurology of synesthesia, art, and the evolution of language."

7 March 2002, Thursday, 9am-10am, main meeting room.
V. S. Ramachandran. "Brain and Art."

18 March 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Lawrence Zbikowski. "Conceptualizing Music"
Followed by discussion at lunch.

19 March 2002, Tuesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
David Freedberg. "Painting and Emotion: The Problem of the Modes."
Followed by discussion at lunch.

19 March 2002, Tuesday, 2:30-3:30, main meeting room.
Mark Turner. "Conceptual Compression and Art."

20 March 2002, Tuesday, 10:30-11:30am, main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Origins and Mechanisms of Role-Playing."

21 March 2002, Thursday, 11-12, main meeting room.
Anna Maria Busse Berger. "The Role of Memory in Medieval Music Composition."
Followed by discussion at lunch.

25 March 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Shweta Narayan. "Comic Art and Cubism are in the Eye of the Beholder."
Followed by discussion at lunch.

26 March 2002, Tuesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Lawrence Zbikowski. "Modeling the Groove"
(Readings: Zbikowski, "Modeling the Groove: Conceptual Structures in
Popular Music," typescript to be circulated soon.)
Followed by discussion at lunch.

1 April 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Terrence Deacon. "Mnemes, schemas, blends, and bisociations: Why we need an evolutionary
semiosis." Followed by discussion at lunch.

9 April 2002, Tuesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Terrence Deacon. "Emergence and symbolic cognition: The neurological novelty of cognition about
value, aesthetic experience, and ethics, and the place of the arts in
developing this." Followed by discussion at lunch.

15 April 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Steven Pinker. "The Blank Slate: On Art and Human Nature."
Followed by discussion at lunch.

6 May 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room
Terrence Smith. "Problems in the Processual Structures of Vision in Art: e.g., the problem of the emergence and then the persistence of the great pictorial organising structures in Western art since the Renaissance."
Followed by discussion at lunch.

13 May 2002, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room
Tennie Matlock. "Fictive motion in language and thought".
Followed by discussion at lunch.

22 May 2002, Wednesday, 7:30pm, main meeting room
Gloria Pinney. "Architectural Space as Metaphor: The Case of the Ancient
Greek Sanctuary." Wednesday evening seminar.

29 May 2002, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting room
Ilavenil Subbiah. "Bookart, Science, and Design are the three threads thatrun through my professional and artisticlives. Having been trained in all three disciplines I have been able to draw on the tools each has provided. Not surprisingly, I have found much overlap among the three areas in approach, process, execution, and end product. I will discuss the intersections between book art, science, and design thathave defined my workand thinking." Followed by discussion at lunch.


Getty-CASBS symposium, "Brain, Cognition, and Art." We held a three-and-a-half day symposium at the Getty Museum in Brentwood, California Wednesday-Saturday, 3-6 April 2002 to unite several of the Fellows and Visitors of the CASBS Special Project on Cognition, Brain, and Art with the Fellows of the Getty Research Institute for 2001-2002. The Getty Fellows will had as their theme that year "Perception, Experience, Judgment."

Program

The Getty Research Institute

in collaboration with

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

presents a

Symposium

'Frames of Viewing: The Brain, Cognition, and Art'

DATES: SYMPOSIUM & PUBLIC LECTURE


Wednesday, April 3, 2002 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 4, 2002 9:15 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday, April 5, 2002 9:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 6, 2002 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Symposium Opening
Public Lecture: Wednesday, April 3,
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Jonathan Miller, author, theater and film director, neurologist
“The Gaze: Looking as It Appears in Pictures”
Location, Harold M. Williams Auditorium, The Getty Center
Reservations required (310) 440-7300 (note: reservation made for lecture automatically with symposium registration)
For more information about this lecture go to:
http://www.getty.edu/research/programs/public/miller.html
6:15 – 7:00 p.m.
Reception: Auditorium Lobby


Symposium
Day One: Thursday, April 4
8:45 – 9:15 a.m.
Coffee and Registration
Morning Session
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.
Overview of the year’s activities in relation to the themes “Frames of Viewing: Perception, Experience, Judgment” (GRI), and “Cognition, Brain, and Art” (CASBS).
Thomas Crow, Director Getty Research Institute
Douglas McAdam, Director Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
General Discussion
10 minute Break
11:00 – 11:50 a.m. (Museum Lecture Hall)
Special Multi-Media Performance Presentation
Semir Zeki and Per Aage Brandt, “Vermeer, Wagner, and the Neurology of Ambiguity”
12:00 – 1:50 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session
The roundtable sessions are 110 minutes each, including: a 20 minute framing presentation on the topic; 10 minute respondent comments; 40 minute roundtable panel discussion; and 40 minute general roundtable discussion.
2:00 – 3:50 p.m.
Roundtable Session I: Perception and Aesthetics
Presenter: Semir Zeki
Respondent: John Hyman
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Marc De Mey, Dennis Sepper, Ladislav Kesner
The study of the neural basis of artistic creativity and aesthetic response has had its most direct beginnings in the scientific investigation of elementary perceptual processes, particularly those related to vision. This session begins the symposium discussions with the perception and aesthetics domain of research, partly to review it and partly to explore whether it can serve as a model for other branches of research into the cognitive roots of art.
20 Minute Break
4:10 – 6:00 p.m.
Roundtable Session II: Affect & Memory in Art
Presenter: Antonio Damasio
Respondent: Martin Kemp
Roundtable Panel: Charles Harrison, David Freedberg, Barbara Stafford, Robert Scott
Within cognitive neuroscience, affect and memory count as two of the core aspects of mind. At the same time, within art history and indeed in the general reception of art, two of the most abiding and unquestioned effects of art are its emotional power over us, and its role in remembrance. These aspects are often inseparable. In this session we examine why art can have such power over human minds, and how art history can contribute to specific understanding of the cultural engineering accomplished by art in social life.
6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Dinner: Getty Center, Resturant, East Area


Day Two: Friday, April 5
9:10 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
Morning Session
9:30 – 9:40
Welcome and Speaker Introduction
9:40 – 10:20 a.m.
Special Presentation
Marina Wallace and Martin Kemp, “Head-On: Art with the Brain in Mind”
10 minute Break

10:30 a.m. –12:20 p.m.
Roundtable Session III: Form, Brain, and Art
Presenter: George Lakoff
Respondent: Thomas Crow
Roundtable Panel: Deanna Petherbridge, Lawrence Zbibowski, Terence Smith, John Hyman
From time to time, we experience an unusual perceptual shift in which we pay attention to the formal nature of an ordinary content of consciousness. In those moments, we are particularly attentive to our experience of form in space or time, rather than states of affairs in the real world. Such shifts are associated with religious experience, stress, depression, erotic arousal, and the perception of "beauty." But artists are able voluntarily
to make these formal shifts and to communicate these formal perceptions. This session examines how it is that the mental brain of our species lets us have both an ordinary register of content-oriented perception and, occasionally, the extraordinary register of form-oriented perception that we experience in art.
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session:
2:00 – 2:30 p.m.
Special Presentation
V. S. Ramachandran, “Perception and Form” (title may be revised by the presenter)
2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
Roundtable Session IV: Dynamics of Completion: Gaps, Blanks, and Improvisation
Presenter: Shirley Brice Heath
Respondent: Deanna Petherbridge
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Francis Steen, David Antin, Per Aage Brandt
Art opens us to interpretation, but how do resources of memory, experience, visual acuity, and language work together as artists and viewers "fill in" for what is not there? Neural networks that enable literacy play a central role in helping us gain a sense of completion when we view a work of art. Images previously stored unconsciously also come to mind and supplement any verbal interpretation to extend the boundaries of line, color, and motion. This session will consider several current attempts to explain the brain processing behind the dynamics of art.
20 minute Break
4:40 –6:30 p.m.
Roundtable Session V: The Evolved and Cultured Brain: Diversity and Communality in Art
Presenter: Terrence Deacon
Respondent: Jerry Moore
Roundtable Panel: Kajri Jain, Merlin Donald, Martin Kemp, Steven Pinker, Charles Harrison
Art is a product of culture, and as such its forms and expressions vary—locally—across time and place. Yet cultural diversity is itself made possible by the universally shared cognitive capacities of the human brain. This session will explore the cognitive and evolutionary roots of artistic creativity and diversity by asking questions about the evolutionary history of the artistic mind, the possibility of universally appealing art, and the cognitive bases for local variation and innovation.
7:00 –8:30 p.m.
Dinner: Getty Center, Trustee House


Day Three: Saturday, April 6
9:10 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
Morning Session
9:30 – 9:40 a.m.
Welcome & Speaker Introduction
9:40 – 10:30 a.m.
Special Presentation
Janet Sternburg, “Phantom Limb: Pathways Between Memoir and Neurology”
10:30 – 10:40 a.m.
Break
10:40 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Roundtable VI: Individual and Collective in the Interpretation and Creation of Art
Presenter: David Antin
Respondent: Gloria Ferrari Pinney
Roundtable Panel: Tom Crow, Mark Turner, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Stephen Murray,
Jonathan Miller (invited)
Art, like language, is a human singularity that depends upon individual capacities and group interactions. From the earliest paintings, the capacity to make images visible made possible a new form of communal or distributed cognition. The content of art may be drawn from and make manifest a preexisting collective vision, in which the personality of the artist is placed in the background. But equally, the act of creation may be thought of as an individualistic and even private endeavor, one that the community should approach as a revelation. What are the factors—aesthetic, cognitive, historical—that regulate the complex dynamic of the relations between artists and their audiences?
12:30 – 1:50 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session
2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Special Presentation
Barbara Stafford, “Devices of Wonder Exhibition”
3:00 – 3:10 p.m.
Break
3:10 – 4:30 p.m.
General Session: Closing Discussion
Led by: Thomas Crow and Mark Turner
4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Closing Reception, Getty Center, Private Dining Room

SUMMARY ROUNDTABLE PANELS
Thursday, April 4
Roundtable Session I: Perception and Aesthetics
Presenter: Semir Zeki
Respondent/Chair: John Hyman
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Marc De Mey, Dennis Sepper, Ladislav Kesner
Roundtable Session II: Affect & Memory in Art
Presenter: Antonio Damasio
Respondent/Chair: Martin Kemp
Roundtable Panel: Charles Harrison, David Freedberg, Barbara Stafford, Robert Scott
Friday, April 5
Roundtable Session III: Form, Brain, and Art
Presenter: George Lakoff
Respondent/Chair: Tom Crow
Roundtable Panel: Deanna Petherbridge, Lawrence Zbibowski, Terence Smith, John Hyman
Roundtable Session IV: Dynamics of Completion: Gaps, Blanks, and Improvisation
Presenter: Shirley Brice Heath
Respondent/Chair: Deanna Petherbridge
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Francis Steen, David Antin, Per Aage Brandt
Roundtable Session V: The Evolved and Cultured Brain: Diversity and Communality in Art
Presenter: Terence Deacon
Respondent/Chair: Jerry Moore
Roundtable Panel: Kajri Jain, Merlin Donald, Martin Kemp, Steven Pinker, Charles Harrison
Saturday, April 6
Roundtable VI: Individual and Collective in the Interpretation and Creation of Art
Presenter: David Antin
Respondent/Chair: Gloria Ferrari Pinney
Roundtable Panel: Tom Crow, Mark Turner, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Stephen Murray,
Jonathan Miller (invited)